Scotsman Obituaries: Anne Demarco, artist and teacher who was hidden strength behind husband Richard’s legacy of artistic patronage

Anne Carol Muckle was born in North Shields Victoria Royal Infirmary, North Tyneside, on Christmas Day 1934. Her parents, Robert and Norah Muckle, lived in a small fishing community between Cullercoats and Whitley Bay. Although her mother hailed from Essex, Anne always considered herself to be a Geordie.

Educated in the Scottish Borders at Kelso and Galashiels High Schools, Anne showed early promise as an artist. In 1952 she met Richard Demarco on her first day at Edinburgh College of Art where Richard was already installed as a student in the School of Design. However, Anne preferred to study Fine Art at the School of Painting and completed her studies in 1954, coinciding with Richard starting his National Service at the King’s Own Scottish Borderers’ barracks at Berwick-upon-Tweed, later becoming a Sergeant Instructor with the Royal Army Educational Corps.

The couple married at the Church of St Ninian and St Triduana in the Edinburgh Parish of Restalrig on 27 December 1956, and they honeymooned in London.

Having graduated from Moray House Teacher’s Training College, Richard was appointed Art Master at Duns Scotus Academy and he and Anne set up their first home together in the top flat of 29 Frederick Street in Edinburgh's New Town.

Anne’s younger sister Elizabeth went on to marry Praesert Sukhum, a Siamese medical student from Edinburgh University, and three of their children were enrolled at Edinburgh independent schools to provide them with a strong Scottish education.

Anne began teaching at a Roman Catholic state school in Cowdenbeath. This enabled her to teach in the Sacred Heart Convent in Craiglockhart and eventually to become, for a significant period, the much respected Head of the Art Department of St Margaret’s Girls School in Edinburgh. An independent fee-paying girls school, St Margaret’s merged with St Denis School and Cranley and eventually closed in 2010.

Thereafter, Anne taught at St Mary’s Music School where she was considered inspirational and is fondly remembered by many of those she taught. Perhaps the most notable event of this period was when she, together with Freda Cockrell, created a tapestry inspired by the all-too-short life of the much loved St Margaret’s School.

In their Frederick Street home during the 1950s, Anne helped Richard to create a Salon for their friends and fellow artists and Edinburgh Festival supporters, welcoming outsiders long before the advent of Jim Haynes’ life-changing Paperback Bookshop which led to the creation of the Traverse Theatre, John Calder’s Ledlanet opera festival and the Richard Demarco Gallery in its first manifestation in Melville Crescent. To a great extent, the rest is history.

With Richard’s extensive involvement with all the arts, Anne became a stalwart supporter of the developing annual Edinburgh International Festival.

In Frederick Street, they welcomed famous actors, musicians, visual artists, dancers and writers and Anne proved a stylish hostess. It also became part of Anne’s purpose to research British films and she completed an Open University degree exploring the world of film before the over-use of Technicolor.

With a combination of moral rectitude and innate wisdom, she enabled Richard to be fruitfully involved through the international spirit of the Edinburgh Festival.

Anne worked alongside Richard, in the last years of her life, to develop the Demarco Archive and her unerring support enabled the life's work of Richard Demarco to help bind together the cultural and educational importance of his legacy as an academic resource for future generations.

This is evidenced in the fact that Europe's foremost international museum of art, the Muzeum Sztuki in the Polish city of Lodz, is now in perpetuity linked with Richard Demarco's life in Edinburgh as a patron of all the arts.

A tender, strikingly attractive, modest but quietly authoritative, individual, Anne was the hidden strength in Richard Demarco’s often controversial life crusade to bring about truth and purpose to humanity through the healing balm of the Edinburgh International Festival, which is now in its 80th anniversary year.