He was descended from a long line of seafarers, but poor health throughout his life meant that he was unable to follow his forebears to sea.

This proclivity, together with lengthy periods of ill health, saw him complete barely 40 paintings and a similar number of drawings during his career.

[1] By the mid-1930s, all the early energy of the National Party of Scotland in Montrose had dissipated and, disillusioned, Baird turned more towards a socialist-inspired vision of ordinary working people and the effects that the long industrial depression of the 1930s had on his locality.

The 1936 canvas, Distressed Area, shows an empty Montrose harbour, looking out across Rossie Island and the River South Esk, to the North Sea.

When war was declared in September 1939, Baird was working on a large scale portrait of his friend, and well known local character, James "Pumphy" Davidson.

Baird quickly adapted the portrait to show Davidson wearing an armband of the newly created Local Defence Volunteers, later the Home Guard.

This image quickly became important in Britain's early propaganda efforts in the war, to show the determination of the UK to resist any attempt to invade the country.

Baird's stylised rendition of Montrose in the background gleams in the steely light of a "Bomber's Moon", making plain the vulnerability of small coastal towns to German air raids.