Simon Quinn
The Farewell at the Flying Scotsman, 2026
Oil on canvas
40 x 32 in
101.6 x 81.3 cm
101.6 x 81.3 cm
Signed & framed
Copyright © Simon Quinn
Further images
An intimate moment unfolds at the threshold of departure in this evocative figurative painting centred on The Flying Scotsman. A young woman in a pale blue pleated dress, rendered with exquisite attention to light and texture, leans upward from the platform as she shares a fleeting kiss with the train’s driver. He, poised in the cab of the great green engine, bends toward her in a gesture that is both tender and restrained, held in the narrow space between duty and desire.
An intimate moment unfolds at the threshold of departure in this evocative figurative painting centred on The Flying Scotsman. A young woman in a pale blue pleated dress, rendered with exquisite attention to light and texture, leans upward from the platform as she shares a fleeting kiss with the train’s driver. He, poised in the cab of the great green engine, bends toward her in a gesture that is both tender and restrained, held in the narrow space between duty and desire.
Set in the 1920s–30s, the work draws upon the visual language of mid-century cinema and railway iconography, yet remains firmly rooted in portraiture. The figures dominate the composition, their connection forming the emotional core, while the locomotive—LNER No. 4472—provides both context and quiet symbolism.
The painting captures not the journey itself, but the moment just before it begins—a suspended second in which time seems to pause. It is a meditation on parting, on the rituals of farewell, and on the human stories that exist within larger systems of travel and progress. Cinematic in atmosphere yet deeply personal in focus, the work invites the viewer to linger in that fragile space where intimacy meets inevitability.
8, King Street