Anne Redpath

Scotland's Celebrated Colourist

This prominent painter's independent spirit and perpetual search for inspiration left a legacy of beautiful work and a wealth of loyal followers.

Anne Redpath.

At the turn of the twentieth century in the Scottish Borders, a young girl watched her father meticulously design tweed fabrics. Her artist’s eye took note of each individual color in the weave and later utilized them in her paintings, saying, “I do with a spot of red or yellow in a harmony of grey, what my father did in his tweed.”

Redpath’s Journey as a Painter

Anne Redpath’s childhood observations of texture and the intricate relationship between colors set the stage for her life journey as an artist. She produced a wealth of paintings, predominantly still lifes and landscapes, becoming one of the most important artists in twentieth century Scottish painting as well as a major figure (and the only woman) in the Edinburgh School art movement. Redpath was strongly influenced by the Scottish Colourists who, a generation before her, had introduced the style and techniques of the French Impressionists and Fauvists into traditional Scottish art.

Over her lifetime, Redpath’s work underwent continual growth. She never rested on her laurels simply because she had found popularity with the public. She preferred to explore styles and techniques from other art movements, incorporating them into her work without losing her own voice.

European Travels Influenced

Redpath's Art

Artistic expression was an integral part of Redpath’s daily life through early adulthood. At the age of 18 she was accepted at Edinburgh College of Art, although she had to agree to train concurrently to be an art teacher in order to gain her parents’ permission to attend.

After receiving her diploma, Redpath completed a postgraduate year. Her impressive talent earned her a traveling scholarship in 1919 which took her to Paris, Florence, Brussels, Bruges, and Siena. The influence of studying art during these travels, especially primitive works she saw in Siena, can be seen in her work, most notably in the addition of new colors to her palette.

One year later, Redpath married James Michie, a young architect working in France. For the next 14 years her attention was fixed on home and family, which left little time to paint. During those years, however, she completed enough work — mostly watercolors — to participate in exhibitions in 1921 and 1928. She also started decorating furniture with bright-colored birds and flowers, which became subjects in her later still lifes.

From Landscapes to Interiors

When Redpath’s husband lost his position in 1934, she returned to Scotland with their three young sons while he worked and lived in London. Although there was contact between them until his death 25 years later, the couple never lived together again.

It was during this period that Redpath began painting with renewed focus and energy, undoubtedly to express herself through her work, but also to provide for her family.

Using a muted palette with a few bright colors, she sketched and painted landscapes of nearby villages and trees on farmlands, showing her work at the Royal Scottish Academy and in group exhibitions. Over the next several years, her growing confidence and inquisitive nature led her beyond the familiar landscapes of the Scottish Borders, and her paintings began to incorporate bold colors and increasingly abstract images. Clearly influenced by the French

Post-Impressionist Henri Matisse, her still lifes and domestic interiors became vibrant, two-dimensional studies of familiar household items.

Redpath’s subjects became tables and chairs, wallpaper, tablecloths or rugs with detailed patterns, cups and teapots, and flowers. She would paint the objects on a flat surface and "tilt" the tabletops, a technique reminiscent of the medieval Sienese paintings she studied on her traveling scholarship.

Redpath’s mastery of complex compositions, structure, and surface texture in this period is remarkable, and these still lifes remain her bestknown works.

Redpath's Later Works

When Redpath moved to Edinburgh in 1949, she was a popular and wellrespected artist. As her financial freedom grew, she began traveling throughout Europe on a regular basis, visiting the South of France, Spain, Brittany, Portugal, Corsica, the Canary Islands, and later Amsterdam and Venice.

Each new location influenced her paintings of coastal scenes, villages, and church architecture. On her travels to the Mediterranean, she seemed particularly interested in Catholic church interiors with their rich, Baroque opulence — so far removed from the Presbyterian churches she knew as a child; these became the subject of many of her paintings.

Redpath's Work Recognized

Over the years, Redpath’s achievements and influence were widely recognized. She received an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in 1955 as well as numerous honors and appointments from distinguished art institutions.

At the height of her career, she was held in high regard by artists and art critics alike, and in the art community as a whole. She formed friendships that lasted her lifetime and enjoyed gatherings in her home conversing on a wide array of topics from politics and art to serious social issues.

Redpath was an inspiration. From early childhood until her death in 1965, in her personal life and as an artist, her inquisitive nature never waned; she never lost interest in the world she lived in.

Michael Palin on Redpath

In 1997, Michael Palin (of Monty Python fame), co-wrote and hosted an arts documentary for BBC

Television about Redpath's work titled,

"Palin on Redpath."

As a collector of her work, Palin remembered the first time he saw one of her paintings, The Old Port at Menton. He said, "It was the first time I ever laid eyes on any work of Redpath's and it seemed to me a monumental work."

He was drawn to the solidity of the picture, its depiction of a strong wind blowing across the harbor, and it's unusual, almost aerial perspective.

The documentary explores Redpath's life in full, including her rather charming habit of collecting items from her travels which she

Redpath's life in full, including her rather charming habit of collecting items from her travels which she called her "awful magpie tendency." These were objects she would later render in her beautiful still life paintings.

Redpath explained, "I have collected so many objects around me that are ready to be painted, as it were. All those things in my room, they're a mixture, but they've all been chosen by me and, therefore, they live together, I think, quite happily."

The love she felt for the objects can certainly be seen in her still lifes. Palin, who was looking for the perfect spot to hang a new Redpath painting he had collected, summed up this tendency to collect loved objects: "It's in the objects you collect that you see your own life reflected."

That reflection may well be what draws a viewer into Redpath's work; a desire to see and feel the landscapes or objects she painted with the same interest and affection she felt for them.

As Palin puts it, "What I've discovered about Anne Redpath's work is that it's not above life, it's part of it."