Scottish Art News Issue 12

Scottish Art News

ISSUE 12 AUTUMN 2009 £3

Sir Muirhead Bone Face of Scotland Martin Boyce The Discovery of Spain The Public Catalogue Foundation Edinburgh Art Festival

Contents

Summer/Autumn 2009 Fine Paintings - 11th December 2009

THE FLEMING COLLECTION

An Invitation to Consign

5 News from The Fleming Collection

by Selina Skipwith

6 Sir Muirhead Bone: Master Draughtsman Throughout his artistic career, Muirhead Bone recorded the city in his drawings and etchings, creating a truthful and unromantic portrait of an urban landscape during the Industrial Revolution and both World Wars

by Bill Smith

12 Sir Muirhead Bone: Artist and Patron It was not only as an artist that Muirhead Bone should be known, but also as a discerning patron of many progressive young artists

by Peyton Skipwith

Muirhead Bone in the mud at Maricourt on the Western Front September 1916, Imperial War Museum

18 The Face of Scotland: Masterpieces from The Scottish National Portrait Gallery With the Scottish National Portrait Gallery closed for renovation, a special selection of portraits from the collection, depicting Scottish sitters are coming to London in 2009

by James Holloway

23

ROBERT GEMMELL HUTCHISON R.B.A., R.O.I., R.S.A., R.S.W (SCOTTISH 1860-1936)

0131 557 8844

TUG OF WAR Signed, oil on canvas 57cm x 95cm SOLD FOR £97,250 Fine Paintings Sale 28th May 2009

Other forthcoming paintings auctions include: 9th July

Paintings

19th August

Scottish Contemporary Art

1

12

Picture in Focus: D.Y. Cameron Old Paris, c.1910

by Camilla Stafford-Deitsch

30 Events in 2009 at The Fleming Collection

25th September Contemporary Art 15th October

26

Paintings 33 Broughton Place Edinburgh EH1 3RR

182 Bath Street Glasgow G2 4HG

11-12 Pall Mall London SW1Y 5LU

0131 557 8844

0141 333 1992

020 7930 9115

www.lyonandturnbull.com

Cover Image

Enquiries: Nick Curnow

Portrait of the Nation An extensive renovation project is underway to revamp the gallery’s spaces and displays at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery

by Nicola Kalinsky

Donald Maclellan, Tilda Swinton, 2000 Silver gelatine bromide toned print Scottish National Portrait Gallery

Sir William Allan, Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) Novelist and poet. c.1844, oil on canvas Scottish National Portrait Gallery

The Fleming Collection is widely recognised as the finest collection of Scottish Art in private hands and was originally conceived as a corporate collection in 1968 for Robert Fleming Holdings Ltd in the City of London. Since 2000 the collection has belonged to The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation which aims to promote Scottish Art to a wider audience. The collection consists of works by many of Scotland’s most prominent artists, from 1770 to the present day, including works by early nineteenth century artists, the Glasgow Boys, the Scottish Colourists, the Edinburgh School and many contemporary Scottish names. Regular exhibitions drawn from the Collection as well as loans from public and private collections of Scottish art can be viewed in the specially designed gallery.

The Fleming Collection | 13 Berkeley Street | London | W1J 8DU tel: +44 (0) 20 7409 5730 fax: +44 (0) 20 7409 5601 www.flemingcollection.co.uk | flemingcollection@ffandp.com Opening Hours: Tues – Sat 10am–5.30pm Admission Free

Scottish Art News 2

Scottish Art News

Editor’s Note

35

A chronicler of the city, becoming the first official War Artist in 1916, Sir Muirhead Bone (1876–1953) fulfilled Baudelaire’s ideal of the ‘painter of modern life’, publishing numerous books of his etchings and drawings. To coincide with the exhibition Sir Muirhead Bone (7 July – 5 September) at The Fleming Collection, London, this issue features a focus on his work as both artist and patron. As well as features on the National Galleries of Scotland’s Face of Scotland and The Discovery of Spain exhibitions, there is an insight into the work being done by the Public Catalogue Foundation to photograph and record paintings in publicly owned collections in the UK.

During the life of this issue, this year’s Venice Biennale will see sculptor Martin Boyce represent Scotland in this year’s Scottish presentation (featured p.36) and the Edinburgh Art Festival will get underway with a diverse range of exhibitions and events (featured p.68). Also in this issue, the regular previews highlight the pick of art to see in 2009.

Gossoprie: Scottish Art News round-up

36 Scotland + Venice: Martin Boyce, No Reflections Martin Boyce has been selected as the first artist to represent Scotland alone at the 53rd Venice Biennale in this year’s Scottish presentation at Venice

by Katie Baker

40 The Discovery of Spain British Artists and Collectors: Goya to Picasso A spectacular celebration of Spanish culture will bring some Mediterranean colour to Edinburgh this summer as the National Gallery of Scotland unveils the highlight of its festival programme for 2009

by Lucia Lindsay

44 Discover the Paintings You Own The Public Catalogue Foundation is cataloging and making publicly accessible all oil paintings owned by the British public

by Andy Ellis

To subscribe to Scottish Art News, published twice a year in January and June, please complete the subscription form on p.71 of this magazine. Alternatively, contact The Fleming Collection: T: 0207 409 5730 E: admin@scottishartnews.co.uk, or complete a subscription form online at scottishartnews.co.uk Scottish Art News Issue 12 is published by The Fleming Collection

To advertise in Scottish Art News please contact: Evelyn Milligan | T: 020 7409 5784 | E: evelyn.milligan@ffandp.com

Behind Scottish Art News at The Fleming Collection: Editor: Briony Anderson Picture research: Evelyn Milligan With contributions from:

Gallery Interns:

Selina Skipwith, Keeper of Art

Camilla Stafford-Deitsch

Lucia Lindsay, Assistant Keeper of Art

Rebecca Mundy

We would like to know what you think about Scottish Art News Martin Boyce photographs Concrete Stepping Stones in the Glasgow workshop, prior to them being wrapped and transported to Venice, May 2009 Photo Credit: Image courtesy of Gilmar Ribeiro

Briony Anderson

and anything you would like us to feature. Email your comments and suggestions to editor@scottishartnews.co.uk

50 Portrait of Peter Higgs unveiled A painting by Ken Currie of the British physicist whose work triggered the worldwide hunt for the elusive ‘God particle’ has been commissioned by The University of Edinburgh

by Bill Hare

Revised design concept by Flit (London) and Briony Anderson Issue 12 designed by Flit (London) | flitlondon.co.uk

Printed by Empress Litho Limited

Regulars Scottish Art News Issue 12 is kindly sponsored by:

52 Art Market Round-up by Will Bennett 54 Books 56 Preview 2009 The pick of art to see in 2009 From Blackadder to Borland: Scottish Women Printmakers North and South: The Scottish Colourists, Pallant House Gallery The Creative World of Alan Davie, Dovecot Studios Little Sparta: The Garden of Ian Hamilton Finlay Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh

© Scottish Art News 2009. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute

reproduced, copied or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written

65 Listings 68 Scottish Art News: A Guide to the Edinburgh Art Festival 2009 The Edinburgh Art Festival 2009 programme sees the

permission of the publisher. Scottish Art News accepts no responsibility for loss or damage of unsolicited material submitted for publication. Scottish Art News is published by The Fleming Collection but is not the voice of the gallery or The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation.

participation of no fewer than 50 galleries and spaces across Edinburgh 3

12

All images copyright of the artist or artist’s estate unless otherwise stated.

T H I S P U B L I C AT I O N WA S D E S I G N E D B Y F L I T L O N D O N . C O. U K

Scottish Art News 4

News from

THE FLEMING COLLECTION

T

On view at the gallery 7 July - 5 September (see pages 6-16)

Sir Muirhead Bone (1876 - 1953) Piccadilly Circus, 1915 © The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation

T H E F LE M I NG C OL L E C TION WE WISH TO THANK THE FOLLOWING FOR SUPPORTING OUR EXHIBITION PROGRAMME

Founder MeMber Fleming Family & Partners Ltd

Corporate MeMbers

aLso

Bird & Bird International Law Firm Evercore Partners Limited Eton College Hamilton & Inches Ltd Highland Star Group RFIB Group Limited Ridgeway Partners LLP Rothschild Banking & Trust RWC Partners Ltd Standard Chartered PLC

Patrons of The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation Friends of The Fleming Collection

his summer The Fleming Collection celebrates the work of Sir Muirhead Bone in a long overdue exhibition of an artist who has been all but forgotten except by a relatively small number of dedicated collectors. The exhibition reassesses Bone’s work both as an artist and also as an important figure in the art world, particularly as collector and patron. He supported and encouraged many young artists, such as Stanley Spencer, Jacob Epstein, Mark Gertler and David Bomberg in their early career and examples of all their work will be included in the exhibition.

Examples of Bone’s work will also be on display in Edinburgh in The Discovery of Spain: British Artists and Collectors at the National Gallery of Scotland (18 July – 11 October).

The Fleming Collection will be lending paintings by Crawhall, Armour and Melville to the exhibition. At the other end of the country The Collection is lending all our works by The Scottish Colourists to Pallant House (27 June – 1 November).

In the autumn The Fleming Collection is delighted to be the London home of the

Scottish National Portrait Gallery while it is closed for renovation.

The Face of Scotland will be a rare opportunity to see a selection of Scotland’s finest examples of portraiture, many of which have never been on show in London before. The exhibition, curated by James Holloway, Director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, will include portraits of some of Scotland’s most famous historical figures such as Mary Queen of Scots, Bonnie Prince Charlie, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Robert Louis Stevenson as well as some of Scotland’s contemporary personalities such as Sean Connery, Ewan MacGregor, Ian Rankin and J.K. Rowling.

I wish to thank all of those who have worked with and supported us as well as the contributors and advertisers in this edition; I would also like to express my gratitude to Lyon and Turnbull, Scotland’s oldest established auction house, for their continued support and generous sponsorship which has made this magazine possible.

Selina Skipwith Keeper of Art

FROM TOP Images from the private view Inspired Part II: Works from The Fleming Collection April 2009 Leah Clark, Andrew Macdonald, Philip Long, Senior Curator SNGMA Michael Portillo

For information on ways to support the gallery contact Lucia Lindsay:

THE FLEMING COLLECTION 13 Berkeley Street, Mayfair, London W1J 8DU 020 7409 5784 │ flemingcollection@ffandp.com │ www.flemingcollection.co.uk 5

12

Adam Fleming, Chairman Fleming Family and Partners David Barbour, Michael Stoddart and Anthony Swift Inspired Part II exhibition co-curators Tim Cornwell and Lucia Lindsay All images © Photographer Georgie Viney

Scottish Art News 6

Throughout his artistic career, Sir Muirhead Bone (1876–1953) recorded the city in his drawings and etchings, creating a truthful and unromantic portrait of an urban landscape during the Industrial Revolution and both World Wars. Bill Smith examines his life and work in Glasgow, then London, and as the first official British War Artist

S

ir Muirhead Bone was one of the most distinguished artists of the first half of the twentieth century. He was an exceptional draughtsman, the late Kenneth Clark describing him as ‘the greatest virtuoso of architectural drawing since Piranesi except, perhaps, for Meryon’. Bone worked almost exclusively with pencil, pen and ink and watercolours. He was also one of the most celebrated printmakers of the etching revival of 1880–1930, his etchings and drypoints avidly sought by collectors in the first three decades of the twentieth century. He was an ardent supporter and patron of many younger artists, such as David Bomberg, Jacob Epstein, Mark Gertler, William Roberts and Stanley Spencer, much of whose work was far removed from his own.

Glasgow

Sir Muirhead Bone, Gorbals, 1899, etching Private Collection © Artist’s Estate OPPOSITE FROM TOP Sir Muirhead Bone, The Great Gantry, Charing Cross Station, 1906, drypoint Private Collection © Artist’s Estate Sir Muirhead Bone, Demolition of St James’s Hall, Interior, 1906, drypoint Private Collection © Artist’s Estate

7

12

Born in Glasgow in 1876, Muirhead Bone was the fourth of seven surviving children of David Drummond Bone, a journalist, and his first wife, Elizabeth Crawford. At school he impressed his fellow pupils with his drawing ability, one later recounting:

‘...I have a most vivid recollection of the extraordinary facility and uncanny confidence with which he used to illustrate, for the edification of myself and the neighbouring desks, current events on his slate with a stumpy slate pencil when, according to our instructors, he should have been

At the end of his four years’ apprenticeship, Bone decided that being an architect was not for him, choosing instead to become an artist more profitably employed.’

Bone’s passion for drawing was shared by Francis Dodd, who was two years older than him. The two boys became lifelong friends. Both enrolled for evening classes run by Archibald Kay, Bone’s drawing master at Partick Academy. Leaving school at fourteen, Bone was articled to a firm of architects and followed Dodd to evening classes at Glasgow School of Art. However at the end of his four years’ apprenticeship, Bone decided that being an architect was not for him, choosing instead to become an artist.

Bone’s father provided him with food and lodging until he was twenty, but it was

a difficult time for the entire family. His beloved mother had died when he was ten. Several years later his father married again – with dire consequences.

A daughter was born, but her mother could not cope with the baby and the seven step-children and turned to drink. After a traumatic five years for the whole family, the marriage ended.

However Bone and his brothers lovingly looked after their little step-sister, Annie, who had a cleft palate and learning difficulties, until her early death.

Until Bone could pay his way as an artist, he took a job manning a homecraft and decorators shop in Glasgow’s Scottish Art News 8

Sir Muirhead Bone, Subido de Santo Domingo, Gerona, c.1926, watercolour Fine Art Society © Artist’s Estate OPPOSITE FROM LEFT Sir Muirhead Bone, The Fight for Lens, from Notre Dame de Lorette 1917, watercolour over charcoal on buff paper Trustees of the British Museum © Artist’s Estate Sir Muirhead Bone, An Aeroplane on the stocks, Coventry, 1917, charcoal with black, red & blue chalk on buff paper Trustees of the British Museum © Artist’s Estate

Great Western Road, owned by a friend, Martha Philip. She was an artist herself and Bone was able to meet other artists at her home in the evening. The shop was closed during the summer while Miss Philip attended studio classes in Paris, allowing Bone to live the life of a full-time artist. In 1894 and the two following summers he spent three months painting landscapes and buildings along the East Neuk of Fife. The rest of the year was spent in Glasgow, painting in the evening and at weekends. He visited Glasgow Corporation Art Gallery, admiring the work of the Dutch painters, Jan van der Heyden (1637–1712) and Jacob van Ruisdael (1628/9–1682). Later in life he remarked that they ‘had showed me how topography should be dignified’. He also 9

12

admired the work of the artists known as the Hague School, which at that time was being acquired by wealthy Glasgow collectors. He was less keen on the Pre-Raphaelites, French Impressionism, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Art Nouveau. Unfortunately very few of his oil paintings survive; around 1901 he decided he did not want to be a painter and destroyed all his work in oils.

Above all Bone loved drawing, spending innumerable hours in the evening and at the weekend, even at night, drawing Glasgow’s streets and docks. He was determined to find a way of ‘dignifying’ topography, using as a model ‘my beloved Dutchmen’ and then, after discovering a volume of his engravings of Paris in Glasgow’s Mitchell Library,

Unfortunately very few of his oil paintings survive; around 1901 he decided he did not want to be a painter and destroyed all his work in oils

following the ‘severer way’ of Charles Meryon (1821–1868).

Meryon’s work had that severity of style that Bone admired and aspired to. He set out to do for Glasgow what Meryon had done for Paris. Another important influence was Thomas Annan’s early photographic record of Glasgow, Old Closes and Streets of Glasgow, which he may have seen in the Mitchell Library. In 1895 Bone planned a similar record of Glasgow, The Poor Man’s Calendar, a series of drawings of the city, which eventually was published as Glasgow in 1901 with text by his journalist brother, James, and a friend, Archibald Charteris.

Money started to come in from the sale of drawings and from illustrations for newspapers and periodicals. In 1897 Bone was retained by The Scots Pictorial to produce scenes of Glasgow and city life – his first regular wage – although this ended after only a year, when the periodical switched to photography. He decided to rent a small studio in Bath Street in the city centre, and in 1898 began to experiment with printmaking, having purchased D Y Cameron’s printing press when Cameron left Glasgow for London. Very quickly Bone demonstrated a precocious talent for etching and drypoint, engraving an astonishing 64 plates by the end of 1899, although only a few impressions were pulled from the majority of the plates. However he did produce the Glasgow Set, a portfolio of six etchings of scenes in the city (1899), modelled on Meryon’s Paris Set and Whistler’s Thames Set. These prints, particularly Gorbals, demonstrate a wonderful talent for capturing on copper

both the spirit of place and precise architectural detail. He also began to exhibit his work around this time, showing a painting, The House in the Wood priced at £10, at the Royal Glasgow Institute in 1897 and a drawing, A Courtyard in the Slums, Glasgow, at the New English Art Club in London the following year.

Through his friendship with Francis Dodd, a romance blossomed between Bone and Dodd’s sister, Gertrude, an aspiring writer. The couple got engaged in 1898, when Bone got to know the Dodd family in Manchester, spending three months in lodgings there with Francis before moving on to London. Armed with his Glasgow etchings, he made a number of important contacts in London.

Bone knew that before the marriage could take place he had to increase his income. Back in Scotland he decided that he could achieve a more regular income, and have plenty of time to paint, by living in Ayr, where an old aunt could provide free accommodation, and offering art classes there. The move was a disaster – not one pupil

materialised. Disheartened, Bone returned to Glasgow.

Bone’s printmaking was beginning to attract attention.

He was commissioned to produce a series of ten etchings of the 1901 Glasgow International Exhibition.

The engraving process was demonstrated, and Bone’s etchings printed, in a studio within the exhibition. Bone regarded the etchings as a failure, however, mainly because of the commercial printing of his plates. He had also failed to persuade James Connell, an important Glasgow print dealer, to pay an annual sum of £200 for his total output of prints.

He felt unsettled, somewhat disillusioned with Glasgow, and looked instead to London. When walking with Gertrude along the beach at Ayr, Bone was bitten by a dog. He sued for damages, but settled out of court for £50, money that enabled him to move to London at the beginning of 1902.

London Bone’s first London exhibition was held at the Carfax Gallery the same year, though it was not an outstanding success. However

Bone eschewed joining the artistic establishment, such as the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers

Bone was making additional contacts. He continued producing drawings and prints, and received a number of commissions for illustrations from periodicals such as The Illustrated London News.

In December 1902 he mounted an exhibition of his London work in his room at King’s Bench Walk. It was a turning point for him. The show sold well and his confidence was boosted. In August the following year Bone married Gertrude in Manchester, taking a house on Chiswick Mall in London before moving to Hampstead in 1907. Two sons were born, Stephen in 1904 and Gavin two years later.

In London Bone flourished, building his reputation as an outstanding printmaker with a series of remarkable drypoints, such as The Shot Tower (1904), Demolition of St James’s Hall, Interior and The Great Gantry, Charing Cross Station (both 1906), all London scenes, and Ayr Prison (1905) and The Ballantrae Road (1907), both views in Ayrshire.

In 1903 he made an important contact in Campbell Dodgson, an Assistant Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum Scottish Art News 10

Sir Muirhead Bone, A Spanish Good Friday, Ronda 1925, drypoint Private Collection © Artist’s Estate

Sir Muirhead Bone, A Manhattan Excavation, 1923–28 Drypoint Private Collection © Artist’s Estate

(appointed Keeper in 1912).

Dodgson was an admirer of Bone’s work and the two became lifelong friends. Dodgson produced a catalogue of Bone’s prints up to 1909, comprising 225 works, which he updated in typescript to 1939 with a further 252 prints.

Bone eschewed joining the artistic establishment, such as the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers. Instead he and several other artists, including William Strang, Augustus John and William Rothenstein, established The Society of Twelve in 1904.

The society’s principal object was to showcase drawings and prints by means of regular exhibitions.

The first exhibition was mounted in 1904 and a further seven were held up to 1915. Membership of the society varied over the period, but it was never more than a score.

For Bone particularly, it was an 11

12

important source of income, the first four shows bringing him in £1,272.

In October 1910 the family moved to Florence, realising a long-held ambition to live abroad. Bone was still working on a commission to produce a set of fifty drawings of his native city. Glasgow, Fifty Drawings by Muirhead Bone was published the following year

by James MacLehose in a special edition costing subscribers six guineas [£6.30]. Containing a broad range of drawings, the book is a fitting tribute to Bone’s superb draughtsmanship. After a month in Florence Bone and the family moved to Rome, then to Perugia, back to Rome and on to Venice, before returning to England towards the end of 1912 to a house in Hampshire. During his period in Italy Bone executed numerous drawings and 32 plates, including the fine drypoint, Rainy Night in

Rome (1913). In 1914 he had an exhibition of 58 of his Italian drawings at Colnaghi in London.

War Artist During the First World War Bone’s income was reduced, and domestic activities played a greater part in his life. He told Dodgson that he was ‘almost unable to work’, but in fact he produced 38 plates during the first two years of the war, including the drypoint, Piccadilly Circus, 1915, adapted as a war picture from a drawing he made in 1907; Bone donated the sale proceeds of 120 impressions to the Belgian Relief Fund. In 1916 he was appointed the first British war artist and sent to France by Wellington House, a government propaganda department. It had been decided that a more subtle approach to visual propaganda was required than the crude propaganda cartoons of the ghastly ‘Hun’ perpetrating atrocities employed until then. Justification for the

war had to be restated more Wellington House in October persuasively; neutral countries 1917, but Bone continued to work had to be won over; it was agreed on various projects, ending up a permanent record of the war sketching the surrendered German should be created. Bone was told fleet in Scapa Flow after the he could not draw dead bodies or Armistice. troops being bayoneted or shot,

Bone was dissatisfied and all his drawings had to pass with his work as a war artist, the censor. describing it as ‘prosaic’. That

He made sketches in certainly is true when it is a small notebook both at the compared with the work of front and behind the lines, which younger artists towards the end of he worked up into drawings the war, such as William Roberts or watercolours back at base. and Christopher Nevinson. But Occasionally he worked under Bone was working under severe fire, as a friend limitations Bone was told he could not draw dead bodies recounted: in terms or troops being bayoneted or shot, and all his ‘Once when a of what drawings had to pass the censor shell burst near he could him his pencil portray went clean through his paper, and under intense pressure to but he carried on while our men deliver. His reputation, however, were taking cover under bits of was assured, his commercial wall, and wounded were being success enhanced. Over the next carried off.’ During the winter of 35 years he became relatively 1916–1917 he was switched to wealthy and was widely honoured. portraying scenes in munitions He was made a trustee of the works and aircraft assembly lines Imperial War Museum, the Tate in England as part of the war Gallery and the National Gallery, effort and then on to Scotland and knighted in 1937. to sketch the Royal Navy in the Firth of Forth, before returning Travel and Oxford to France in the spring. He was also sent to the Clyde to depict Between the wars Bone produced the shipbuilding yards. Bone was a further 121 plates, of which 49 under constant pressure from were topographical images within Wellington House to produce Britain and 40 abroad, the latter more and more drawings, twenty charting his travels – France, Italy, of which were used in each the United States, Scandanavia, of ten monthly issues of The Spain. One of his most memorable Western Front by Muirhead Bone. drypoints is Manhattan It was a punishing timetable; he Excavation, started in New York got so exhausted that his wife in 1923 but not completed until complained that ‘he can now 1928. Bone and his wife visited hardly hold a pencil’. 30,000 Spain six times between 1924 and copies of each issue were printed, 1928. He produced a number of of which 12,000 were sold and plates, including the atmospheric the remainder distributed free in drypoint, A Spanish Good Friday Britain and abroad as propaganda (1925), as well as numerous (including 6,000 in America). drawings, 154 of which were The series was discontinued by reproduced in two large-format

volumes titled Old Spain with text

by Gertrude, published in 1936.

The 1930s were blighted by their younger son’s recurring tuberculosis; Gavin died from his illness in 1942. In 1929 the family had moved from Hampshire to Oxford, where Bone had a new house built overlooking the city. He continued drawing and printmaking, although his output of plates tailed off markedly after 1936. During the Second World War he again served as a war artist, but on the home front and on a much smaller scale than previously. During the Blitz he was hurriedly recalled to London to depict the scene after a huge raid by the Luftwaffe, producing the evocative St Bride’s and the City after the Fire 29 December 1940.

At Rosyth he drew the battleships lying at anchor in the Forth; in Glasgow he depicted the twisted metal of the hull of torpedoed merchant ships.

Bone continued drawing right up to his death in 1953.

Kenneth Clark wrote ‘I will always remember him as one of the most honest, warm-hearted and unselfish men I have ever known’.

Bill Smith is curator of Sir Muirhead Bone: Artist and Patron and a Trustee of The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation. A banker by profession, he was Keeper of Art at Flemings, the London investment bank, from 1985 to 1997.

Sir Muirhead Bone: Artist and Patron 7 July – 5 September 2009 The Fleming Collection 13 Berkeley Street, London W1J 8DU tel: 020 7409 5730 www.flemingcollection.co.uk Tues – Sat 10am–5.30pm Admission Free Scottish Art News 12

London’s Carfax Gallery.

It was through Dodd that he first met the young Lancashire born architects Charles Holden and Lionel Pearson, who, many years later were to be principal partners in the London firm of Adams, Holden and Pearson. Bone lodged with the Holdens for a short time when he first moved to London. In London, as earlier in Glasgow, Bone loved to prowl around, sketchbook in hand, drawing old buildings, buildings in the process of demolition and the new buildings being erected in their place surrounded by scaffolding and teeming with workmen; echoes of Piranesi’s great prints.

It was not only as an artist that Muirhead Bone should be known. Peyton Skipwith reveals Bone’s commitment to furthering the careers and aspirations of his contemporaries

I

t is something of a revelation to most people who only know Muirhead Bone through his topographical drawings and etchings to discover that he was a discerning patron of many progressive young artists, including David Bomberg, Stanley Spencer, Mark Gertler, C.R.W. Nevinson and Jacob Epstein. It also reveals a surprising aspect of the art market during the first decades of the twentieth century that, coming from modest beginnings, Bone could have earned sufficient money to enable him to be so generous. Apart from personal acts of patronage and 13

12

encouragement, in the wake of the First World War he made a donation of £2,000 to the newly founded Imperial War Museum to buy contemporary work, as well as giving over four hundred of his own drawings and prints to the Museum.

Bone was one of a large family; he was the fourth of the six sons of David Drummond Bone, a Glasgow journalist working on the North British Daily Mail.

As a boy he showed a marked talent for drawing, and on leaving school at the age of fourteen was apprenticed to a painter of porcelain, moving later to an architectural office, while taking

ABOVE Jacob Epstein installing Rima in Hyde Park, April–May, 1925. Photo Courtesy The Henry Moore Centre for the Study of Sculpture, Gift of Peyton Skipwith OPPOSITE Henry Tonks, An Underground Casualty Clearing Station, Aras oil on canvas, 56.3x71.6 cm Imperial War Museum © Artist’s Estate

In the wake of the First World War he made a donation of £2,000 to the newly founded Imperial War Museum to buy contemporary work, as well as giving over four hundred of his own drawings and prints to the Museum

The decades either side of the Great War were a particularly opportune time for an artist with such interests. He made many drawings and etchings, which are now important historical documents as large areas such as the Strand, Regent Street, Piccadilly and Berkeley Square witnessed redevelopment on an unprecedented scale, and many of the grand ducal houses – Devonshire House, Norfolk House, Dorchester House – were demolished to be replaced by office blocks. One of the new buildings erected in the Strand was the headquarters of the British Medical Association designed by Charles Holden.

Holden had asked Francis Dodd to recommend a sculptor to carve a strong frieze of figures in Portland stone, to be interspersed between the windows at second-floor level, to contrast with the austere grey of the Cornish granite of the lower part of the building. Dodd recommended Jacob Epstein, a young American recently arrived from Paris; the two men quickly found a bond in their mutual passion for the poetry of Walt Whitman, and a friendship was established that was to last until the end of Epstein’s life.

Rather than choose figures from classical mythology or history, Epstein sculpted nineteen lifesize male and female nudes with

evening classes at Glasgow School of Art. By the age of eighteen he decided to give up architecture as a profession and devote himself solely to art. Although during these early years he produced a body of oil paintings, many of which he later destroyed, he quickly realised that it was as a draughtsman and etcher that he would make his mark. In this he was encouraged by his brother James and their friend, Archibald Hamilton Charteris, with whom he produced Glasgow in 1901, the Glasgow dealer, Craig Annan, Francis Dodd, his brother-in-lawto-be, and, slightly later, William Rothenstein and Robert Ross at Scottish Art News 14

such titles as Maternity, Hygieia, Primal Energy and Academic Research. The shock to the general public when they were unveiled created a furore, largely stirred up by Cardinal Vaughan, who denounced them as ‘scandalous’.

Muirhead Bone was among those who stepped in to defend Epstein; the first of many acts of courage and friendship, which were to be repeated in defence of his genitalia-ed winged figure for Oscar Wilde’s tomb in Pére La Chaise Cemetery, Paris, and 15

12

Bone loved to prowl around, sketchbook in hand, drawing old buildings, buildings in the process of demolition and the new buildings being erected in their place surrounded by scaffolding and teeming with workmen; echoes of Piranesi’s great prints

most tenaciously in his cochairmanship of the Hudson Memorial Fund, both before and after the unveiling of Rima in Hyde Park. Rima was the most abused piece of public sculpture in London; from its unveiling on 19th May 1925 by the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, it was used as an excuse for virulent antisemitic attacks in the press and calls for its mutilation, or better still, its removal, with the Daily Mail coming out with a strident headline five days later: ‘THE HYDE PARK ATTROCITY. TAKE IT AWAY!’ It fell to Bone some months later to pen the letter to the Times (23 November 1925) in its defence. The letter attracted 119 signatories ranging from Ramsay MacDonald to D.Y Cameron.1 Bone was not only prepared to take up the cudgels in defence of Epstein, in 1919 the Muirhead Bone Fund purchased and presented three Epstein bronzes to the Imperial War Museum – Sergeant D F Hunter VC, An American Soldier and The Tin Hat, and five years later he commissioned him to make the fine bust of Joseph Conrad; his own cast is now in Canterbury Museum.

The Bone Fund gift of over forty works to the Imperial War Museum in 1919 shows the range of his tastes and friendships.

In addition to the three sculptures

by Epstein, it includes works by old friends and colleagues from the New English Art Club such as William Rothenstein, Wilson Steer, D S MacColl, Henry Tonks and John Singer Sargent, as well as more avant garde pieces

by David Bomberg, Wyndham Lewis, Gilbert Spencer, William Roberts and Rupert Lee. The two extremes are neatly illustrated

Leo Stern, that Bomberg had done with ‘cubist’ experiments and ‘means to do sober, serious, really “record” work,’ as well as ‘vivid impressions’ suitable for reproduction in magazines, newspapers and pamphlets.3 When Bomberg’s 1923 exhibition at the Mansard Gallery failed to realise sufficient funds, Bone secured him free travel to Palestine, as well as helping him financially, just as, five years later, on his return to London, it was Bone who persuaded the Leicester Galleries to mount an exhibition of his Palestinian work, and personally underwrote the framing costs.

A similar pattern of discrete patronage and personal help was followed in his relations with Stanley Spencer, starting with Bone’s recommendation to the Ministry of Information

by Sargent’s bucolic watercolour ‘Thou shalt not steal’’ depicting soldiers scrumping in a sunlit orchard, and Bomberg’s charcoal drawing, Sappers at Work: Canadian Tunnelling Company, R14, St Eloi, with its stylised, cubistic figures, working deep underground.

Bone, recognising Bomberg’s talent, had been responsible for giving him this Canadian commission, but it is unclear whether he totally approved of his post-Vorticist style of drawing and painting, as he wrote to him saying ‘I’m still sure that you should face the trouble of realism and not take refuge in shortcuts’.2 At the same time, in his efforts to secure Bomberg’s appointment as an official artist to the Zionist Organisation in Palestine, he was writing to the Organisation’s President,

for the commissioning of Spencer’s great First War work, Travoys with Wounded Soldiers Arriving at a Dressing Station at Smol, Macedonia (Imperial War Museum) of 1919, for which, as Keith Bell points out4 Spencer adopted the same raised viewpoint as in his pre-war Zacharias and Elizabeth, which Bone purchased the following year, and which I first saw in Mary Adshead’s house in Haverstock Hill, Hampstead,5 along with Epstein’s bust of Conrad and a bust of her brother-in-law, Gavin Bone, by Ivan Mestrovic. In 1922 Bone promoted a scheme for a series of panels in Steep Village Hall in Hampshire, for which he had raised £250, and invited Spencer to stay with him and his wife and undertake the job. Although, due to an unfortunate misunderstanding,

FROM TOP David Bomberg, Sappers at Work: Canadian Tunnelling Company, R14, St Eloi charcoal on paper, 67.3x55.8 cm Imperial War Museum © The Artist’s Family David Bomberg, The Pool of Hezekiah, oil, 32x23 cm Private Collection © The Artist’s Family OPPOSITE John Singer Sargent, ‘Thou shalt not steal’, watercolour on paper, 50.8x33.6 cm © Imperial War Museum

Scottish Art News 16

Those he helped were not only highly talented, but among the younger ones at least, mostly came from impoverished backgrounds – such as Gertler, Bomberg, Spencer, Meninsky and Roberts

1 For a full account of this affair see Terry Freedman ‘The Hyde Park attrocity’.

Epstein’s Rima: Creation and Controversy, The Henry Moore centre for the Study of Sculpture, 1988 2 Letter dated 24 March, 1922, quoted William Lipke, David Bomberg, London, Evelyn Adams & Mackay, 1967, p.52 3 Ibid, p.59 4 Keith Bell, Stanley Spencer: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, London, Phaidon, 1992, p.35 5 Mary Adshead (1904–1995) was a mural painter, trained under prof. Tonks at the Slade, and married to Muirhead Bone’s son, Stephen

Mark Gertler, Self-Portrait, pencil drawing , 25x20 cm Private Collection © Artist’s Estate

the scheme fell through, but at least one of Spencer’s preparatory drawings, Scrubbing the Floor and Soldiers Washing, Beaufort Hospital, (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge) provided material for three of the paintings in the Sandham Memorial Chapel, Burghclere. At the same time Bone also recommended Spencer’s brother-in-law, Sydney Carline, for the post of Ruskin Drawing Master at Oxford.

It is probably not accidental that so many of the younger painters who benefited from Bone’s generous patronage were former Slade students, and may originally have come to his notice through the recommendation of his old friend Henry Tonks, the Slade Professor. Those he helped were not only highly talented, but among the younger ones at least, mostly came from impoverished 17

12

backgrounds – such as Gertler, Bomberg, Spencer, Meninsky and Roberts. Having been an impoverished student himself at Glasgow School of Art a couple of decades previously, Bone was very conscious of the fact that a few pounds in the pocket could mean more at this stage of an artist’s life than many hundreds later in their career. Spencer’s Moses and the Brazen Calf, a Slade Sketch Club subject, may well have been purchased as such a thoughtful act on a visit to the Slade at this time. As we have seen, a number of these acts of patronage and support were very public and well documented, while for others there is little or no corroborative evidence available, however, few artists of any period have been as perceptive, thoughtful, and persistent in their encouragement and patronage of young talent as Muirhead Bone.

Peyton Skipwith is a freelance writer and art consultant, with a particular interest in British art of the inter-war years. In 1986 he organised the ground-breaking exhibition ‘Sculpture in Britain Between the Wars’, and since then has co-authored with Brian Webb a series of books on design of the period, including Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious, Paul and John Nash, McKnight Kauffer and Harold Curwen and Oliver Simon.

Muirhead Bone: Artist and Patron, a fully-illustrated biography of Bone written by his grandson, Sylvester Bone, is being published by Bayham Publishing in July. Copies may be obtained from The Fleming Collection shop priced £20 (£3.50 postage & packaging) Sir Muirhead Bone: Artist and Patron 7 July – 5 September 2009

Purchased with the assistance of Patrons

Sir John Lavery RA RSA (1856-1941) The Blue Hungarians 1888 oil on canvas © The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation

PAT RO N S O F

THE FLEMING-WYFOLD ART FOUNDATION SUPPORT THE FOUNDATION AND ENJOY A PROGRAMME OF SPECIAL GATHERINGS WITH ARTISTS, COLLECTORS, CURATORS AND MUSEUM DIRECTORS

The Fleming Collection 13 Berkeley Street, London W1J 8DU tel: 020 7409 5730 www.flemingcollection.co.uk Tues – Sat 10am–5.30pm Admission Free

For information on ways to support the gallery contact Lucia Lindsay:

THE FLEMING COLLECTION 13 Berkeley Street, Mayfair, London W1J 8DU 020 7409 5784 │ flemingcollection@ffandp.com │ www.flemingcollection.co.uk Scottish Art News 18

Donald Maclellan, Tilda Swinton, 2000, Silver gelatine bromide toned print, Scottish National Portrait Gallery

W

With the Scottish National Portrait Gallery closed for renovation, a special selection of portraits from the collection, depicting Scottish sitters, are coming to London in 2009, as James Holloway, Director of the SNPG explains 19

12

hen Bonnie Prince Charlie and his tartan army marched south on London during the winter of 1745 he only got as far as Derby before turning back to bloody defeat. This year, in the company of Mary, Queen of Scots, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Robbie Coltrane, he has made it to the heart of Mayfair. London hasn’t seen such an invasion before and is unlikely to witness another.

The reason such distinguished Scots are coming south is that their home, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, is closed for renovation and The Fleming Collection has opened its doors to welcome some of the greatest portraits from the gallery.

Like its sister institution the National Portrait Gallery in St Martin’s Place, London, Scotland’s national portrait gallery has its origins in the Victorian belief of the immediacy of the portrait and its ability to inspire. It was Thomas Carlyle who presented the historian’s point of view: ‘in all my poor historical investigations it has been, and always is, one of the most primary wants to procure a bodily likeness of the personage inquired after …any representation, made by a faithful human creature, of that Face and Figure, which he saw with his eyes, and which I can never see with mine, is now valuable to me, and much better than none at all.’ The Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, emphasised the moral purpose of a national pantheon. ‘There cannot, I feel convinced, be a greater incentive to mental exertion, to noble actions, to good conduct on the part of the living, than for them to see before them the features of those who have done

John Byrne, Robbie Coltrane, (b.1950 Actor (as Danny McGlone)) 1988, oil on board Scottish National Portrait Gallery

things which are worthy of our admiration and whose example we are more induced to imitate when they are brought before us in the visible and tangible shape of portraits’.

These sentiments inspired both London and Edinburgh and while London’s portrait gallery was founded in 1856, it took another generation before the Scottish National Portrait Gallery opened its doors to the public in 1889. When it did, the public experienced two collections: the collection of original portraits taken from the life, and a building, the decoration of which was itself illustrative

Sir Robert Rowand Anderson’s Arts and Crafts building on Queen Street was carefully designed, not just to exhibit the infant national collection of historical portraits, but to be a shrine to Scottish achievement

Scottish Art News 20

of Scottish history. Sir Robert Rowand Anderson’s Arts and Crafts building on Queen Street was carefully designed, not just to exhibit the infant national collection of historical portraits, but to be a shrine to Scottish achievement. The red sandstone statues of King Robert the Bruce and Sir William Wallace stand guard at the entrance: King Malcolm Canmore and his queen, St Margaret, above. Within, the main hall is decorated with two mural cycles, a painted frieze that runs back in time from the Victorians to the Stone Age and a further set of mural paintings illustrating key moments in early Scottish history. In William Hole’s account of the nation’s history there are no defeats – no Flodden 21

12

or Culloden – but instead, those victories over the Vikings and the English that secured an independent Scotland and the dynastic marriages and deeds of piety and good works that helped create a stable, Christian nation.

Hole’s murals and the statues on the façade of the building provide a stirring, if unauthentic narrative of Scotland’s history before the time that portraiture took root.

The earliest authentic portraits in the collection date from the mid-sixteenth century.

The earliest in The Face of Scotland, the portrait of King James V1 and 1, was painted at the start of the seventeenth century. The Flemish artist, John de Critz, has shown James in 1604, the year after the King of

The public experienced two collections: the collection of original portraits taken from the life, and a building, the decoration of which was itself illustrative of Scottish history

ABOVE FROM LEFT John de Critz, James VI andI (1566–1625) King of Scotland 1567–1625. King of England and Ireland 1603–1625. 1604, oil on canvas Scottish National Portrait Gallery Allan Ramsay, David Hume (1711–1776) Historian and philosopher. 1754, oil on canvas, Scottish National Portrait Gallery

Scots had acceded to the English throne. He wears the magnificent hat jewel known as the Mirror of Great Britain, newly made for him from pieces of Queen Elizabeth’s jewellery and the Scottish crown jewels. One of James’s first acts as King of England was the commission of a number of portraits to preserve the memory of his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots who had been executed on the order of a reluctant Queen Elizabeth. The full-length portrait of Mary, based on a miniature

by Nicholas Hilliard, shows the queen as a Catholic martyr.

It is one of the most famous portraits in Scotland. The palace of Falkland in Fife, and Seton in East Lothian were well known to both Mary and James. Their presence in a portrait gallery might seem surprising but the Scottish National Portrait Gallery started to acquire landscapes early on. We still do, believing that such ‘portraits of places’ can help the visitor understand more fully the cultural history of the nation. The paintings of Falkland and Seton were originally part of a set of views in northern England and Scotland painted by Alexander Keirincx for King Charles 1 in the 1630s. They follow the King’s route north from London to Edinburgh to be crowned King of Scots in 1633. They are the earliest landscapes to have been painted of the country.

For years the identity of the young man, the subject of the great full-length known as The Highland Chief, was tantalisingly unknown. Recently an Irish scholar identified him as Lord Mungo Murray, a son of the Marquis of Atholl and indeed a Highlander renowned in his day for defending his clan against the

Sir William Allan, Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) Novelist and poet. c.1844, oil on canvas, Scottish National Portrait Gallery

incursions of the Frasers. Lord Mungo is magnificently dressed for the hunt. His portrait, painted by a Scottish artist for an Irish Duke, as famous when it was painted in the late seventeenth century as it is now, is the first known portrait of a man in Highland dress. Poor Lord Mungo died a teenager, fighting for his country in Central America in the vain attempt to found a Scottish colony in Panama. The failure of the Darien Scheme bankrupted Scotland and was

a factor in the unification of Scotland and England in 1707.

During the eighteenth century many Scots were ambivalent about the union.

Some like the historian David Hume embraced England to the extent of attending classes to anglicise his accent. Others, like the Jacobite Flora Macdonald were celebrated then, and later for their heroic attempts to restore the royal House of Stewart. It was Sir Walter Scott who brought to life the struggle between Jacobites Scottish Art News 22

Photographs of the contemporary authors Ian Rankin and J.K.Rowling and the actors Ewan MacGregor, Sean Connery and Tilda Swinton bring the exhibition up to date

Nicola Kalinsky, Deputy Director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, outlines the extensive renovation project underway to revamp the gallery’s spaces and displays

and Hanoverians. The theme, in some of his greatest novels, is the reconciliation of past and present. Scott’s writing inspired the greatest writers and composers of the nineteenth century and

Victoria Crowe, Ronald David Laing (1927–1989) Psychiatrist, 1984 Oil on hardboard over acrylic underpainting Scottish National Portrait Gallery Donald Maclellan, Billy Connolly, 2000, Silver gelatine bromide toned print, Scottish National Portrait Gallery

23

12

even shaped our own perception of Scotland. Two other great writers are included in The Face of Scotland. J.M.Barrie, painted

by William Nicholson while rehearsals were underway for the first performance of Peter Pan, and Robert Louis Stevenson caught by the Italian artist Girolomo Nerli at the end of his short life. Photographs of the contemporary authors Ian Rankin and J.K.Rowling and the actors Ewan MacGregor, Sean Connery and Tilda Swinton bring the exhibition up to date.

One of the most memorable portraits in the exhibition shows a member of the Local Defence Volunteers, later known as the Home Guard.

Walter Rankin was a retired newsagent in Kilsyth when he was chosen in 1940 by the artist W.O. Hutchison, a fellow member of Rankin’s LDV unit, for a portrait intended as a symbol of national resilience. Rankin was chosen as the face of Scotland.

When first exhibited the portrait was accompanied by lines from Shakespeare’s King John: ‘Come the three corners of the world in arms, and we shall shock them’.

James Holloway is Director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.

The Face of Scotland: Masterpieces from The Scottish National Portrait Gallery 15 September – 19 December The Fleming Collection 13 Berkeley Street London W1J 8DU tel: 020 7409 5730 www.flemingcollection.co.uk Free admission Tues – Sat 10am–5.30pm

P

ortrait of the Nation, the name given to the National Galleries of Scotland’s plan to restore the building of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and to re-present its collections, passed several key milestones this spring. In March we received confirmation of support from the Heritage Lottery Fund who will contribute £4.8 million to the £17.6 million project (already granted £5.1 million by the Scottish government), in April the gallery closed its doors to the public after a moving ‘Farewell Festival’, and May saw the last of the collections leave the building and go into storage. Only the

staff remain, temporarily, as they too will be moving out before the handover to the building contractors in the autumn. We are scheduled to reoccupy and fit out the building in mid-2011, to be ready for a grand reopening in November 2011

The greatest portion of the ‘spend’ - around £14 million - will be directed to the building, the pre-eminent public work of Sir Robert Rowand Anderson and an iconic landmark within Edinburgh’s World Heritage site. In its 120 year history, the building has never benefited from a major refurbishment and while this has arguably preserved its integrity, the internal fabric

Projected design for Highland Dress display © Studioarc

is now shabby and neglected and lacks many of the services essential (and legally required!) today. The appointed architects Page\Park will be working to retain the character and authentic appearance of the building while introducing new services such as a reliable and adequately sized lift.

Partition walls and false ceilings, mainly inserted in the 1960s and 70s, will be removed uncovering fine original features throughout.

Most importantly, the magnificent suite of five top-lit galleries on the upper floor will be restored to their intended splendour, creating one of the finest display spaces in Scotland. In total, we will increase the amount of public and gallery Scottish Art News 24

FROM TOP Detail of ambulatory frieze -– The Good Deeds of King David 1 by William Hole. Photo by Keith Hunter, 2008 © Keith Hunter Photography Spire Photo by Keith Hunter, 2008 © Keith Hunter Photography Detail of column capital with squirrel, Photo by Keith Hunter, 2008 © Keith Hunter Photography

25

12

space by more than 50 per cent, and all this, without stepping beyond the footprint (or above the skyline) of the building itself. Our project, unlike many comparable ventures has the huge advantage of being able to gain more space not by extension or addition, but by reclaiming areas which were always intended for public use, but which, over the years, were coopted as storage and office space.

The interiors will look magnificent when the project is complete, with new, sensitively designed lighting allowing visitors to appreciate – possibly for the first time – the beauty and coherence of the original decorative scheme, the murals by William Hole, the stained glass, gilded capitals and terrazzo floors.

There will of course be the usual things we have come to expect and enjoy in our public galleries – a larger cafe will pick up where our immensely popular cafe (with its award winning scones) left off, and a decluttered visitor hub will facilitate circulation. In addition, we will have some entirely new and much needed facilities, including a large, designated education suite, an adjoining auditorium for talks, and a Resource and Learning Centre. The latter, which reuses the fabric of the library installed for the Society of Antiquaries

in 1890, will encourage the public to use our reserve collections of works on paper, including photographs, all of which will be housed in an

adjacent, highly ergonomic, onsite storage facility.

But what of the collections, the faces of Scotland, the raison d’être of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery? When the gallery first opened in 1889, in truth the collections were scarcely worthy of their building.

The initial displays were drawn from an embryonic nucleus of a mere few hundred items, and were dominated by antiquarian objects such as casts of medallions and copy portraits, as well as being heavily supplemented by temporary loans. Since then, the portrait collections have grown exponentially in terms of quantity and quality, now numbering over 3,000 paintings and a further 25,000 works on paper. It is the second largest collection of portraits in the world and contains masterpieces by the most highly regarded artists of their day, Scottish and international, as well as documenting individuals of immense popular interest and profound historical importance.

In addition, the gallery is home to the Scottish National Photography Collection, around 38,000 photographs including the world’s most important holding of works by pioneer Scottish photographers David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson. The project not only creates the space physically required to do justice to all this richness, it has provoked a conscious decision to reconsider how we present the collections. Much thought and consultation has resulted in new ideas and principles with which to underpin our use of the collections, hopefully leading to displays which will be much more interesting and enjoyable for all our visitors. Not only were

the galleries in the ‘old’ portrait gallery very cramped (sometimes attempting to cover over 200 years in one room!), they also tended to present portraits as isolated islands of evidence pertaining to one particular person, with little or no exploration of connections and context.

Working closely with their colleagues in education and external advisors, the curators are now busy working up 16 new presentations for 2011, drawing primarily on our own resources.

Rather than focusing our energies, as in the past, on temporary loan exhibitions, we will maintain and refresh interest with a schedule of regularly changing displays based on the permanent collection.

Retaining a strong chronological backbone, we will consider the collection within five broadly defined eras – Reformation, Enlightenment, Empire, Modernity and the Contemporary. Each area will occupy a major exhibition space, and will also have one or two smaller related displays in the new, more intimate, ancillary rooms created from old office space. We will still use as our basic building block the painted portrait of the individual, (after all,

Top Floor Gallery currently used as NMS Storage ‘Roman Room’. Photo by Kim Macpherson, 2009

Lavery View (War at Sea exhibition) © Studioarc

the strength of the collection) but we will include more varied media where possible (including photography), as well as significant objects where appropriate, to provide a fuller context and create visual contrasts. Edinburgh based design consultants, Studioarc, are helping us to develop a coherent aesthetic across these various presentations.

Together we will ensure that the rooms are elegant, respectful of the architecture and the objects, and capable of conveying the various stories with clarity and imagination. Scottish art, naturally enough, will figure in many of the displays, and Scottish artists, historic and living, will feature regularly. One of the inaugural displays within the Reformation area will consider the life and work of George Jamesone, and the Enlightenment will include a focus on Allan Ramsay.

Photography will be an important draw of the new portrait gallery. Integrated into

displays throughout the building, it will be an essential medium in three of the areas – Empire, Modernity and Contemporary.

We will also have a major gallery space dedicated to photography, a ‘first’ for the National Galleries of Scotland and this will feature both historic displays drawn from the national collections and newly commissioned work by contemporary photographers.

Although there is a daunting amount of work to do, physically and intellectually, to realise our Portrait of the Nation, everyone involved is energised by the fact that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity and we all feel very privileged to be able to contribute to the project. We hope over the coming months to involve people more widely in our work, whether through communicating progress through a web ‘blog’ or spreading the message through fundraising activities. Our website www.nationalgalleries.org has a section devoted to Portrait of the Nation which will be updated throughout the life of the project.

Nicola Kalinsky is Deputy Director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.

Scottish Art News 26

by Camilla Stafford-Deitsch D.Y. Cameron Old Paris, c.1910

D

.Y. Cameron is often remembered as a great landscapist. His name conjures up images of sweeping Scottish landscapes, imbued with a purplish blue light, or a soft ochre, earthy palette. He is, of course, much more than that, as this painting in The Fleming Collection demonstrates. Old Paris is a depiction of one of the medieval streets of Paris before Haussman’s great renovation in the 19th century, which modernised the city, stripping it of many such historic back alleys.

The buildings are bathed in a warm light, which is comforting and bright, yet this is offset by a rather ominous dark cloud seen above the rooftops. One feels a sense of time passing, as the sunlight, which engulfs the shoppers on the street in a solid rectangle of yellow, is soon to be replaced by rain, cold and darkness. The buildings are smooth and straight edged, not as ramshackle and tired looking as the title of the painting might suggest. This is perhaps testament to Cameron’s passion for architecture and structure, as seen in many of the watercolours that he made into etchings, which initially brought him to the forefront of the art scene in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

David Young Cameron was born in 1865 to a Presbyterian Minister and his wife in Glasgow.

27

12

David Young Cameron, Hills of Ross, c. 1934, oil on panel, FWAF © Artist’s Estate

David Young Cameron, Old Paris, c.1910, oil on canvas, FWAF © Artist’s Estate

Religion was therefore an important factor in his life and he is known to have held a lifelong dislike of the fact that he was not named Donald, the traditional Christian name of the first born boy of a family of Clan Cameron. As a result, he refused to use his first name, instead signing his pictures, ‘D.Y.’ His family made great pains to make their clan heritage known, convinced that they were direct descendents of Dr Archibald Cameron, the brother of the Chief of the Clan Cameron. This family connection was important to Cameron’s art and there is a definite sense of patriotism and an obvious love of his homeland, which comes through in his etchings, watercolours and oil paintings.

There is a definite sense of patriotism and an obvious love of his homeland, which comes through in his etchings, watercolours and oil paintings

In his final year at school, Cameron attended art classes at Glasgow School of Art. After working in an iron foundry and a brief sojourn in a law firm in Perth, he went to Edinburgh School of Art in 1884 to learn his trade, alongside fellow students such as George Denholm Armour (1864–1949), Charles Mackie (1862–1920) and James Pryde (1866–1941). At art school he was known as being an immaculate dresser, at all times avoiding the stereotypical bohemian artist look, which was perhaps a reflection of his strict Presbyterian upbringing.

He returned to Glasgow in 1887 at the age of 22 and it was by pure chance that his career as an etcher took off. George Stevenson, the brother of a successful industrialist in Glasgow,

spotted two of his drawings in a shop window. Stevenson took Cameron under his wing and taught him the trade, whereby Cameron became one of the foremost etchers of the age.

Glasgow was an exciting place for the young Cameron to launch his career.

The Glasgow Institute for Fine Arts had been established in 1861, showcasing local talent. It also exhibited work by foreign artists, such as Corot, and The Barbizon and Hague Schools as well as work by Burne-Jones, Rossetti and Whistler. Glasgow was a prosperous, confident city, constantly expanding. The new group of successful industrialists and merchants in Glasgow became enthusiastic art collectors, so it was a prime place for young artists Scottish Art News 28

to ply their trade.

Cameron is often loosely associated with the Glasgow Boys, who formed the first Parisian style ‘atelier’ or studio in Scotland in a Glasgow flat. They disliked academic art and its rules, preferring to paint in a more unguarded fashion, often outdoors, much like the French Impressionists. The boys, artists such as James Guthrie, E.A. Walton, and George Henry used thick, impasto paint with bold colours, giving their work an unusual spontaneity. His association with the Boys, coupled with his expertise in etching gave a certain framework and individuality to his art.

This use of thick paint can be seen in Old Paris and is a defining element of his landscape paintings such as in The Hills of Ross, c.1934. Unlike the Glasgow Boys, he turned to the Highlands for inspiration at the turn of the century, losing contact with them, yet this painting perhaps echoes their impasto technique. The ridges are clearly defined against the brilliance of the yellow sky, yet the paint is still thick and smudgy.

Old Paris is also heavily reliant upon Cameron’s expertise as an etcher. He builds up his pictures structurally with a strong line, leaving out any trivial elements in his painting, so that we focus solely on the

Unlike the Glasgow Boys, he turned to the Highlands for inspiration at the turn of the century

towering hills or edifices. The defined verticals of the buildings take one’s eyes skyward, up to the brooding dark cloud. The forms of the buildings have been created by a balanced juxtaposition of dark and light, creating differing tonalities, which gives a dramatic, bold effect, also seen in The Hills of Ross.

His interest in architecture is made apparent by such watercolours as Dieppe Castle, 1896, which was made into an etching the following year.

The figures have been simplified into a few blobs of paint, while the structure is depicted in all its detail. It is clearly the edifice that fascinated him on this trip to

OPPOSITE David Young Cameron, Dieppe Castle, 1896, pencil and wash © Artist’s Estate, FWAF ABOVE David Young Cameron, The Boddin, Angus, c.1911, oil on canvas © Artist’s Estate, FWAF

France, made on his honeymoon with his wife Jeanie, in 1896. The same can be seen in Old Paris.

The detail is concentrated on the buildings, not the Parisians, who are purely pointers used to mark out doorways and windows.

Cameron’s landscapes are in the tradition of the great landscapists of the 18th and 19th centuries such as Alexander Nasmyth (1758-1840) and Horatio McCulloch (1805-1867).

There is a great sweeping sense of romance and nostalgia in his art, seen in all his paintings, not just the landscapes. The Boddin, Angus, c.1911 certainly conveys a brooding sense of mystery and romance. Similar to Old Paris, an ominous storm is gathering in the clouds, although the light 29

12

continues to illuminate the buildings. Cameron has invested these lowly lime kilns on the Angus coast with the aura of temples on the banks of the Nile.

He has glorified the kilns and given them status, helped by the direct light which shines upon them, perhaps an indication of his patriotism and love of his homeland.

D.Y. Cameron is an artist famed for his glorious, romantic landscapes of Scottish scenes. His detailed compositional technique, learned from etching was used in his landscape paintings to precisely map out the hills and peaks of the Highlands.

His passion for architecture and bold structures fuelled the creation of many images of towns

Cameron has invested these lowly lime kilns on the Angus coast with the aura of temples on the banks of the Nile

and cities, so we can remember him as not only as a landscape painter, but as a multi-talented artist, capable of depicting great buildings in great detail.

Camilla Stafford-Deitsch is gallery intern at The Fleming Collection.

D.Y. Cameron: The Vision of the Hills

by Bill Smith (Atelier Books, 1992 £12.99) is available to buy from The Fleming Collection Scottish Art News 30

publication. Homecoming: From China to Scotland is published by Luath Press.

Sculpture Walk Saturday 18 July, 10am–5pm Meeting under statue of Sir Henry Irving, Charing Cross Road, London Tickets: £17.50; Friends, Philanthropic Friends and Corporate Members £12.50; Patrons Free Peyton Skipwth, past Master of Art Workers Guild and curator of the groundbreaking 1986 exhibition Sculpture of Britain between the Wars conducts a walking tour of London’s public sculptures including Gill, Epstein, Hepworth, Frampton, Gilbert and Jagger. Meeting point will be under statue of Sir Henry Irving, Charing Cross Road (behind National Portrait Gallery). The visit will end with a drink at The Fleming Collection at 5pm.

Image: Maquette for The Driver, Royal Artillery Memorial, Charles Sargeant Jagger (1921–1925) © Private Collection

Tour of West Dean College, followed by The Scottish Colourists from The Fleming Collection, Pallant House Gallery Wednesday 22 July, 10.30–4pm Meet at Chichester Train Station at 10.30am Tickets: £35; Friends, Philanthropic Friends, Corporate Members and Patrons £25 West Dean, home to the Edward James Foundation is notable for its college, which has a world wide reputation for the study of conservation, making and visual arts. There will be a tour of the college and historic house in which it is located and a visit to the professional Tapestry Studios, followed by lunch at the college and transport to Pallant House Gallery to view The Scottish Colourists from The Fleming Collection (the complete Colourist collection). It is the first time they have been viewed in the south of England. There will be an introduction by the director, Stefan van Raay followed by a tour of the exhibition. Ticket price includes all the tours, lunch at West Dean, transport to and from the College (not trains to Chichester) and tea and coffee at Pallant House Gallery.

Image: SJ Peploe, Lady in White © FWAF

31

12

Visit to Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s 78 Derngate Saturday 26 September 10.30–12.30, Tea and coffee on arrival, Tour 11–12.15pm Meet at 78 Derngate Northampton Trust, 82 Derngate Northampton NN1 1UH Tickets: £20; Friends, Philanthropic Friends, Corporate Members and Patrons £15 78 Derngate, the only Charles Rennie Mackintosh domestic commission outside of Scotland, is a town house in Northampton, which was renovated by Mackintosh in 1917 for the owner Joseph Bassett-Lowke. With the help of Bassett-Lowke and the local architect Alexander Ellis Anderson, Mackintosh redesigned the back and the interior of the house. It is the stunning interior décor which is Mackintosh’s real contribution. The tour lasts one hour and 20 minutes and includes an introductory video, guided tour of the house and supporting exhibitions, followed by tea and coffee. Image: Front door, courtesy of 78 Derngate Trust

Friends Annual Lecture given by Philip Mould Thursday 22 October 6pm Drinks at Philip Mould Fine Paintings, 29 Dover Street, London W1S 4NA 6.45pm The Fleming Collection, 13 Berkeley Street W1J 8DU 7pm Annual Lecture: Quest for Lost Art by Philip Mould Tickets: £10; Friends, Philanthropic Friends, Corporate Members and Patrons Free Philip Mould OBE has specialised in British art for over twenty years, and is regarded as the foremost expert in British portraiture. He is a regular expert on Antiques Roadshow and is currently filming a series for BBC1 entitled Sleuthing Lost Art which will be broadcast in spring 2010. Image: Philip Mould. Photographer: William Shaw

Scottish Art History Lecture Series at The Fleming Collection 13 Berkeley Street W1J 8DU Tickets: £7.50; £5 Friends, Philanthropic Friends, Corporate Members; Free Patrons Thursday 3 September 6.30–7.45pm Two Short Lectures Sir Muirhead Bone: Artist and Patron given by exhibition curator Bill Smith and consultant Peyton Skipwith.

Two short lectures discussing different aspects of the work of Sir Muirhead Bone as the first official British War Artist and his patronage.

Tuesday 3 November 6.30–7.30pm Evening Lecture Homecoming: From China to Scotland given by Alan Riach, Professor of Scottish Literature, Glasgow University, and Alexander Moffat RSA. Alan Riach will launch and read from his new collection of poems, Homecoming, to which Alexander Moffat has contributed a series of drawings made during their journey to China in 2004, and two based on the final poem in the book, referring to the castle of the warrior queen Skathach, from the Isle of Skye. Poems, stories and drawings combine in this unique

Date still to be published 6.30–7.30pm Evening Lecture The Scottish Colourists: An Introduction given by Philip Long, Senior Curator, SNGMA. Philip Long has written extensively on the Colourists and curated an exhibition on their work The Scottish Colourists 19001930 for the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and the Royal Academy in London in 2000. Image: Muirhead Bone in the mud at Maricourt on the Western Front , September 1916, IWM

This lecture series is sponsored by Flemings Mayfair Hotel

Arts of Resistance: Poets, Portraits and Landscapes of Modern Scotland: Lunchtime Poetry Recital and book signing by Professor Alan Riach and Alexander Moffat RSA Wednesday 4 November, 1.10pm Admission free The Fleming Collection 13 Berkeley Street W1J 8DU Advanced copies can be ordered from The Fleming Collection.

To book tickets for any event or for further information or travel advice tel 020 7409 5730, email flemingcollection@ffandp.com or book online flemingcollection.co.uk Scottish Art News 32

F i n e A rt D r Aw i n g A n D PA i n t i n g C o u r s e s

C apture the beauty and drama of the c hanging Per thshire landscape at Kinnaird

Guests will gather inspiration en plein air and practice a wide range of techniques during afternoon studio sessions Two professionally tutored residential courses run by The Fleming Collection and led by artists Victoria Crowe and Briony Anderson, exploring painting and drawing techniques, while responding to the beautiful surrounds of Kinnaird Estate.

Fine Art Drawing and Painting Course and Scottish Art History Course led by artist Briony Anderson MA (hons) Fine Art, with art historical lectures given by Lucia Lindsay, Assistant Keeper of Art at The Fleming Collection, London.

Fine Art Drawing and Painting Course led by well established artist Victoria Crowe OBE, MA (RCA), RSA, RSW with tutorials given by Mike Walton NDD, ATD, Painter and Lecturer.

10 – 13 August 2009

Image courtesy of The Scotsman Publications Limited © Douglas Robertson Photography

A fine house in a fine land, just over an hour’s drive from the centre of Edinburgh and Glasgow A p r i v a t e l y o wn e d R e l a i s a n d C h â t e a u x h o t e l , n e s t l e d u n d e r a p i n e c o v e r e d c r a g s e t i n a p r i v a t e 7 , 0 0 0 a c r e s p o r t i n g e s t a t e wi t h 5 m i l e s o f p r i va t e f i s h i n g b e a t i n t h e b e a u t i f u l l a n d s c a p e o f P e r t h s h i r e . T h i s 1 8 t h C e n t u r y M a n o r H o u s e h a s p l a y e d h o s t t o d i s t i n gu i s h e d g u e s t s a nd K i n gs a n d Q u e e n s a t l e ge n d a r y h o u s e p a r t i e s . M r s . C o n s t a nc e C l u e t t W a r d o p e n e d t h e d o o r s o f he r f a mi l y h o me t o t h e p u b l i c i n 1 9 9 0 , a n d t o d a y c o n t i n u e s t h e W a r d f a m i l y t r a d i t i o n o f h o s p i t a l i t y wi t h h e r d a u gh t e r s .

F i s h f o r S c o t l a n d ’ s f i n e s t S a l m o n u n d e r t h e wa t c h f u l e y e o f K i n n a i r d ’ s p r i v a t e G h i l l i e ; e x p l o r e t h e e s t a t e o n wa l k s a nd n a t u r e t r a i l s ; e n j o y s c e n i c v i e ws r e l a x i n g wi t h a p i c n i c a t t h e M i l l p o n d B o t h y o r o n t h e b a n k s o f t h e R i ve r T a y ; b r e a t h e i n t h e e v o c a t i v e a r o m a o f t h e l o g f i r e a s y o u m a k e y o u r s e l f a t h o m e i n t h e C e d a r R o o m , a n d i n d u l g e i n a gl a s s o f C h a mp a gn e i n a n t i c i p a t i o n o f a d e l i c i o u s d i n n e r p r e p a r e d b y H e a d C h e f J e a n B a p t i s t e B a d y , wi n n e r o f 2 0 0 9 S c o t t i s h C h e f o f t h e Y e a r , a nd h i s b r i ga d e i n t h e 3 A A R o s e t t e r e s t a ur a n t .

33

12

For full course details or to reserve a place, please contact Kinnaird:

Kinnaird Hotel, Restaurant & Sporting Estate K i n n a i rd E s t a t e, by D u n ke l d , Pe r t h s h i re, P H 8 0 L B, S c o t l a n d Telephone + 44 (0) 1796 482440 Fax + 44 (0) 1796 482289 Email: enquiry@kinnairdestate.com www.kinnairdestate.com Scottish Art News 34

Lucy Skaer and Richard Wright have been announced as nominees for this year’s Turner prize. Both are based in Glasgow and trained at Glasgow School of Art. The majority of this year’s nominees, including Skaer and Wright, locate the basis of their practice in drawing and painting.

Milestone is a unique arts event specifically designed for the Edinburgh Art Festival in which ten international sculptors will each carve a new sculpture in a 1-2 tonnes block of stone in ECA’s quadrangle. This daily event is free and open to the public and offers a rare opportunity to watch sculptors at work.

September 2009 sees the launch of TRONGATE 103, a major visual arts resource for the city of Glasgow. The building, based in Glasgow’s Merchant City, will house galleries, workshops, artists studios and production spaces supporting the creation of art in a wide variety of media including printmaking, photography, digital media, film, video, kinetic sculpture, painting and ceramics. The project is being delivered in a partnership between Glasgow City Council and eight Merchant City based visual arts organisations – Glasgow Print Studio, Project Ability, Street Level Photoworks, Transmission Gallery, Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre, Glasgow Media Access Centre, Glasgow Independent Studios and The Russian Cultural Centre. TRONGATE 103 has been designed by award winning architects Elder and Cannon.

The Common Guild has unveiled plans for a major new collaborative project with The Lighthouse, acclaimed visual artist Phil Collins and architects Caruso St John. ‘Project for Parks’ seeks to inject new life into Glasgow’s parks through the use of public art and architecture and is supported by Scottish Arts Council Public Art Fund.

Geoff Uglow has been awarded the 20th Alastair Salvesen Painting and Travel Scholarship 2009 by The Royal Scottish Academy. Uglow has been inspired by William Daniell’s now famous journey A Voyage Around Great Britain; which celebrated the rural coastline of Britain in 1814. Uglow aims to make a similar journey, making his own series of prints and paintings which will be shown at the RSA in 2010.

This years Edinburgh Festival’s visual arts programme has 50 participating galleries, both permanent and temporary.

Highlights include an exhibition of studio works by Eva Hesse at the Fruitmarket and a solo show of American artist John McCracken at Inverleith House. New works by leading UK artists also play a prominent part in the line up; Lucy Skaer, Rosalind Nashashibi, Bob and Roberta Smith, Tacita Dean, Callum Innes and Jane and Louise Wilson all feature.

Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop has raised 90 per cent of funding required for a new World Class Sculpture Centre. The purpose-built facility will be built on their existing site and has been designed by Sutherland Hussey Architects. Specialist workshops, education, project-development and research spaces, 26 artist studios and two apartments for visiting artists will benefit more than 300 artists and 7,000 public participants and visitors each year.

EntErtain your cliEnts in ExquisitE surroundings BOOK NOW FOR The Face of Scotland: Masterpieces from the Scottish National Portrait Gallery 15 September - 19 December 2009 The Scottish Colourists from The Fleming Collection 12 January - 1 April 2010

Artist’s impression of the interior of the new TRONGATE 103 development Courtesy Culture and Sport Glasgow

Gossoprie n. Also: gossepry, -aprie. [e.m.E. gossypry (1550). Relationship as gossips. ‘Quhat tym...that thae...be gossepis and aye and quhil the sayd gossepry be compleyttyt’; 1520, Thanes of Cawdor p.134; ‘[To] fulfill the band of gossaprie’; 1533 Ibid. p.159. ‘I

Please contact us for information on gallery hire for Corporate & Private Events

have...sent that express to your selfe...to crave two or three lynes under one of your hands..., or else to give up gossoprie’; 1651 Baillie III. p.138 ‘Until you had first given

The Fleming ColleCTion 13 Berkeley Street, Mayfair, London W1J 8DU 020 7409 5784 │ flemingcollection@ffandp.com │ www.flemingcollection.co.uk 35

12

up gossoprie’; 1691, Leven & Melv. p.647.’

Scottish Art News 36

Scotland +Venice Martin Boyce, No Reflections This year for the Venice Biennale Martin Boyce is presenting a solo show, No Reflections, curated by Dundee Contemporary Arts

by Katie Baker

M

artin Boyce has been selected as the first artist to represent Scotland alone at the 53rd Venice Biennale in this year’s Scottish presentation at Venice. For someone whose art has drawn largely on the iconography of modernist design, the contrast of showing in a 15th century Venetian building is reflected somewhat poetically in the work’s arrival there. From a fabricator’s workshop in Glasgow to the Palazzo Pisani in Venice, concrete blocks, a rusted steel table and aluminium trees, will complete the final part of their journey by winding their way on boat through Venice’s narrow canals. Objects firmly rooted in the modern, but an aptly romantic passage for an artist whose work exploits the most quotidian of things in a resolutely dreamlike way. Boyce’s romance may be that of the shared packet of chips under the neon glow of a bus shelter variety, but no less resonant and lyrical.

Born in Hamilton in 1967, Boyce studied on the environmental art course at Glasgow School of Art. Early work involved an anxious treatment of iconic modernist furniture.

Classic chairs were transformed into tribal-like masks, displayed like some anthropological oddity, or photographed pushed up under the handle of a door in a paranoid and futile gesture. Archetypes of periods, they evoked memories of egalitarian visions, long forgotten in the lust of wealthy collectors for furniture that is now a signifier of sophisticated taste. His reinterpretation of Modernist design is haunted by these broken utopian dreams, an elegy to lost opportunities.

The work has evolved to ideas on a larger scale, moving from the domestic interior to a more melancholic reference to outside spaces, with objects recalling the urban landscape of the park and subway. A seminal show at the Tramway in 2003, Our Love is Like the Flowers, the Rain, the Sea 37

12

From a fabricator’s workshop in Glasgow to the Palazzo Pisani in Venice, concrete blocks, a rusted steel table and aluminium trees, will complete the final part of their journey by winding their way on boat through Venice’s narrow canals

and The Hours, turned the place into a dark imaginary landscape, intermittently lit by suspended strip-light trees and sparsely populated by the familiar furniture of our public spaces. In moving away from the direct referencing of design classics, these objects and the spaces they narrate now reverberate with alternative lives, both public and private. Litter bins, telephone booths, benches – with and without seats, suggest not just the disappointment of modernist ideals, the regenerated urban environments that have become sites of menace, threat and despair, but evoke nostalgic memories of the places sought out in adolescence. The playground at night, street corners and abandoned buildings – spaces carved out in that hinterland between child and adult, areas sought and claimed in our nascent attempts to find a place in the world.

Boyce’s objects seem to belong to anywhere but here, suggesting past and future locations and an allusion to some other place both temporal and geographical. Repeated motifs in his work include ventilation grilles that spell out messages, ranging from the ordinary to the sinister, hinting at an outside beyond the gallery, albeit one that is mediated and filtered. Elsewhere, chain link fences cross floors in ways that vaguely mark an inside and an outside, resulting in a space that is both open and enclosed. The outside permeates the gallery but the boundaries are not clear.

In searching for a suitable site in Venice, in close collaboration with the DCA, Boyce was initially drawn to more expansive spaces in keeping with previous exhibitions. However,

it was his abiding impression of the space as an abandoned garden that ultimately attracted him to it. Large concrete stepping stones lead visitors into the faded grandeur of the Palazzo’s series of seven interconnecting rooms. Within the space, with its echoes of Venice’s labyrinthine passageways, Boyce’s ongoing collapse of nature and design is played out, complementing and contrasting with its historical surroundings. A metal table looks like it has been abandoned to the elements for years and thousands of paper leaves are scattered on the floor, as if swept in on the breeze through open doors. Like his trademark rubbish bins that lean as if into a strong gale, nature appears to have been and gone, leaving the place looking as if ‘the outside world has somehow blown in’. These objects bear the traces of an imaginary exterior, the natural world present through its conspicuous absence. The stepping stones that bear the viewer over a floor devoid of water suggest a river that has dried up, in an

LEFT Martin Boyce photographs Concrete Stepping Stones in the Glasgow workshop, prior to them being wrapped and transported to Venice, May 2009. Photo Credit: Image courtesy of Gilmar Ribeiro BELOW The Venue, Palazzo Pisani (S.Marina), Calle delle Erbe, Cannaregio 6103 which will house the exhibition. Photo Credit: Piero Codato/CameraphotoArte Venezia

Scottish Art News 38

Boyce’s immersive environments offer moments frozen in time for the viewer to pick their way through, splinters of the twentieth and twenty first century displaced and abandoned, from which alternative histories and narratives may be spun in an elegaic landscape dreaming itself into existence echo of the inspiration behind the show’s title ‘No Reflections’ – the dried up pools of a deserted zoo Boyce visited when working on a recent project.

This refusal of reflection may well apply to Boyce’s own appropriation of modernist designers not least of all the brothers Joel and Jan Martel.

Having found a photograph in a book of their sculpture of four concrete trees made for the 1925 ‘Exposition des Arts Decoratifs’ in Paris, Boyce has spent years exploring in his work the structures and shapes derived from their geometric forms. Their latest incarnation can be found in the black and white chandeliers that have replaced the Palazzo’s own Murano glass ones, as well as being the template for the shape of the table, stones and top of the bin. This is not a looking back at a work that no longer 39

12

exists, beyond its photographic reproduction, but a ‘returning ghost’ of a sculpture that has spawned so many new forms within his work and is for Boyce the perfect collapse of nature and architecture, a visualisation of the conflict between the natural and the constructed that is so central to his work.

The unmooring of these objects from their original contexts leaves a sense of displacement that will find resonance with the formerly opulent surroundings of the palazzo. Boyce’s immersive environments offer moments frozen in time for the viewer to pick their way through, splinters of the twentieth and twenty-first century displaced and abandoned, from which alternative histories and narratives may be spun in an elegaic landscape dreaming itself into existence.

In reference to his

recent work ‘We are Shipwrecked.

We are Landlocked.’ Boyce talked of wanting to shipwreck a fragment of an imaginary landscape. The arrival by boat of his work in Venice may be more controlled than that of a shipwreck, but its impact will be just as disconcerting, as the fragmented landscape of our recent past washes up this summer on the shores of the Venice Biennale.

Katie Baker is an artist and writer based in London.

Martin Boyce, No Reflections Curated by Dundee Contemporary Arts Palazzo Pisani (S.Marina), Calle delle Erbe, Cannaregio 6103, 7 June – 22 November Closed Mondays www.scotlandandvenice.com

F l e m i n g s m ay F a i r H o T e l A gem in the heart of fashionable Mayfair announces the autumn opening of ‘Flemings’ their new bar and restaurant Just a few steps from THE FLEMING COLLECTION Flemings Mayfair Hotel are delighted to welcome Friends, Corporate Members and Patrons of The Fleming Collection to benefit f rom exclusive rates when staying with us

The Fleming Collection would like to thank Flemings mayfair Hotel

for supporting a special scottish art History lecture series (see pp.30–31) FROM TOP Martin Boyce photographs Concrete Stepping Stones in the Glasgow workshop, prior to them being wrapped and transported to Venice, May 2009. Photo Credit: Image courtesy of Gilmar Ribeiro

Flemings Mayfair Hotel Martin Boyce at work on new artwork to be exhibited at Venice Biennale 2009. Photo Credit: Image courtesy of Gilmar Ribeiro

7–12 Half Moon Street London W1J 7BH Telephone: +44 (0)20 7499 2964 E-mail: reservations@flemings-mayfair.co.uk

Scottish Art News 40

T

he Discovery of Spain explores the fascination for Spanish art and culture in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain, and examines the taste of Hispanophile collectors and artists. Outstanding examples of Spanish art, including works by Velázquez, El Greco, Murillo and Zurbarán, will form a dramatic centrepiece for the exhibition.

Paintings by major British artists who were captivated by the experience of travelling through Spain will also feature

prominently, including important paintings by Sir David Wilkie, David Roberts, John Phillip, Arthur Melville and David Bomberg.

Spain is now a familiar and much-loved part of the British view of Europe, but in the eighteenth century it was relatively little known. The Discovery of Spain explores the process by which this changed, and conveys the excitement of the period from 1800 to the 1930s (the eras of Goya and Picasso), when the country’s architecture,

Sir David Wilkie, The Spanish Mother, oil on canvas, 99x127 cm, Private Collection, Courtesy of The Fleming Collection

The Discovery of Spain British Artists and Collectors: Goya to Picasso A spectacular celebration of Spanish culture will bring some Mediterranean colour to Edinburgh this summer as the National Gallery of Scotland unveils the highlight of its festival programme for 2009 by Lucia Lindsay

41

12

customs, fashions and painting were gradually ‘discovered’ by artists and collectors, and created a sensation in Britain.

The period covered

by The Discovery of Spain begins and ends with conflicts which prompted extraordinary artistic responses from both Spanish and British painters – the Peninsular War (1807–14) and the Spanish Civil War. In the first of these, British military intervention played a key role in Spain’s struggle for independence from France, and artists from both countries drew inspiration from the dramatic events of the war. Goya sensitively depicted the British hero, The Duke of Wellington (National Gallery, London), and the harrowing reality of the conflict in his Disasters of War prints, while Sir David Wilkie adopted a more romanticised approach in his magnificent The Defence of Saragossa (Royal Collection).

The Defence of Saragossa proved extremely popular on Wilkie’s return to Britain and the series of paintings to which it belongs was quickly acquired by King George IV. Its popularity reflected a growing enthusiasm among British artists for Spanish subjects, which developed throughout the nineteenth century. A major stimulus to this was the publication in 1845 of Richard Ford’s Handbook for

Travellers in Spain. A landmark in travel literature, it helped shape the British perception of Spain, as did the brilliant watercolours and oil paintings by artists such as John Frederick Lewis, David Roberts and John Phillip, who toured extensively through the country, delighting in its culture, customs, costumes and architecture.

Phillip painted animated studies of Spanish life, sometimes on an epic scale, among which ‘La Gloria’: A Spanish Wake (National Gallery of Scotland) is the supreme example. At the time of its purchase in 1897, Phillip’s masterpiece was the most expensive painting the gallery had ever acquired. David Roberts’ extended trips to Spain in the 1830s and ’40s (during which he produced beautiful studies of buildings such as the cathedrals in Burgos and Seville) were a prelude to his work in Africa and the Near East. To their fascinated British audience, the work of these artists depicted an irresistible culture hovering between the familiar and the exotic. The architecture of Moorish Spain, represented in the exhibition through the work of Owen Jones, provided a decorative

Joseph Crawhall (1861–1913) The Bull Ring, Algeciras, 1891 watercolour on paper © FWAF

George Denholm Armour (1864–1949), The Entrance of the Bull, c.1891, watercolour on paper, FWAF © Artist’s Estate

vocabulary which was to have a significant impact on Victorian design, and enriched further the perception of Spain as being quite unlike any other part of Europe.

Richard Ford was also a discerning critic and connoisseur who contributed to the growing awareness of Spanish art in Britain. The Discovery of Spain will celebrate the extraordinary quality of the collections of Spanish painting formed in the nineteenth century by figures such as the Duke of Wellington, Sir William Stirling-Maxwell

and John and Joséphine Bowes.

Among the outstanding loans exploring their taste will be Velázquez’s A Spanish Gentleman (Apsley House), Zurbarán’s St Francis in Meditation (National Gallery, London), El Greco’s The Tears of St Peter (Bowes Museum) and Woman in a Fur Wrap (Pollok House), and Murillo’s Flower Seller (Dulwich Picture Gallery).

Such works created a complex and layered image of the ‘golden age’ of Spanish art, ranging from the moving and profoundly spiritual paintings of Zurbarán, to the sensual appeal of El Greco’s portraits, and charm of Murillo’s scenes of everyday life. It was above all Velázquez’s achievement which exerted a powerful influence upon generations of painters in Britain. The various ways in which this was felt will be explored in the exhibition through works such as Sir John Everett Millais’s Souvenir of Velázquez (Royal Academy of Arts), John Singer Sargent’s Portrait of W. Graham Robertson (Tate) and James McNeill Whistler’s Brown and Gold (SelfPortrait) (Hunterian Art Gallery).

Scottish Art News 42

Madrid: Paintings and Palaces Friends of The Fleming Collection Guided Tour

ABOVE Arthur Melville (1855-1904), Orange Market, Saragossa, 1872 Watercolour on paper © FWAF OPPOSITE John Phillip, La Gloria, A Spanish Wake, 1864 © National Galleries of Scotland

Explore world class art collections at the Prado, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Thyssen-Bornemisza and Palaces in Madrid and El Escorial with The Fleming Collection, 6 – 11 October 2009. As well as seeing masterpieces by international artists over the ages and Spanish artists including Velázquez, Goya, Sorolla, Dalí, Miró and Picasso you will see

prize wining contemporary architecture, including Rafael Moneo’s extension to El Prado and Herzog & De Meuron’s new exhibition space for the contemporary art collection of La Caixa. The trip includes flights, five nights stay, some meals, entrance fees.

Enquiries and reservations: Tel: 020 7409 5735

THESCOTTISHGALLERY

43

The exhibition’s last section will address the crisis of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, which prompted a new sense of sympathy with Spain on the part of many British people. It will include Picasso’s extraordinary Weeping Woman (Tate), which toured Britain with the artist’s iconic depiction of the devastation and suffering caused by warfare – Guernica – in 1938. The painting will be shown along with the artist’s preparatory drawing for it and a related etching. This group will form a powerful finale to The Discovery of Spain. They will be shown alongside diverse and richly imaginative responses to the conflict from major British artists, such as Percy Wyndham Lewis, Edward Burra and Henry Moore.

The Discovery of Spain

To their fascinated British audience, the work of these artists depicted an irresistible culture hovering between the familiar and the exotic

CONTEMPORARY ART SINCE 1842 has been organised by Christopher Baker, Deputy Director at the National Gallery of Scotland, and guest-curated by Dr David Howarth (University of Edinburgh) and Dr Paul Stirton (University of Glasgow).

Lucia Lindsay is Assistant Keeper of Art at The Fleming Collection, London.

The Discovery of Spain 18 July – 11 October 2009 National Gallery Complex The Mound, Edinburgh EH2 2EL tel: 0131 6246 6200; recorded information tel: 0131 332 2266 www.nationalgalleries.org Admission £8.00

Forthcoming Painting Exhibitions 2009 George Devlin 3 - 27 June The Scottish Gallery in Cork Street 8 - 13 June Alexander Goudie’s Tam O’Shanter 7 July - 1 August Summer Exhibition 7 July - 1 August James Morrison 7 August - 5 September David Cook 9 September - 3 October The Scottish Gallery at the RCA, 20/21 British Art Fair 9 - 13 September Kate Downie 7 - 31 October Duncan Shanks 4 - 28 November Christmas Exhibition 2 - 24 December

(concessions £6.00) Free to children under 12

12

16 Dundas Street Edinburgh EH3 6HZ tel. 0131 558 1200

mail@scottish-gallery.co.uk

Scottish Art News 44

www.scottish-gallery.co.uk

James Morrison Northwards, 7.x.2008, oil on board 69 x 102 cms (detail)

In the closing years of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth, the explorations of British artists in Spain extended beyond the urban centres, when painters such as Arthur Melville, William Nicholson and David Bomberg became attracted to the qualities of brilliant light and vibrant colour found in the varied landscapes across the country. The sunfilled exuberance of Nicholson’s Plaza del Toros, Málaga (Tate), was in stark contrast to the more sober tones for which the artist is better known, while Melville’s vivid sense of colour found its perfect expression in watercolours such as The Orange Market (The Fleming Collection) and oils such as A Spanish Sunday; Going to the Bullfight (Dundee University).

Discover the Paintings You Own Andrew Ellis, Director of The Public Catalogue Foundation, describes the Foundation’s plans to catalogue and make publicly accessible the many hidden assets of Scotland’s art collection James Ferrier Pryde, The Great Doorway, oil on canvas 40.5x30.5 cm West Yorkshire Catalogue; Bradford Museums, Galleries and Heritage

T

he British public owns some 200,000 oil paintings.

These are held by museums and art galleries, universities, hospitals and other civic buildings across the land. Eighty per cent of these paintings are not on view, being either in storage or in buildings without routine public access. In short, what is publicly owned is not publicly accessible.

The Public Catalogue Foundation is intent on changing this. Through our series of regional Oil Paintings in Public Ownership catalogues and our proposed YourPaintings website partnership with the BBC, our aim is to improve dramatically access to these paintings. In doing this we will highlight the astonishing richness of painting collections outside the metropolis. To date, the project’s focus has been England. We are now turning to Scotland.

45

12

Not only are more than 150,000 publiclyowned oil paintings hidden from view but only a small proportion of the nation’s paintings have been photographed

Not only are more than 150,000 publicly-owned oil paintings hidden from view but only a small proportion of the nation’s paintings have been photographed. Smaller museums and other institutions often have no photographic records whatsoever. Furthermore, many of the museum records are incomplete and in some cases council collections and other civic collections have no inventory of their paintings. Indeed, across the country only a tiny number of collections have a fully illustrated hardcopy or online colour catalogue of their paintings.

Why is this? Certainly it is through no fault of the collections’ curators who, as we have discovered, are doing everything in their power to display and catalogue the paintings in their care. Yet, endless cutbacks in staffing and resources have had a pernicious effect on collections’ ability to care for their paintings.

Compared to the heady days of bountiful bequests and burgeoning acquisition budgets, most museums these days are short of technicians to move paintings (required for rotating collections) and conservators to care for the paintings that are at risk. Perhaps the most disturbing finding is the reduction in the number of curators with fine art expertise.

Our work therefore comprises making a photographic record of all oil paintings owned by the public. At the same time we collate the essential catalogue records from the participating collections. We photograph works hanging on the walls of councillors’ offices, behind librarians’ desks, in obstetrics wards and in university common rooms. Our catalogues include

a painting screwed through its centre to the wall of a Cornish fire station, works hanging in a West Sussex crematorium and a canvas scarred by shrapnel from a German naval attack on Scarborough during the First World War.

The catalogues are typically published on a countyby-county basis although we sometimes publish single collection catalogues such as the Imperial War Museum, the Government Art Collection and V&A. Every oil painting owned by the public is listed in these catalogues with succinct catalogue data and a colour photograph of almost every single work.

These ‘matchbox-size’ colour reproductions are shown nine to a page and all paintings are reproduced irrespective of quality or condition. Paintings by Corot and Correggio sit alongside Corbould and Cordrey and works with patches of conservation tissue appear next to paintings finished last year. The Foundation makes no judgments about the paintings shown, leaving this entirely to the reader.

The Foundation’s first catalogue was published in June 2004 and 25 catalogues have been published since then showing approaching 60,000 paintings.

Perhaps more interestingly, we now have recorded the works of 15,000 artists, many of whom are relatively obscure. Many of the paintings in public collections have no artist attributions and we envisage that by the end of the project there will be some 20,000 unattributed paintings on our website.

Mark Thompson, Director General of the BBC, announced in January that the

ABOVE Sir Henry Raeburn, Mrs Moir of Leckie, c.1815, oil on canvas Presented by Robert Fleming, 1925, Collection of Dundee Art Galleries and Museums Mrs Moir of Leckie (nee Anne Stewart 1746–1823) was the 3rd daughter of Charles Stewart, 5th Laird of Ardshiel. Anne married Dr Robert Graham of Balchapple, who assumed the name Moir on inheriting the estate of Leckie in 1796 © Dundee Art Galleries and Museums BELOW John Faed ,The Artist’s Wife, 1890, oil on canvas, 76.2x63.5 cm © Image courtesy of Glasgow City Musuems

Scottish Art News 46

BBC intended to enter into partnership with the PCF to put all 200,000 oil paintings in public ownership on the BBC website.

The intention is that the BBC will build and host the YourPaintings website on bbc.co.uk – the most popular British website in the world. Our other partners in the YourPaintings project are the University of Glasgow and the University of Oxford together with the Collections Trust.

YourPaintings will become the PCF’s principal publication vehicle. The objective of the website will be to popularise and democratise art as well as to educate and entertain. The site will make it possible to search the entire corpus of oil paintings in UK public collections. The potential which this represents in terms of the appreciation and

We photograph works hanging on the walls of councillors’ offices, behind librarians’ desks, in obstetrics wards and in university common rooms

study of these works at every level, from school children to academic scholars, is extraordinary. The involvement of the BBC will create exciting interactive public engagement opportunities and permit the linking of paintings and video footage from the extensive BBC archive. The intention is to launch the bbc. co.uk/YourPaintings website by the end of 2010 and have all 200,000 paintings online by the time of the London Olympics in 2012 (funding permitting).

The benefits of our work to the collections are substantial and come at no financial cost to them. Not only do our catalogues raise the profile of the collections and, we hope, improve visitor numbers, but the collections also receive all the digital images photographed by the Foundation.

However, probably the single largest benefit to the nation will be the revelation that, spread across a variety of institutions from Cornwall to Orkney, there is one single UK collection of extraordinary size and variety. It should destroy once and for all the myth that great art can only be found in the national museums in London. Instead, Monets can be found in public collections in Aberdeen, Swansea and Walsall; Constables in Aberystwyth, Hull and Kilmarnock; Raeburns in Bradford and Greenock; Spencers in Belfast and Dundee. It will also doubtless challenge common assumptions. For example, who would have expected to find eight times as many paintings by Alfred Wallis in the Pier Art Gallery in Orkney than in all the public collections put together in Wallis’s

Samuel John Peploe, Yellow Tulips and Statuette oil on canvas 55.6x50.8 cm, Tyne & Wear Catalogues; Laing © Laing Art Gallery

FROM LEFT William George Gillies, Still Life with Cactus, oil on canvas 89x122 cm East Sussex Catalogue; Brighton and Hove Museum © RSA Joan Eardley, A Glasgow Lodging, 1953, oil on canvas 112.9x92.8 cm

Our catalogues include a painting screwed through its centre to the wall of a Cornish fire station, works hanging in a West Sussex crematorium and a canvas scarred by shrapnel from a German naval attack on Scarborough during the First World War

© Artist’s Estate, Image courtesy of Glasgow City Musuems

47

12

Scottish Art News 48

native Cornwall (where there is only one)?

The Foundation has now reached Scotland and our first catalogue, one of three Glasgow volumes, is underway while we have recently just started work in the Grampian and Tayside regions. In total we believe that there will be 13 or 14 catalogues covering around 30,000 paintings.

George Leslie Hunter Still Life with Tulips and Oranges SOLD FOR £433,250 ON 29 APRIL 2009 A NEW WORLD AUCTION RECORD FOR THE ARTIST

Andrew Ellis is Director of The Public Catalogue Foundation. Prior to joining the Foundation he spent 18 years working for Robert Fleming (subsequently JPMorgan).

The Public Catalogue Foundation is a registered charity with only six full-time staff and a team of experienced freelance county researchers and fine art photographers. It is funded principally by the generous support of individuals, companies, and charitable trusts. Support from the public sector, mainly County Councils and selected English Museum Hubs, only constitutes 20 per cent of the Foundation’s funding. It is now looking for financial support in Scotland. If you are interested in supporting the Foundation’s work please contact: Andrew Ellis, Director. andy.ellis@thepcf.org.uk The Foundation is also looking to expand their team of researchers to help create the regional Scottish catalogues over the next two to three years. For further information, please contact: Katey Goodwin, Coordinator Manager. katey.goodwin@thepcf.org.uk Special Offer If you would like to purchase catalogues in a special offer open only to readers of Scottish Art News please ring 01235 465577.

See the full list of catalogues on the website: www.thepcf.org.uk The normal price of catalogues is £25 (HB) (plus £5 p+p) and £15 (PB) (plus £5 p+p). Scottish Art News readers can purchase hardback catalogues priced £20 and paper back catalogues priced £15 (both inclusive of p+p). Please quote ‘SAN offer’ when placing your order. Each catalogue is beautifully produced, and to quote the Editor of Apollo Magazine, ‘...unputdownably browsable...’

FROM TOP Alfred Wallis, St Ives Harbour and Godrevy (?), circa 1934–8, courtesy of the Pier Arts Centre Collection © Wallis Estate James McIntosh Patrick, Portrait of Alex Russell, 1930, oil on canvas, courtesy of University of Dundee Museum Services, Duncan of Jordanstone College Collection © Artist’s Estate

49

12

An Invitation To Consign Scottish Pictures NEXT AUCTION IN LONDON 30 SEPTEMBER 2009

I

CONSIGNMENT ENQUIRIES +44 ( 0 ) 20 7293 5718

SOTHEBYS.COM Scottish Art News 50

While lighting up and dispelling the darkness of ignorance and superstition has been a role of science since the Enlightenment, the complex relationship between light and dark (or chiaroscuro) is also fundamental to the art of pictorial construction. Unquestionably, few contemporary painters have focussed their obsessive attention on this elemental dialectic to greater effect than Ken Currie. This is surely confirmed by these two portraits. For the artist, as with the scientists he portrays, light and dark are not only physical phenomenon, but also carry allegorical meanings and metaphysical concepts, which both illuminate, but also shroud, the limits of what can be comprehended by the human mind.

ABOVE Ken Currie, Three Oncologists (Professor RJ Steele, Professor Sir Alfred Cuschieri and Professor Sir David P. Lane of the Department of Surgery and Molecular

Bill Hare is Honorary Fellow and Curator, The University of Edinburgh.

Oncology, Ninewells Hospital, Dundee, The Scottish National Portrait Gallery OPPOSITE Ken Currie Peter Higgs, oil on canvas, 274x197 cm, 2008 The University of Edinburgh

Portrait

of

Peter Higgs

unveiled

Fine art by fine printers

A painting by Ken Currie of the British physicist whose work triggered the worldwide hunt for the elusive ‘God particle’ has been commissioned by The University of Edinburgh as Bill Hare, Honorary Fellow and Curator of the university explains

I

t is with both professional and personal pleasure that I can welcome Ken Currie’s outstanding portrait of the eminent physicist, Emeritus Professor Peter Higgs into The University of Edinburgh’s Fine Art Collection. As Curator I not only need to express on behalf of the University, our thanks to the artist for this fine work, but also pay recognition to Pat Fisher, Principal Curator of the Talbot Rice Gallery, for her role in initiating this important commission.

On a personal level I am further delighted with this remarkable achievement by Ken who I have long admired and occasionally had the privilege to work with on various exhibitions.

As the artist himself pointed out to me at the recent unveiling ceremony, which appropriately took place in the University’s new state of the arts Informatics Building, he very rarely takes on portrait commissions. Although figurative subject matter does predominate in his other work, he prefers to present historical and social representatives of human 51

12

types, rather than portray specific individuals. Interestingly however, he has carried out one other major commission for the Scottish National Portrait Gallery – his group portrait of Three Oncologists.

These two powerful works make a very intriguing contrast. They both, for instance, depict scientists who, in their own particular fields – medical surgery and sub-atomic physics, are pioneers at the forefront of human knowledge. Yet there is a vital difference; while surgery is a practical science, Professor Higgs is a theoretical physicist. Thus Currie shows the Oncologists ready for action in their operating attire, yet surrounded by the darkness of the unknown as they part the veil that ultimately separates life from death. In contrast, the casually dressed figure of the physics professor in his own private space is an illuminating presence who basks, both in direct natural sunlight, as well as in the reflected exploding elementary particles from the highly intriguing mirror behind him.

An invitation to consign Pictures

www.empresslitho.com

We are currently consigning pictures suitable for inclusion in our forthcoming sales.

For more information or to arrange an appointment please contact:

Forthcoming Picture Sales The Scottish Sale 21 August 19th and 20th Century Pictures and Prints 15 October Fine Pictures 4 December

Colleen Bowen 0131 240 2292 colleen.bowen@bonhams.com

Illustrated: Anne Redpath, OBE RSA ARA LLD ARWS ROI RBA (1895 - 1965) “White Peonies” (circa 1947).

Sold for £69,600 Bonhams 22 Queen Street Edinburgh EH2 1JX 0131 225 2266 0131 220 2547 fax

www.bonhams.com/edinburgh Scottish Art News 52

2009 Art Market Round-up

by Will Bennett

The number of sales devoted specifically to Scottish art is falling

decision but cutting costs during the recession may also have been a

As the sale moved into its 20th-century section the works of Sir

and fewer will be held north of the border. Christie’s has announced

factor in their thinking. All this means that Edinburgh has been left to

William Russell Flint, derided by many as mere glamour pictures

that its Scottish art sales in Edinburgh and at its South Kensington

Lyon & Turnbull, which is based there, and Bonhams, which retains a

but popular with collectors down the years, got a mixed reception.

saleroom in London are to end. Scottish pictures will either be sold

substantial operation in the Scottish capital.

A Russell Flint nude, entitled Alethea and estimated at £60,000 to

through a vast new department called Old Masters and 19th Century

£80,000, produced a lengthy battle between two bidders in the room

Art – which covers everything up to 1900 – or in 20th Century British

invasion’ as auctioneer Harry Dalmeny called it – produced mixed

culminating in one of them, a British private collector, paying £99,650

art sales. Meanwhile Sotheby’s has ended its sales in Edinburgh and

results with 58.3 per cent of the 156 lots selling for a total of more

for the picture. Three more Russell Flints were bought in quick

at Gleneagles and in April held its first Scottish art auction in London.

than £2.8 million. As is usually the case, the Scottish Colourists were

succession by one telephone bidder but seven of the eight other

It has no plans to abandon these specialist sales but New Bond Street

the stars of the show although the market kept its feet firmly on the

works by the artist in the sale failed to sell suggesting that the market

will be the venue from now on. The big two auction houses say that

ground and refused to pay more than the pre-sale estimates for these

for his pictures is not deep.

the increasing globalisation of the art market is the reason for their

hugely popular artists. However for once George Leslie Hunter, so

Sotheby’s first Scottish sale in London – or ‘the Tartan

Two of Scotland’s finest 20th-century women painters, Anne

often overshadowed by his fellow Colourists,

Redpath and Joan Eardley, did well at Sotheby’s. Redpath’s Blue and

fetched the highest price of the auction which

Yellow Still Life, dating from the mid-1940s, went to a British private

was also a record for his work. Still Life with

collector for £97,250, with the £80,000 hammer price in line with

Tulips and Oranges, which had not been on the

the upper estimate while her Pittenweem, Village in Fife turned in a

market since about 1930, was fought over by

similar performance selling for £70,850. The latter was among a group

two telephone bidders one of whom, a British

of works from the collection of the late Anthony Rampton which also

private collector, paid £433,250 for it once

included five paintings by Eardley, who was recently the subject of a

Sotheby’s had added its commission. However

major exhibition at The Fleming Collection. Four of these sold with

the hammer price of £360,000 was towards

Brass, Hair and Wool becoming the most expensive non-Colourist

the lower end of the £300,000 to £500,000

picture in the sale at £157,250.

estimate. The market’s caution was further

demonstrated by the fate of three still lifes by

£4,000 to £6,000 estimate at Bonhams sale in Edinburgh in April

Samuel John Peploe in the sale, two of which

selling for £9,120. Redpath’s Still Life, Fruit in a Striped Bowl equalled

sold within estimate while the third failed to

the top estimate of £15,000 at Bonhams in an auction at which more

find a buyer. A British collector paid £409,250

than 80 per cent of the works sold. While some more traditional

for Arum Lilies and and American private buyer

Scottish pictures may be out of fashion, it is heartening to see good

parted with £265,250 for Still Life with Pink

modern artists such as these getting the recognition they deserve.

Another Eardley picture Fields of Barley soared above its

OPPOSITE George Leslie Hunter (1877–1931) Still Life with Tulips and Oranges, oil on board, 69x56 cm ABOVE Anne Redpath (1895–1965), Still Life, Fruit in a Striped Bowl BELOW FROM LEFT Sir William Russell Flint (1880–1969) Alethea, tempera, 49x66.5 cm Disobedient Jane at Elie, watercolour, 24.5x33 cm

Roses, which had been in the private collection of a leading London art dealer for some years.

Will Bennett is the former Art Sales Correspondent of the

But bidding for the less colourful and less

Daily Telegraph who now works for the marketing and public relations

well-executed Roses stopped at £260,000, well

consultants Cawdell Douglas.

short of the £300,000 lower estimate.

But while the Colourists are still

performing well, much 19th century Scottish art remains firmly in the doldrums. The pictures of Highland glens, cattle and sheep produced in vast numbers to adorn the walls of Victorians have long been out of fashion and, except for a few of the better examples, either remained unsold or just scraped through at Sotheby’s.

However this malaise did not extend to the game bird watercolours of Archibald Thorburn, three of which all sold for four-figure sums.

53

12

Scottish Art News 54

Books The Last Bohemiams

Spirit of Jura. Fiction, Essays,

A Discipline of the Mind:

establishment of a part of Europe which in the 18th and 19th centuries

The Two Roberts – Colquhoun

Poems from the Jura Lodge

The Drawings of Wilhelmina

was still relatively unknown. The Discovery of Spain conveys the

and MacBryde

John Burnside, Bernard

Barns-Graham

excitement of this era, a time when Spain’s architecture, customs,

Roger Bristow

Crick, Janice Galloway, Philip

The Pier Arts Centre and The

fashions and painting were ‘discovered’ and created a sensation in

Sansom & Company Ltd

Gourevitch, Romesh Gunesekara,

Barns-Graham Charitable Trust

Britain. This survey contains contributions from renowned scholars

2009, £24.95

Kathleen Jamie, Liz Lochhead,

2009, £15

and illustrates the work of the Spanish masters Velázquez, El Greco, Murillo, Zurbaran, Goya and Picasso, and the British artists David

Swetha Prakash, Will Self, with In 1948, Alfred Barr, the esteemed

drawings by David Faithfull

‘I have always been interested in

Wilkie, David Roberts, John Frederick Lewis, John Phillip, Arthur

curator of New York’s Museum

Polygon, in conjunction with the

drawing – it is a discipline of the

Melville and David Bomberg. (Rebecca Mundy)

of Modern Art, visited London

Scottish Book Trust

mind. I seek to discover abstract

to purchase works from some of

2009, £9.99

shapes, accepting the subject’s demands often touching different

King’s College Aberdeen:

moods’ – Wilhelmina Barns-Graham

History, Buildings and

He selected just five pieces. Among them were the works of Robert

‘I am anxious to get out of London’, wrote George Orwell in 1946,

Artistic Portrayal

Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde.

‘I want to write another book which is impossible unless I get six

The Discipline of the Mind provides a comprehensive overview

Derek Ogston and

the new wave of British artists.

A rags-to-riches and back-to-rags-again story, the fruit of

months’ quiet’. The beautiful and remote Hebridean island of Jura

of the prolific and diverse output of graphic work created by

Margaret Carlaw

over twenty years’ original research, The Last Bohemians is the first

provided just such a tranquil escape, affording Orwell the solitude

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, one of the most distinctive bodies of

Ballieknowe

full-length biography of two charismatic, talented and ultimately

and inspiration needed to write his political masterpiece Nineteen

drawing produced in Britain in the 20th century. In contrast to the

2009, £20

tragic individuals. Born and brought up in Ayrshire to poor, working-

Eighty-Four.

abstract nature of Barns-Graham’s paintings and prints, the drawings

class families, Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde met at

catalogued in this book display a concentrated fidelity to nature, an

The buildings of King’s

Glasgow School of Art in the 1930s. They moved to London in 1941

Whiskey Writers’ Retreat Programme to provide contemporary writers

attempt to capture the appearance and atmosphere of the world

College have dominated

and quickly became associated with the Neo-Romantic group of

and poets the same opportunity of a tranquil space to create. Spirit of

which she observed. Rather than mere studies for later painted works,

the skyline of Aberdeen

painters which included Keith Vaughan and John Minton. At a time

Jura provides an anthology of works by writers and poets who have

the drawings reproduced here can be appreciated as accomplished

for many centuries. This

when homosexuality was not only illegal but actively persecuted,

benefitted from this programme.

autonomous works in their own right.

mecca for artists, writers and

they made little attempt to disguise their relationship and they had a

photographers is documented by Derek Ogston and Margaret Carlaw

constant stream of admirers, both male and female.

records as a fictional account, a brief moment in George Orwell’s

of Barns-Graham’s drawings, divided into themes from seascapes to

in this meticulous and detailed study of the buildings and institution.

In 2006 the Scottish Book Trust established the Jura Malt

Among the highlights, Janice Galloway’s ‘Almost 1948’

The book contains excellent quality reproductions of many

life on Jura before he wrote what would later become Nineteen

village scenes, and includes an essay on her graphic output by

Not only are the buildings themselves and their history recorded,

both England and Scotland, interviewing many of Colquhoun and

Eighty-Four. Liz Lochhead’s expansive love and laughter-filled

Mel Gooding. (Rebecca Mundy)

but great effort has been taken to trace and document the visual

MacBryde’s friends and admirers – well-known names in the art

poetry, scattered throughout the book, brings clearly to light the

and literary worlds including George Barker, Prunella Clough, Ian

remote, unusual beauty of the space in which she worked during

The Discovery of Spain:

sketched, painted, engraved and photographed over the centuries.

Hamilton Finlay, Bryan Robertson, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Patrick

her residency. Will Self’s ‘Tissue Sample’, a story about the writing

British Artists and Collectors:

Consequently the book provides a rich visual account of the different

Heron and Ken Russell. The Last Bohemians attempts to dispel

of a story, records his rambling journeys around the island and the

Goya to Picasso

mediums through which these buildings have been documented in

many of the negative myths which grew around the pair, known in

inspiration he found there to aid the often frustrating process of

David Howarth with essays by

often fascinatingly contrasting ways.

the 1940s as ‘The Golden Boys of Bond Street’, following their early

writing fiction. ‘Tissue Sample’ provides an account of the sewing of

Claudia Heide, Michael Jacobs,

deaths. Using previously unpublished material including the personal

the seeds of a story.

Hilary Macartney, Paul Stirton and

throughout the book with accompanying details of each artist

correspondence of both artists, The Last Bohemians provides

Nicholas Tromans

and composition, provide an account just as interesting as the

a fascinating account of the lives and work of Colquhoun and

together to provide a vividly inspirational setting. The fruits of the

National Galleries of Scotland

photographic records provided and the detailed accounts of the

MacBryde and the intriguing artistic world which surrounded them,

writers’ retreat programme form in Spirit of Jura, an intruiging, varied

July 2009, £14.95

buildings’ history. To see the same buildings and skylines represented

while attempting to establish their reputations as highly significant

and charming read, which above all captures the spirit of a place.

figures in the history of 20th-century British art. (Rebecca Mundy)

(Rebecca Mundy)

To research this book, the author travelled widely in

Jura is a site in which nature, geography and history come

reception of the buildings throughout history, how they have been

Such representations reproduced as high quality images

in such a range or mediums throughout such different periods of This lavishly illustrated book, published to coincide with the

time, societies and preoccupations, makes this an unusual and

opening of the exhibition of the same name at the National Gallery

absorbing study. (Rebecca Mundy)

of Scotland in 2009, celebrates the impact of Spanish culture on British art and collecting from the 1790s to the 1930s. This largely unresearched area of art history, from the Napoleonic period to the Spanish Civil War, charts the impact on the British artistic 55

12

Scottish Art News 56

Preview 2009

are Scottish by birth, but artists who work in Scotland or have produced prints at the four leading printmaking studios in Scotland: Dundee Contemporary Arts, Edinburgh Printmakers, the Glasgow

From Blackadder to Borland: Scottish Women Printmakers

Print Studio and Peacock Visual Arts

2 June – 2 August

in Aberdeen. The collection provides

Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, PO19 1TJ

an overview of the wealth of talent

www.pallant.org.uk

emerging from the Scottish art schools and some of the best work produced in the leading printmaking studios, spanning the likes of Stephen Campbell, Alan Davie, Peter Howson, Callum Innes, David Mach, Barbara Rae, Adrian Wiszniewski and the younger generation including Martin Boyce, Nathan Coley, Anya Gallaccio, Toby Paterson and David Shrigley.

The starting point for the

current display of Scottish women printmakers is an etching entitled Iris (1987) by Elizabeth Blackadder, arguably the doyenne of the Scottish art world.

The delicately incised lines of this typical flower subject set it apart from the resolutely strong imagery of most of the other printmakers in the show, not least the vibrant colours of her younger contemporary Barbara Rae, whose With the ‘Glasgow Boys’ in the late 19th century, the ‘Scottish

attended a lecture by Walter Hussey, the Dean of Chichester

carborundum print entitled Tuscan

Colourists’ in the early 20th century and the ‘New Glasgow Boys’ in

Cathedral and donor of Pallant House Gallery’s founding collection.

Field (2003) features bold contrasts

the 1980s, a summary glance might suggest that modern Scottish

Many years later, inspired by the Dean’s enlightened attitude to arts

of pinks and blues. This ‘colourist’

art has been like an all-male club that has sidelined its female

patronage and collecting, he and Thompson decided to support the

vein in Scottish art also appears to be

counterparts. But in truth, some of the leading protagonists in

gallery to form a collection of contemporary prints focused on work

manifested in the work of Katy Dove,

the Scottish art scene have been women. Anne Redpath was a

by Scottish artists. Although generous, the annual fund of around

whose kaleidoscopic screenprint Mirador

prominent figure in the ‘Edinburgh School’, Elizabeth Blackadder

£4,000 has also required focused decision-making on how this money

(2004) has synaesthetic associations, and

and Barbara Rae are major figures in The Royal Scottish Academy

can be best allocated as the market prices for contemporary artworks

Rosalind Lawless, who builds up subtle

and the contemporary artists Anya Gallaccio and Christine Borland

rise. The process of selecting prints has been a dialogue between

depths of colour with pastel applied onto

have achieved international reputations and nominations for the

the patrons and curators at the gallery, with suggestions coming from

screenprint in works such as Surface Area

Turner Prize. This summer, to address the gender balance, Pallant

both parties and a keen eye on new editions from the Scottish print

from her Contained Series (2008).

House Gallery in Chichester is presenting an exhibition of its holdings

studios, so that the Golder-Thompson gift has an identity that reflects

of prints by contemporary Scottish women artists, providing a

the taste of the patrons as well as meeting curatorial concerns. Since

artists, although related questions of identity are certainly addressed.

counterpoint to an exhibition of paintings by the Scottish Colourists

2001, around 100 prints have been acquired, forming a collection

Gwen Hardie’s lithograph I am (1987), features a schematised

from The Fleming Collection.

that could never claim to be comprehensive, but can claim to be

representation of the female body which relates to her work from the

representative of recent developments in Scottish printmaking.

mid-1980s, while Christine Borland’s The Quickening (1999) features a

Rosalind Lawless (b.1978) Surface Area, from the ‘Contained’ series, 2008, Screenprint

south of England, Pallant House Gallery has been developing one

mirror-image of the artist on a shooting range while she was pregnant,

and pastel on paper, Edition 1/1, Pallant House Gallery (Golder-Thompson Gift, 2009)

of the most interesting collections of contemporary Scottish prints

reflects not only the political devolution of the United Kingdom, but

thus raising moral questions surrounding the fragility of human life. Like

outside Scotland. The mode in which this body of prints by 60 Scottish

also the fact that as a gallery of modern British art, Pallant House

Borland, Jacqueline Donachie and Nicola Murray have demonstrated

artists has been amassed is also unusual – a partnership between the

Gallery should acquire and exhibit art from across the British Isles.

an interest in the relationship between art and science, which finds

gallery and two generous patrons, Mark Golder and Brian Thompson.

Reflecting the fluidity of what it means today to be ‘Scottish’, the label

expression in Murray’s Conjecture (2003) an image of an empty white

As a student at Manchester University in the 1970s, Golder had

has been interpreted inclusively, to incorporate not only artists who

laboratory coat. With the range of artists included, it would be difficult

57

Perhaps rather unexpectedly for a museum situated in the

12

The decision to acquire a collection of Scottish prints

The issue of gender is not explicit in the work of most of these

OPPOSITE Christine Borland (b.1965) The Quickening, from the ‘Habitat’ Portfolio 1999 Screenprint on paper, Pallant House Gallery (Golder-Thompson Gift, 2004) ABOVE FROM TOP Gwen Hardie (b.1962) I am , 1987, Lithograph on paper Pallant House Gallery (Golder-Thompson Gift, 2009)

Scottish Art News 58

to meaningfully argue for any

in Britain, exposing many British artists to the exciting developments

The Creative World of Alan Davie

consistent artistic voice, aside

in continental art for the first time. Although Sickert had visited the

5 August – 26 September

from the fact that all the artists in

salons of Paris in the 1880s, his encounters with Degas, Manet and

Dovecot, 10 Infirmary Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1LT

the show are Scottish and female.

others largely informed the subject matter of his paintings and his

Tel: 0131 550 3660

However, what it does provide is

treatment of modern life. It was not until the first decade of the 20th

www.dovecotstudios.com

a snapshot of the vitality of the

century that Sickert’s peers in the Camden Town School began to

contemporary Scottish printmaking

assimilate the bold colours and techniques of the Post-Impressionists

scene and an opportunity to see

in their work, whereas the Scottish Colourists had already encountered

a range of prints from Scotland

the work of Matisse and the Fauves and had begun to exhibit and

south of the border.

make a name for themselves in Paris as early as 1907.

Of equal consequence is the opportunity to present this

Simon Martin, Assistant Curator,

fine collection of art in the context of Pallant House Gallery, itself

Pallant House Gallery.

a ‘collection of collections’. The similarities between the vision of the founding benefactor of Pallant House Gallery, Dean Walter

Artists include: Anne Bevan,

Hussey, and the story of The Fleming Collection will be immediately

Elizabeth Blackadder, Christine

identifiable to the gallery’s visitors, who will recognise in David

Borland, Joyce Cairns, June Carey,

Donald1 a commitment to developing an exceptional collection of art

Katy Dove, Moyna Flannigan, Anya

that was shared by Hussey. We are delighted to be able to present the

Gallaccio, Jo Ganter, Gwen Hardie,

two side by side in this, the 100th anniversary of Hussey’s birth.

Jessica Harrison, Louise Hopkins, Rosalind Lawless, Natalie McIlroy,

Frances Guy, Curator, Pallant House Gallery.

Jennifer McRae, Barbara Rae, Carol Rhodes and Bronwen Sleigh.

Alan Davie in Gamel’s Studio, 1993, photo by Iain Roy Elizabeth Blackadder (b.1931), Iris, 1987, Etching on paper, Pallant House Gallery (Golder-Thompson Gift, 2001)

1 The Fleming Collection was conceived as a corporate collection for Robert Fleming Holdings Ltd , one of its directors, David Donald, collecting works between 1968-85. Since

The Creative World of Alan Davie celebrates the remarkable breadth

2000 the collection has belonged to The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation which aims to

of work from one of Scotland’s most respected and influential artists.

promote Scottish Art to a wider audience.

At 89 Alan Davie continues to work in a range of different mediums

North and South: The Scottish Colourists at Pallant House Gallery

with an energy that belies his years. This exciting exhibition in

27 June – 1 November

Dovecot’s landmark building will educate and inform an international

Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, PO19 1TJ

audience, giving a new perspective on the broad spectrum of

www.pallant.org.uk

work produced by Davie in a career spanning seven decades. The exhibition will include specially selected examples of his work in

This summer works by the Scottish Colourists from The Fleming

sculpture, painting, tapestry and rug making, jewellery design,

Collection will be on display at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester,

printmaking, drawing, photography, poetry and experimental jazz.

the first time this collection will have been seen in the south of

Work from the 1950s to the present day will be innovatively displayed

England. As our summer exhibition this is an important event in

in Dovecot’s south gallery (3,400ft2). Drawn from both private and

itself, but it also fulfils an unarticulated aim of the gallery to be truly

public collections, the work will show how it has, over the years,

representative of the history of 20th-century art in Britain. While

consistently pushed the boundaries of definition.

preparing the new guidebook prior to the gallery’s relaunch following

the building of a new wing in July 2006, we became only too aware

at Dovecot, a series of talks and ‘in conversation’ events with curators

of our shortcomings in presenting ourselves as a gallery of modern

and critics will be held that explore Davie’s work. There will also be a

British art with only a handful of artists in our collections having been

number of experimental jazz evenings focusing on some of the earlier

born outside of England. The gallery is addressing this gap through

free improvisation recordings made with Tony Oxley in the 1970s. It is

a contemporary collecting strategy (see pp.56-8) but it is an issue we

hoped that the artist will attend and speak about his work.

can also cover through our temporary exhibitions programme.

offer a new perspective on the creative energy of an inquisitive and

The group of artists – Cadell, Fergusson, Hunter and Peploe

During the course of the Edinburgh Art Festival exhibition

As Davie approaches 90, this major exhibition aims to

– who came to be known as the Scottish Colourists are significant in

energetic mind, one which has explored and worked across many

the story of the introduction of European avant-garde art to Britain.

different art forms, drawing inspiration from influences as diverse as

Their involvement in the artistic scene in Paris in the late 1890s

Byzantine mosaics, Carib Indian petroglyphs and Zen Buddhism.

and early 20th century predated by at least a decade the seminal 1910 exhibition mounted by Roger Fry in London that is widely acknowledged as the key moment in the development of modern art 59

12

Francesca Baseby, Exhibitions Assistant, Dovecot Studios.

George Leslie Hunter (1877-1931), Ceres, Fife (Fifeshire Village) c.1924-27, oil on canvas © FWAF

Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell, The White Villa, Cassis, 1924, oil on panel © FWAF

Scottish Art News 60

Little Sparta: The Garden

Also showing:

of Ian Hamilton Finlay 7 June – 30 September

Ian Hamilton Finlay (ARTISTS ROOMS)

Stonypath, Dunsyre,

2 March 2009 – 30 January 2010

Lanarkshire ML11 8NG

Tate Britain Millbank, London

www.littlesparta.co.uk

SW1P 4RG www.tate.org.uk/britain

Ian Hamilton Finlay’s garden Little Sparta at his home

One-room installation, Sailing Dinghy,

in the Pentland Hills will

1996, comprising sailing boat, poem

be opening to the public

and wall texts.

once more in June 2009.

The garden is an oasis of

ARTIST ROOMS is a new collection of

foliage, sculpture, poetry

international contemporary art which

and learning on windswept

has been created through one of the

moorland an hour south of

largest and most imaginative gifts of art

Edinburgh. Before Finlay

ever made to museums in Britain by Anthony d’Offay in 2008, with

Remembering Little Sparta: Janet Boulton

died in March 2006 he was

the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, The Art Fund

30 July – 30 August 2009

and the Scottish and British Governments. ARTIST ROOMS is jointly

Edinburgh College of Art, 74 Lauriston Place, EH3 9DF

owned and managed by National Galleries of Scotland and Tate on

www.eca.ac.uk

insistent that the garden only be open to visitors during the

Little Sparta, Apollo & Daphne, photograph by Sam Rebben

behalf of the nation. Its guiding principle is the concept of individual

verdant summer months. The Little Sparta Trust, who maintain the garden for the nation, uphold this

The garden itself is surprisingly small. When the Finlays moved to the

rooms devoted to particular artists.

An exhibition of paintings, paper reliefs and photographs based

wish and between June and September visitors can again see one of

farm in the 1960s there were only a few currant bushes and a single

on the 15 year engagement by the artist with Ian Hamilton Finlay’s

Europe’s most important contemporary artworks.

ash tree. Slowly, through the work of his spade, and the help of Sue

Displays 1500–2009 and features Ian Hamilton Finlay’s monumental

This room display is part of Tate Britain’s BP British Art

Finlay, and increasing numbers of collaborators as the decades went

one-room installation Sailing Dinghy. The sailing boat, which Hamilton

garden during the months available than to be reminded that, a

on, Finlay dug two lochans and an allotment, planted innumerable

Finlay sailed himself, measures over five metres tall and four metres

couple of years before his death, it was named Scotland’s greatest

trees and shrubs, laid paths, adapted farm buildings and generally

wide, while a poem forms a ‘key’ that describes the parts of the boat

artwork in a poll of the country’s leading artists. Not only is it of

‘composed’ the landscape from the land, in much the same way as

and evokes its movement.

profound importance to the art world, but it has already entered the

Claude Lorraine composed his landscapes from paint. As well as

What more encouragement would one need to visit Finlay’s

canon of great gardens; the garden design expert, Sir Roy Strong,

containing works of art, the garden itself is a work of art, a poem.

described it as ‘the most important garden made in Britain since

1945’. Furthermore, it is one of the most innovative and well-executed

Even in gallery exhibitions he would refer to his lists of works as

collections of poetry ever ‘published’ in Scotland. And so why, we

bibliographies. In poetry we accept that we will not capture every

must wonder, is Finlay’s work so little known outside the artworld, and

allusion, every line, and yet there are still depths of stimulation in the

so often misunderstood within it?

play of words upon each other, the unification of seemingly disparate

ideas. Even when meaning is elusive, Finlay asks us to dive into our

One explanation is undoubtedly the complexity of

garden, Little Sparta.

ABOVE AND BELOW Little Sparta, photograph by Dave Paterson

For it was as a poet that Finlay considered himself.

Finlay’s artistic mind. Like his printed and gallery works, Little Sparta

experience and forgotten learning and to make links. As Forster

focuses on a series of themes, delving into them both visually and

wrote, and Finlay quoted, ‘only connect’.

intellectually. The recurrent, almost obsessional points of departure for Finlay’s art include ‘the Second World War, the French Revolution,

Ishbel McFarlane is a postgraduate research student at the University

sea fishing, pre-Socratic philosophy, romantic love, Western landscape

of Edinburgh. She is looking into the work and collaborations of Ian

painting [and] classical mythology.’

Hamilton Finlay as both poet and artist.

Such overtly intellectual engagement can give Finlay’s

oeuvre an aura of inapproachability. In Finlay’s eyes of course, such a

Opening Times:

belief was simply an example of the wilful ignorance of contemporary

Visits to the garden are on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday afternoons,

society and he saw his work as a battle against this. The highly-

2:30–5pm, from 7 June – 30 September. Visits by groups of 10 or

considered name of the garden, Little Sparta, was chosen to set these

more should be made by appointment: £10 admission fee. There

few acres against Edinburgh – the Athens of the North – the centre

will be a minibus service to Little Sparta on 12, 19, 26 August and 2

of what Finlay saw as the barbarous mainstream in Scotland. In the

September. The coach will leave Ingleby Gallery in Edinburgh at

words of his oft-quoted aphorism, ‘Some gardens are described as

1.30 pm and return by 6 pm. Booking ahead is essential.

retreats when really they are attacks.’

For full details email little_sparta@btinternet.com or call 07826 495677

61

12

Scottish Art News 62

Jupiter Artland

Mount Stuart

Bonnington House Steadings

Isle of Bute PA20 9LR

Wilkieston, Edinburgh EH27 8BB

Tel: 01700 503877

Tel: 0131 257 4170

www.mountstuart.com

www.jupiterartland.org sources. The eclectic fantasy of a Victorian Pouring rain and lots of mud couldn’t dampen guests’ spirits as they

Romantic and Renaissance man, it has been

drove through Life Mounds a four acre terraced landform by Charles

described as a ‘Venetian Palazzo crossed

Jencks and gathered for the opening of Jupiter Artland on Saturday

with an English medieval cathedral’. The 80

9th May. The sun eventually came out and stayed dry for Cornelia

foot central Marble Hall rises through three

Parker’s The Moon Landing, an evening firework display, inspired by

floors, with a deep blue star studded vaulted

Whistler’s Nocturne in Black and Gold The Falling Rocket, 1875 and

ceiling high above, staircases on either side

Debussy’s Nocturnes. Designed in collaboration with pyro-technicians

and marble pillars. The gilded bronze railings

The Moon Landing incorporated a lunar meteorite which scattered

are copied from the tomb of the Emperor

moon dust in a shower of sparks over the grounds of the estate to

Charlemagne at Aachen. However, although

mark the inauguration of this welcome addition to Scotland’s art

result is a striking connection between the art and the landscape, a

medieval in its architectural style, the house

scene.

theme from which the project, ‘Artland’, draws its name.

was particularly innovative in its use of

technologies. For example, its swimming bath

Jupiter Artland is the private initiative of Nicky and Robert

Not content to rest on their laurels the Wilsons already have

Wilson whose love of contemporary art has led them to commission

future plans underway to evolve the collection. Cornelia Parker has

was the first heated pool in any house. Upon

a series of ambitious site-specific works from some of the most

spent time as trial artist in residence, Waltener is planning to install

the 3rd Marquess’ death in 1900, not only did

highly regarded contemporary artists from Britain and abroad for the

a second work and Goldsworthy is set to manage the continuation

parts of the project remain incomplete such as

grounds of their estate. The Wilsons bought Bonnington House, a

of the coppice in Badger Wood. Turner prize nominee Nathan Coley

Jacobean manor house within an 80-acre estate in 1999 and within a

is poised to embark on the construction of a major new installation

Near the eastern shore of the Isle of Bute lies Mount Stuart, a grand

few years, the formal gardens, fields and woodlands began to suggest

which will be ready for the public in 2010 and the Wilsons are in

Victorian Gothic house (with its own shoreline) sitting among 300

faced a period of uncertainty and neglect.

the perfect milieu for Nicky’s long-held ambition to create a sculpture

conversation with Jim Lambie. The Jupiter Artland Foundation that

acres of designed landscape and 18th-century woodlands. The family

park.

they have created runs an educational programme providing a unique

seat of the Marquesses of Bute, the original Mount Stuart house was

major renovation and refurbishment was carried out by the late 6th

resource for local schools and colleges as well as being a wonderful

built in 1719 by the 2nd Earl of Bute (1682–1723), but after a fire

Marquess of Bute, and the house was opened to the public by the

day out for all to enjoy.

destroyed the central part of the building in 1877, the 3rd Marquess

current Marquess of Bute in 1995. In stark contrast and just over half

Laura Ford, Andy Goldsworthy, Antony Gormley, Anish

Kapoor, Marc Quinn, Shane Waltener and the late Ian Hamilton Finlay are among the line up of artists who have been commissioned by the Wilsons. Each work has been carefully placed and time has

the Marble Chapel, which Anderson had been commissioned to design, but Mount Stuart Then during the 1980s, an extensive programme of

of Bute (1847–1900) – amid Britain’s 19th century Gothic revival – Selina Skipwith, Keeper of Art, The Fleming Collection.

commissioned the Edinburgh Gothicist Robert Rowand Anderson (1834–1921) to realise the Marquess’ ambitious and visionary

been taken to landscape each piece into its immediate environment.

The artwork is enhanced by the landscape, the changing seasons

Opening Times:

and weather conditions, and in turn the sculptural pieces provide

15 May – 31 July 2009

1 August – 31 August 2009

retaining only two wings, one of which contained the small private

an added dimension to the landscape in which they are placed. The

Friday – Saturday 10am–4pm

Thursday – Sunday 10am–4pm

chapel designed by the architect and designer William Burges

rebuilding plans.1 These involved demolishing the surviving structure,

(1827–1881) in 1873.

A scholar, mystic, eminent patron of the arts and one of

the richest men in the country, the 3rd Marquess commissioned and supervised much of the art and craftsmanship within the red sandstone Gothic palace.2 A Roman Catholic convert, motivated by the renewed interest in and enthusiasm for medieval architecture, the building reflects the Marquess’s three passions – astronomy, religion and the decorative arts, and from marble columns to Gothic arches beneath vaulted ceilings studded with stars, to stained glass windows with zodiac themes, heraldic mosaics and heroic tapestries, the building and its rooms are elaborate settings for an outstanding collection.

63

12

Works by the leading portraitists of the 18th century, such

ABOVE Firmament, Antony Gormley

as Raeburn, Reynolds and Ramsay adorn the walls, enhancing and

© The artist

enlivening the already detailed and ornate decoration – every surface

LEFT Life Mounds, Charles Jencks

an excuse for carving or embellishment.3 The new Mount Stuart

© The artist

incorporated elements from several continental as well as British Scottish Art News 64

Listings SCOTLAND ABERDEEN

Nielsen, Ganghut and Rob

years of John Burningham’s

Hunter & John Louden

Work

tel: 0131 228 8228

4 July – 30 August

7 July – 5 September

National Gallery of

It’s Burning Everywhere

The Creative World of Alan

Scotland

Aberdeen Art Gallery

19 September – 29 November

Davie

The Discovery of Spain:

The Tartan Lens

152 Nethergate, DD1 4DY

5 August – 26 September

British Artists and

13 May – 15 September

tel: 01382 909 900

Jerwood Contemporary

Collectors: Goya to Picasso

dca.org.uk

Makers 2009

18 July – 11 August

a mile from the house itself, an innovative and award wining Visitor

of several metal objects, two paper works and a photographic work

Schoolhill, AB10 1FQ

Centre, encompassing a 120 seat restaurant, gallery, gift shop and

collectively titled The Great Bear (je meurs où je m`attache). The

tel: 01224 523 700

audio visual room was opened in 2001. Its gardens, the views from

installation reflects the artist’s ongoing enquiry into cultural history,

aagm.co.uk

which are designed to highlight various features across the Firth of

philosophy, architecture, temporality and the ownership of space and

Clyde, for example, the hills above Largs and the island of Great

collections, which makes Mount Stuart a particularly apt setting with

Cumbrae, are a mixture of wilderness, woodland and designed

its astronomical and astrological decorative references, including the

landscape, which make for an intriguing contrast against both the

striking astronomical ceiling in the Marble Hall.

5 August – 26 September

National Gallery Complex

The Royal Scottish Society

10 Infirmary Street,

The Mound EH2 2EL

of Painters in Watercolour:

Edinburgh EH1 1LT

tel: 0131 624 6200

Leith Hall Gardens

129th Open Annual

tel: 0131 550 3660

nationalgalleries.org

A Garden Tale, inclusing

Exhibition

dovecotstudios.com

work by Michael Stumpf

15 August – 12 September

Until 30 August

The Meffan

Edinburgh College of Art

Scotland

Huntly, Aberdeenshire,

20 West High Street, Forfar

Milestone (+live carve

Ballast: Bringing the

imaginative vision of the 3rd Marquess and the creative energies of

AB54 4NQ

DD8 1BB

event)

Stones Home

its architect and craftsmen make Mount Stuart and its collection a

tel: 0844 4932175

tel: 01307 464123

1 August – 30 August

from 5 August

remarkable monument to the Victorian age. In the 1900s, Rothesay

ssw.org.uk/nts.org.uk

Montrose Museum Gallery

74 Lauriston Place,

Salt of the Earth

natural beauty of the landscape and the Gothic Victorian splendour and grandiosity of the house. The result of the elaborate and

Briony Anderson is editor of Scottish Art News.

National Museum of

26 September – 24

Edinburgh EH3 9DF

from 16 October

100,000 people a week sailed into Rothesay Bay on Clyde steamers,

1. Sir Robert Rowand Anderson (1834–1921) had a large and successful practice and was

Peacock Visual Arts

October

tel: 0131 221 6000

Chambers Street EH11JF

either on day trips or to start their summer holidays. The appeal of the

instrumental in the foundation of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland. He was

David Blyth: The Book of

Panmure Place, Montrose

eca.ac.uk

tel: 0131 225 7534

Isle of Bute is undiminished today with Mount Stuart, an essential stop

also involved in the restoration of Scotland’s medieval churches, such as Dunblane Cathedral.

Spring Lambs

DD10 8HE

on the tourist trail of the 21st century.

Several of his buildings, such as the McEwan Hall in Edinburgh are in an eclectic Classical

13 June – 25 July

tel: 01674 673232

The Fruitmarket Gallery

on the Isle of Bute was Scotland’s most successful holiday resort –

nms.ac.uk

manner, but his finest works are in an accomplished medieval style, as in his design for the

35 years of great stuff!

26 September – 24

Willie Doherty

Royal Scottish Academy

scheme, the house and grounds itself, a site for artists to explore,

Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.

13 June – 25 July

October

25 April – 12 July

Lee O’Connor, RSA

respond to and work and exhibit within. Artists such as Christine

2. He has been described as the ‘best unprofessional architect of his generation’, also

Tim Winters:

Arbroath Library Gallery

Eva Hesse: Studiowork

Alastair Salvesen Painting

Borland, Nathan Coley and Langlands and Bell have made context-

restoring Cardiff Castle and building Castell Coch, both with the architect William Burges.

Island to Island

Hill Terrace, Arbroath

5 August – 25 October

and Travel Scholarship,

specific works for Mount Stuart and 2009 sees artist Katja Strunz select

3. The greatest beneficiary of the 3rd Earl’s patronage was the portrait painter Allan Ramsay

22 November – 20 December

DD11 1AH

45 Market Street EH1 1DF

2008 Award Winners Solo

work to exhibit within the context of Mount Stuart – a constellation

(1713–84). The Dining Room at Mount Stuart contains five portraits by the artist.

21 Castle Street

tel: 01241 872248

tel: 0131 225 2383

Exhibition

AB11 5BQ

angus.gov.uk/museums

fruitmarket.co.uk

5 June – 19 July

Mount Stuart also runs a highly regarded artist residency

Opening Times:

tel: 01224 639 539

1 May – 30 September

peacockvisualarts.com

The Finlay Room EDINBURGH

Ingleby Gallery

William Littlejohn RSA –

Ceryth Wyn Evans

Little Fishes, Small Works

Dean Gallery

7 May - 31 July

from the studio collection

The House 11am–5.00pm Sunday to Friday 10am–2.30pm Saturday only

DUNDEE

Alive with Innovations:

Ian Hamilton Finlay

4 July – 26 September

Broughty Castle Museum

Paolozzi’s Beginnings

19 June – 1 August

Friends Room

The Gardens & Visitor Centre 10am–6pm

The Orchar Collection

28 March – 27 September

15 Calton Road EH8 ADL

Annual Exhibition:

PREVIOUS PAGE FROM TOP

Until 27 November 2010

73 Belford Road Edinburgh

tel: 0131 556 4441

Homecoming

View of Mount Stuart from front lawn Photographer Keith Hunter, Keith Hunter

Castle Approach

EH4 3DS

inglebygallery.com

14 November – 20 December

Photography © Mount Stuart

Broughty Ferry, Dundee

tel: 0131 624 6200

The Dining Room, Photographer Keith Hunter, Keith Hunter Photography

dundeecity.gov.uk

nationalgalleries.org

© Mount Stuart

65

12

The Mound EH2 2EL Marchmont Gallery

tel: 0131 225 6671

Regina Fernandes

royalscottishacademy.org

THIS PAGE FROM TOP

Dundee

Dovecot Studios

1 March – 30 October

The Visitor Centre, Photographer – Fingal Design © Mount Stuart. The Kitchen

Contemporary Arts

Mr Gumpy and Other

56 Warrender Park Road,

Royal Society of Edinburgh

Garden, Photographer Keith Hunter, Keith Hunter Photography © Mount Stuart

Susanne Nørregård

Outings: Celebrating 50

EH9 1EX

Studies for Raeburn: Scottish Art News 66

ST. ANDREWS

Briony Anderson

Talbot Rice Gallery

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and

5-9 St Margaret’s Place

5 – 8 August

Jane and Louise Wilson

Museum

G1 5JY

22-26 George Street,

(White Cube Art Space)

Furniture in Focus: The

tel: 0141 553 2662

St. Andrews Museum

Edinburgh EH2 2PQ

Joseph Kosuth

Decorated Surface

sorchadallas.com

Ancestral Voices

tel: 0131 240 5000

(Georgian Gallery)

Until May 2010

edinburghartfestival.org

6 August – 26 September

Argyle Street G3 8AG

University of Edinburgh

tel: 0141 276 9599

The Scottish Gallery

Old College, South Bridge

glasgowmuseums.com

Selected Gallery Artists,

EH8 9YL

Summer Exhibition

tel: 0131 650 2210

Mansfield Park Gallery

2 Castle Street G4 0RH

Vanguard Court Studies,

trg.ed.ac.uk

Kirsty Wither: New Paintings

Tel: 0141 553 2557

29 August – 30 September

glasgowmuseums.com

Ceramic Exhibition Adam Paxton, Jewellery

GLASGOW

1 July – 1 August

LONDON

Tate Britain

7 June – 22 November

Turner Prize, including

Palazzo Giustinian Lolin

Caldoniart

nominees Richard Wright

San Vidal, San Marco 2893

Mist Covered Mountains

and Lucy Skaer

30124, Venice

24 May – August

September 2009

6 October – 16 January

tel: +39 041 5218711

St Mungo Museum

Kinburn Park

La Galleria, Pall Mall

ARTISTS ROOMS:

labiennale.org

Famine: New Works by

Doubledykes Road

tel: 0208 348 1958

Ian Hamilton Finlay

Peter Howson

tel: 01334 659 380

caldeoniart.co.uk

2 March – 30 January 2010

Sara Meltzer Gallery

29 May – 28 September

visit-standrews.co.uk

5 Hyndland Street G11 5QE

STIRLING

Millbank SW1P 4RG

Trouble Loves Me:

The Fleming Collection

tel: 020 7887 8888

Moyna Flannigan

Sir Muirhead Bone:

tate.org.uk

13 May – 27 June 525–531 West 26th Street

Artist and Patron Stirling Smith Art Gallery

7 July – 5 September

Thackeray Gallery

New York, NY 10001

tel: 0141 3424124

Tramway

and Museum

The Face of Scotland:

Mark I’Anson

tel: 212-727-9330

mansfieldparkgallery.com

Scottish Ballet: 40th

Robert Burns Mausoleum

Masterpieces from the

8 – 24 September

sarameltzergallery.com

Anniversary Exhibition

June – July 2009

Scottish National Portrait

18 Thackeray Street

Mary Mary Gallery

1 May – 30 September

Summer Exhibition

Gallery

tel: 0207 937 5883

Lorna MacIntyre: Sentences

Albert Drive G41 2PE

13 June – 13 September

15 September – 19 December

thackeraygallery.com

Cycling Up the Hill with

not only Words

Tel: 0141 276 0950

The Doig Collection

13 Berkeley Street W1J 8DU

my Dad

30 May – 11 July

tramway.org

July 2009

tel: 020 7409 5730

from Japan

4 July – 15 August

Lili Reynaud-Dewar

British Tapestry Group

flemingcollection.co.uk

7 August – 5 September

Timo Jokela: Northern

29 August – 3 October

David Cook, New Paintings

Traces

Suite 2/1 6 Dixon Street

New Glass Focus, Glass

22 August – 26 September

G1 4AX

Georgia Wiseman, Jewellery

Ian McCulloch: Trespassing

Showcase

21 November – 19 December

9 September – 3 October

22 Richmond St

Kate Downie, New Paintings

Glasgow G11

Mitchell Library

from Perth’s Collection

Ann Little, Beth Legg,

tel: 0141 548 2558

Inspired

10 January – 24 October

Jewellery Showcase

strath.ac.uk

4 April – 20 September 201 North Street G3 7DN

James Morrison New Paintings

Collins Gallery

Philip Eglin, Ceramics

Jan Scott Excess:

Wendy Ramshaw and David

Experiments in Living

Watkins, 70th Birthday

23 May – 27 June

Celebration of jewellery Koji Hatakeyama, Boxes

7 October – 31 October

PERTH

12 September – 6 December

AUCTIONS Lyon and Turnbull

OTHER

Jewellery and Silver 8 July

Touring: Various venues

Paintings

Dumbarton Road FK8 2RQ

Panter and Hall

ARTISTS ROOMS

9 July

Perth Museum and

tel: 01786 471 917

David Sawyer RBA

nationalgalleries.org/

33 Broughton Place

tel: 0141 226 2257

Art Gallery

smithartgallery.demon.co.uk

17 June – 10 July

tate.org.uk

Edinburgh

marymarygallery.co.uk

French Connections –

Jill Barthope AROUND SCOTLAND

lyonandturnbull.com

15 – 24 July

Pallant House Gallery

Artists of Fame and Promise

From Blackadder to

Bonhams

Kirkcudbright Town Hall

16 September – 2 October

Borland: Scottish Women

The Scottish Sale: Silver

The Spirit of Burns

Home Again

Mark Deamsteader

Printmakers

18 August

10 January – 24 October

4 July – 31 August

7 – 23 October

2 June – 2 August

The Scottish Sale: Ceramics,

French and Scottish Art

Duncan Shanks RSA, RSW,

Gallery of Modern Art

Tel: 0141 287 2999

La Serenissima, A

Kirkcudbright DG6 4AA

Christine Woodside RSW RGI

Scottish Colourists from the

Whisky

RGI New Paintings

Rob Churm

mitchellibrary.org

Celebration of Venice

tel: 01557 330291

28 October – 13 November

Fleming Collection

19 August

Mark Herald and Friends,

21 May – 2 August

Simon Quadrat

2 June – 1 November

The Scottish Sale: Books,

Mixed Objects Show

Royal Exchange Square

The Modern Institute

78 George Street PH1 5LB

The Scott Gallery

18 November – 4 December

9 North Pallant, Chichester

Arms and Armour, Works of

4 – 28 November

G1 3AH

Thomas Houseago, Dieter

tel: 01738 632 488

David Michie: In My Garden

Sandy Murphy RSW RGI

PO19 ITJ

Art, Clocks and Barometers,

16 Dundas Street EH3 6HZ

tel: 0141 248 2891

Roth & André Thomkins

pkc.gov.uk/museums

and Some Other Places

9 – 23 December

tel: 01243 774557

Furniture

tel: 0131 558 1200

glasgowmuseums.org

30 May – 11 July

pallant.org.uk

20 August

18 July – 1 May 2010

8 August – 27 September

9 Shepherd Market

Suite 6 Floor 1

The Fergusson Gallery

Wilton Park Museum

W1J 7PF

Hunterian Art Gallery

73 Robertson Street

A Life in Sketch

Hawick

tel: 020 7399 9999

Tate Liverpool

21 August

Scottish National Gallery of

Alexander Stoddart:

G2 8QD

Until 17 November

tel: 01450 373457

panterandhall.com

Colour Chart: Reinventing

22 Queen Street, Edinburgh

Modern Art Library

Drawings and Models

tel: 0141 248 3711/248 3280

Fergusson, A Scottish

scotborders.gov.uk

Colour, 1950 to today

bonhams.com

Robert Adam’s Landscape

23 May – 12 September

themoderninstitute.com

Colourist

Fantasies

Munch Prints

25 April – 25 July

12 June – 5 September

The Dean Gallery 73 Belford Rd EH4 3DS

scottish-gallery.co.uk

The Scottish Sale: Pictures

Rollo Contemporary Art

29 May – 13 September

Until 6 February 2010

Mount Stuart

Old Masters Reinterpretation

Albert Dock, Liverpool

Sothebys

Sorcha Dallas

Winner’s Collection

Katja Strunz – The Great

14 July – 28 August

L3 4BB

Scottish Sale

82 Hillhead Street,

I am a Camera

Until 17 November

Bear (je meurs où je

51 Cleveland Street

tel: 0151 702 7400

30 September

University of Glasgow

5 June–17 July

From Here to There

m`attache)

W1T 4JH

tate.org.uk/liverpool

34–35 New Bond Street

tel: 0131 624 6200

G12 8QQ

Charlie Hammond

24 November – 23 January

17 May – 30 September

tel: 020 7580 0020

nationalgalleries.org

tel: 0141 330 5431

4 September – 9 October

Marshall Place PH2 8NS

Isle of Bute, PA20 9LR

rolloart.com

hunterian.gla.ac.uk

Henry Coombes

tel: 01738 783 425

tel: 01700 503877

Martin Boyce, No

23 October – 27 November

pkc.gov.uk/museums

mountstuart.com

Reflections

67

12

London Venice Biennale

sothebys.com

Scottish Art News 68

Scottish Art News

A Guide

to thE Edinburgh Art Festival 2009

Eva Hesse

Callum Innes

The Fruitmarket Gallery

Ingleby Gallery

Eva Hesse is famous for her large-scale ephemeral sculptures that

The Ingleby Gallery

hang poised on the edge of minimalism, yet are often more suggestive

celebrates the first

of sensuous human physicality. Throughout her career Hesse also

anniversary of its move

produced a prodigious amount of small, experimental works alongside

to Calton Road with an

her larger sculptures. A major exhibition at The Fruitmarket Gallery will

exhibition from former

showcase a range of these works, several of which have never been

Turner prize nominee

exhibited for the public. Rather than just ‘test-pieces’ which aided

Lucy Skaer and Rosalind Nashashibi

and Edinburgh-born

her technical exploration, this exhibition argues that these renamed

doggerfisher

abstract painter

‘studioworks’ cannot be viewed as peripheral practice but instead

Callum Innes. Innes

help us to re-evaluate the nature of Hesse’s work, and indeed the

This year’s Edinburgh Art Festival sees the first solo exhibition in

belongs to a group of

very nature of the artwork as a whole. The exhibition coincides with

Scotland of Glasgow based and Turner prize nominated artist Lucy

British painters who

the publication of new research by renowned Hesse scholar Professor

Skaer and her collaborative partner Rosalind Nashashibi. To date

continue to explore

Briony Fer, who co-curates this exhibition with Barry Rosen, Director

Skaer’s work has ranged from works on paper, particularly drawing

and develop the role

of the Eva Hesse Estate. Many of these challenging and beautiful

and printmaking, to experimental intervention work and interaction

of paint on canvas and

‘studioworks’ which are made in a wide range of materials including

within public space. Skaer once again joins forces with Rosalind

attempt to nudge the

latex, wire-mesh, sculpmetal, wax, and cheesecloth, help to question

Nashashibi at doggerfisher to exhibit a new 16mm film. The two artists,

possibilities of painting further. Innes’ quietly seductive paintings use

the work of Hesse not just in relation to what an artwork is, but in

who have been collaborating since 2005, will exhibit the film which

as their basis the language of monochrome established in the 1960s,

relation to the work an artwork does in our culture.

takes as its starting point Paul Nash’s painting Flight of the Magnolia.

yet simultaneously establish their own language of form through the

fruitmarket.co.uk

doggerfisher.com

process of addition and subtraction. Innes often removes sections of paint from the canvas’s surface with turpentine to leave only the faintest traces of what was there before, allowing him to explore

Rebecca Mundy reveals the EAF 2009 programme, which this year sees the participation of no fewer than 50 galleries and spaces across Edinburgh, including 11 which are new to the festival

the process of removal. In his exhibition at Ingleby Innes’ works will be featured across all spaces of the gallery. Also featured at The Ingleby Gallery will be Tacita Dean, best known for her compelling film work, who will become the latest artist to produce a work as part of Ingleby’s Billboard for Edinburgh project. inglebygallery.com Bob and Roberta Smith

Now in its 6th year, the Edinburgh Art Festival continues to promote and strengthen Edinburgh’s standing as a world class centre for cultural and artistic practice. Rebecca Mundy reveals the 2009 festival, running from 5th August to 5th September, which will showcase a wide variety of exhibitions ranging from the work of leading British and international artists (including surveys of work by the older generation of Scottish artists) to that of exciting up and coming new talent from Scotland and around the world

69

12

The Grey Gallery To Bob and Roberta Smith, ‘there should be no artists, just people making art, and OPPOSITE FROM TOP

by the same token there should be no art critics, just people writing

Eva Hesse, Studiowork, 1967. Courtesy of Mr and Mrs Ronald B. Lynn,

about art’. This year’s show at The Grey Gallery as part of EAF will

Westwood, NJ, 1979. Photo credit: Abby Robinson, New York & Barbora

focus on a single work by Smith, whose 11-metre painting This Artist

Gerny, Zürich

is Deeply Dangerous breaks down into nine panels, and is one of the

Eva Hesse, No title, 1966. Courtesy of The Estate of Eva Hesse

largest works ever created by the artist. Smith’s large work takes for its

Photo credit: Abby Robinson, New York & Barbora Gerny, Zürich

inspiration and content the Guardian sports writer Steve Bierly’s review

ABOVE FROM TOP

of a Louise Bourgeois exhibition. The review came about when the

Callum Innes, Untitled 2009 No. 2.

Guardian newspaper asked their arts and sports writers to swap places

Image courtesy the artist / Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh

for the day. Reading the article held great relevance for Smith, who is

Lucy Skaer, Room of Lines, 2008. Installation view The Fruitmarket Gallery,

interested in how texts are understood, particularly having suffered

Edinburgh 2008 Plaster, wood and monoprints. Dimensions variable

from dyslexia as a child. To Smith, the fascination of Bierley’s article lay

Courtesy the artist and doggerfisher, Edinburgh. Photo credit: Ruth Clark

in its enthusiastic clarity and eagerness to inform in an inclusive way.

Scottish Art News 70

Subscribe

Such elements, so often absent from the world of art criticism, encouraged Smith to make this work.

Scottish Art News

This year The Grey Gallery will move from a derelict warehouse to the opulent new surroundings of Hawke & Hunter. Smith’s work will be one of its first

Two-year subscription UK £18 Europe £28 International £40

One-year subscription: UK £9 Europe £14 International £20

shows. bobandrobertasmith.zxq.net Aileen M. Stackhouse

Delivery Address (if this is a gift subscription, please give details of the recipient)

For myself

A gift

Sierra Metro Gallery Outside the city centre the new Sierra Metro

I enclose a cheque for £ The Fleming Collection Ltd

gallery, based in the Granton Lighthouse, will

or

host an exhibition by Duncan of Jordanstone

I wish to pay by

College sculpture graduate Aileen M. Stackhouse.

made payable to

Name

Mastercard

Visa

Switch

Stackhouse will create a site-specific piece

Cardholder’s Name

incorporating drawing, which will then be

Card No_ _ _ _ / _ _ _ _ / _ _ _ _ / _ _ _ _

transformed into sculpture. Visitors will be able to witness the artist occupy the space with vast lengths of paper which

Title Address

Bob and Roberta Smith with a section of his painting

Expiry date

This Artist is Deeply Dangerous. Photocredit: Joe Angio

Security No

Tel

Signed

Email

will then be transformed into the final works. sierrametro.com Other Highlights Emerging Contemporary Artists Other important exhibitions at this year’s EAF also promise an exciting Edinburgh Art Festival will also this year highlight the work of several

range of artistic production. The Institut Francais d’Ecosse will see

emerging contemporary artists from Scotland and elsewhere.

the first Scottish showing of the 19 original photographs by Paul

Visual artist Kate V. Robertson, originally from Edinburgh, will create

Nouge, the Belgian Surrealist. Inverleith House meanwhile offers

a disparate collection of 2D works, installed directly onto walls

the first solo show in the UK for one of the great living American

throughout the city, creating a subtle and almost invisible graffiti.

artists, John McCracken. Grangemouth born artist Alan Davie this

At the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 12 young artists inspired

year celebrates his 89th birthday, and as part of the Edinburgh Art

by street art and graffiti culture will present their remixed version of

Festival is to be the subject of a major retrospective at Dovecot

Scottish history, painted, pasted and projected directly onto the walls

Studios. At Stills the first solo UK show by Joachim Koester will include

of the evocative empty space produced by the gallery’s current closure

photographic work alongside film and video installations. A highlight

for redevelopment. Meanwhile at Arts Complex, Reveal/Reset will

of the National Galleries of Scotland’s programme during EAF 2009

show the work of a group of emerging artists from Glasgow, Edinburgh

will be The Discovery of Spain, a celebration of Spanish culture, as

and Munich, who will each use the space to reflect on the

seen through the eyes of British artists and art collectors. Talbot Rice

information-rich environment of today. edinburghartfestival.com

Gallery offers an exhibition of film and photography by Jane and

Issue No/Start Date

Postcode

Date I would like my subscription to start with Issue 12 Issue 13 Please complete the form and fax to +44 (0) 20 7409 560, or send to Scottish Art News subscriptions, The Fleming Collection, 13 Berkeley Street, London W1J 8DU. Alternatively, download a form from www.scottishartnews.co.uk Back issues of Scottish Art News (Issues 3–11) can be ordered priced £1 plus p+p

Louise Wilson. Their first solo exhibition in Edinburgh, it will include a new film and recent photographs alongside a new sculptural commission. Edinburgh Printmakers in association with the Paul Stolper Gallery, London is to

Issue 11 | Spring 2009

Issue 10 | Autumn 2008

Issue 9 | Spring 2008

Issue 8 | Autumn 2007

present the Scottish premiere of The Venice Suite and other works by Peter Blake. Meanwhile, a journey of artistic reflection, demonstrating the great technical diversity and depth of subject matter treated in the 50-year career of the influential Scottish painter John Bellany, will be showcased at Open Eye Gallery.

Rebecca Mundy is intern at The Fleming Collection, currently completing a Masters in Art History at UCL, London.

Issue 7 | Spring 2007

Jane and Louise Wilson, Unfolding the Aryan Papers. Commissioned by Animate Projects and the BFI with The Stanley Kubrick Archives, University of the Arts London Photocredit © Dave Morgan

71

12

For full programme details see: edinburghartfestival.com

Issue 6 | Autumn 2006

Issue 5 | Spring 2006

Issue 4 | Autumn 2005

Issue 3 | Spring 2005

To order back issues, call +44 (0) 20 409 5730 or email admin@scottishartnews.co.uk Scottish Art News 72

The Fleming ColleCT ion exh ibi T ion CaTalo gues The Fleming Collection shop also stocks a wide range of specialist Scottish art books

The Fleming Collection, 13 Berkeley Street, London, W1J 8DU, T: +44 (0) 20 7409 5730, E: flemingcollection@ffandp.com, www.flemingcollection.co.uk

A Ramble on Copper: Two Centuries of Scottish Etching 1750–1950 FWAF, 2003, £15 + p&p

A History of Scottish Art: The Fleming Collection FWAF, 2003 Hardback £35 + p&p Paperback £25 + p&p

Intimate Friends: Scottish Colourists from the Hunterian Art Gallery & The Fleming Collection FWAF, 2003, £15 + p&p

Bond Bound: Ian Fleming and the Art of Cover Design FWAF, 2008 £20 + p&p

Rascals and Ruins: The Romantic Vision of James Pryde FWAF, 2006, £15 + p&p

Portrait of a Young Scotsman: A Life of Edward Baird 1904–1949 FWAF, 2004, £15 + p&p

Divided Selves: The Scottish Self-Portrait from the 17th Century to the Present FWAF, 2006, £12.95 + p&p

Corporate Culture: A History of Corporate Art Collecting FWAF, 2005 £4 + p&p

MARK I’ANSON

BOOK ORDERS Book Title

Friends Discount

Quantity

Cost

Total As the postage costs will vary for each item, we will contact you with the postage costs before we process your order.

Please do not hesitate to contact us prior to ordering should you have any queries.

I enclose a cheque for £ The Fleming Collection Ltd or I wish to pay by

Mastercard

made payable to

Title Name

Visa

Switch

Address

Cardholder’s Name Card No_ _ _ _ / _ _ _ _ / _ _ _ _ / _ _ _ _ Expiry date

Issue No/Start Date

Postcode

Security No

Tel

Signed

Email

Date Please complete the form and fax to +44 (0) 20 7409 560, or send to The Fleming Collection, 13 Berkeley Street, W1J 8DU T: +44 (0) 20 7409 5730, E: flemingcollection@ffandp.com. You can also order online: www.flemingcollection.co.uk 73

12

NEW WORK

8th – 25th September 2009

THACKERAY GALLERY 18 Thackeray Street London W8 5ET 020 7937 5883

www.thackeraygallery.com • enquiries@thackeraygallery.com

Scottish Art News 74

B O U R N E Scottish Paintings: Old Master to Contemporary 31 July – 5 September 2009

William Gouw Ferguson . Sir Henry Raeburn . John Knox Andrew Wilson . Sir David Wilkie . William Dyce . William McTaggart . Edwin Sherwood Calvert . Arthur Melville . Charles Oppenheimer . George Leslie Hunter . Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell . Anne Redpath . Joan Eardley . Callum Innes

Bourne Fine Art 6 Dundas Street Edinburgh EH3 6HZ Telephone 0131 557 4050 Fax 0131 557 8382

www.bournefineart.com

The Fine Art Society 148 New Bond Street London W1S 2JT Telephone 020 7629 5116 Fax 020 7491 9454

www.faslondon.com Sir Henry Raeburn RA 1756-1823 Portrait of Mr George Abercromby of Tullibody, Clackmannanshire oil on canvas