ELIZ ABETH BL ACK ADDER FAVOURITE FLOWERS
ELIZ ABETH BL ACK ADDER FAVOURITE FLOWERS 19 October — 21 November 2021
THE
SCOTTISH
GALLERY
The Garden Museum 5 Lambeth Palace Road London SE1 7LB
The Scottish Gallery 16 Dundas Street Edinburgh EH3 6HZ
CONTEMPOR
16 DUNDAS ST +44 (0) 131 55
Published by The Scottish Gallery to coincide with the exhibition Elizabeth Blackadder – Favourite Flowers 19 October — 21 November 2021 At The Garden Museum, 5 Lambeth Palace Road, London, SE1 7LB Exhibition can be viewed online at www. scottish-gallery.co.uk/elizabethblackadder ISBN: 978 1 912900 30 5 Photography: John McKenzie
Insider covers: Elizabeth Blackadder, Black Cat and Irises, 2001, cat.28 (detail) Above: Elizabeth Blackadder, Orchidaceae Laeliocattleya Chinco ‘La Tuilerie’, 2009, cat.14
ELIZ ABETH BL ACK ADDER FAVOURITE FLOWERS
This exhibition has been long in gestation, first scheduled for February this year. On Monday the 23rd of September 2021 Elizabeth died after a long illness, so that this exhibition is the first memorial to her memory.
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CONTENTS 6 FOR EWOR D 9 INTRODUCTION 13 PR INTS 41 PA I N T I N G S 56 BIOGR APHY
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FOREWORD BY EMMA HOUSE C U R ATO R , G A R D E N M U S E U M
T
his exhibition explores the work of Elizabeth Blackadder, one of Scotland’s most admired and collected artists. Through a childhood spent collecting local flowers, pressing and labelling them with Latin names, a fascination
developed that was to later surface again and again in her paintings of plants and flowers. In 1966 Blackadder moved into a studio that looked out onto her garden where she grew lilies in pots, which she then transplanted into the studio, admired and recorded. When she moved with her husband to another Edinburgh house in 1975, the large sunny garden began to offer serious focus for her attention as a painter and gardener. Soon thick volumes of sketchbooks were filled with intently observed flower studies. The structure of individual plants carefully recorded and together with their foliage and flowers, the distinct textures and colours skilfully drawn. Irises were a particular favourite of the artist. She grew bearded irises for their velvet flowers, and enjoyed the challenge of painting the stippled veining of colour that is found on plicata irises. Clumps of sibiricas spread throughout the borders and lent themselves to her translucent watercolour style. Whilst the tiny reticulates offered an early specimen, their bold details and jewel-like colours brought intense early interest to the garden. Blackadder’s detailed and lyrical watercolours and prints identify her as a gardener who was intensely interested in plants, and as a skilled plantswoman that grew varieties for all seasons. From the early flowering fritilaria and tulips through to the fleeting blue meconopsis poppies, self seeding opium poppies, her beloved irises, lilies and gladioli, the garden provided an abundance of source material. But she was also an artist who delighted in gardens beyond her own. In the 1980s she travelled to Japan several times and the formal gardens she encountered offered new ways of planting and structures for laying out gardens; their influence flowed 8
Right: Elizabeth Blackadder painting in her Edinburgh garden, 1989
into her work with a freshness that made her prints truly absorbing. The decorative arts and kimono designs she observed on these trips stimulated her use of colour and pattern within her work. This is our annual selling exhibition in support of our clay for dementia learning programme. We are proud that although we have no public funding, we have three talented educators teaching botany, art, and food to school children and the wider community. Co-founding a course in botanical illustration at Edinburgh College of Art, Elizabeth Blackadder always placed teaching within the scope of her art practice and it therefore seems immensely fitting that the sales from this exhibition will continue this strong tradition of learning at the Garden Museum. 9
ELIZ ABETH BL ACK ADDER BY GUY PEPLOE
F
or more than half of the one hundred and twenty years or so that we consider the modern period, the images of Elizabeth Blackadder have surprised and beguiled us. She can now perhaps best be considered as a national treasure,
like Burns or Scott or Raeburn; her body of work a monument to quiet application, restraint, enlightenment and cultural variety. Each work has the simple poetry of a haiku but is presented with the perfect pitch of a tuning fork. In this exhibition exclusively for The Garden Museum, we have made a considered selection of works from many decades of her life on the theme of growth which we hope is seen as a celebration and a renewal after the year we have all suffered. She was a passionate plants woman and her garden has provided a rich succession of subjects year-round, from daffodils to Autumn leaves by way of the rich blooms of Spring and Summer; tulips, iris and lilies. Writing in the introduction to Favourite Flowers (Pavilion Books, 1996) Deborah Kelloway sought to make the distinction between Blackadder and the plant illustrators, “Blackadder’s flower paintings seem rather to say: this is how it was on that particular day. She goes into the garden with its iris beds, its ponds and self-seeded poppies amongst herbaceous borders; she picks a flower, brings it to her upstairs studio, puts it in water and waits to see if looks ready to be painted. Sometimes it does not, it is too stiff, like a self-conscious sitter for a portrait. A day or two later it may have relaxed and she must work fast to catch it in this mood. She will paint it life-size, but she will not measure it; she will rely upon her eyes and set it down as it appears to her. If she is using a blank sheet of here heavy hand-made paper, she may place it near one edge and leave the composition. This sort of art needs patience as well as speed; sometimes a picture may wait to be completed for a whole year, until the due season comes around again.”
Left: Elizabeth Blackadder, Pavement Leaves, 2013, cat.29 (detail)
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Right: Elizabeth Blackadder in her Edinburgh garden, 1978
Having spent several hours with the artist, reticent at the best of times, allowed to watch as well as listen, Kelloway comes to a profound understanding of her relationship with the subject, as she compares Blackadder’s flowers with Durer’s Das Grosse Rasenstuck: burnet, saxifrage, yarrow and the dandelion, simple and beautifully observed. “This is the starting point for Elizabeth Blackadder’s flower paintings too. It is the joy of direct observation, the urge to tell the truth, and so to catch the essence of the flower. ‘I don’t take liberties,’ she says. She means that she never exaggerates nor idealises. Her flowers, like Durer’s dandelion, are allowed to shed petals, to flop, even to die. And that is why they live.” Elizabeth enjoyed a long, consistent history of exhibitions with The Scottish Gallery over the long span of her professional life, as well as her exhibitions with The Mercury Gallery in London. She was honoured with a retrospective at The National Galleries of Scotland in 2010 and her long association with the Royal Academy (she became an Associate in 1971 and was the first woman to be a member of both the RA and RSA) let her enjoy a national profile. Her list of honours and exhibitions runs to a booklet in itself and it is hard to grasp the breadth of her achievement across many media. For many she is best known as a watercolourist, for many more her printmaking has allowed collectors to own her work, new editions of etchings, screen prints and lithographs appearing regularly, latterly made at The Glasgow Print Studio. Her oil painting practice never went away, even when she had to work predominantly on paper, and she always maintained separate studios for each medium. This diversity of approach she shared for forty-five years with her husband John Houston RSA - they met as students - and whom she sadly lost when he died in 2008. In recent years her working life was severely restricted by ill-health and new bodies of work could not be expected but rather a serendipitous choice and thematic exhibitions remind us of her extraordinary variety and genius. 12
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1 John Houston, The Garden (Portrait of Elizabeth Blackadder), 1989 woodcut, 41.5 x 58.5 cm
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PRINTS 1. John Houston, The Garden (Portrait of Elizabeth Blackadder), 1989, woodcut, 41.5 x 58.5 cm 2. Orchidaceae Masdevallia, 1987, etching, 61 x 45 cm 3. Orchidaceae Coelogyne Cristata, 1992, etching and aquatint, 30.5 x 35.5 cm 4. Orchidaceae Dendrobium Atroviolaceum, 1987, etching, 60.5 x 45.5 cm 5. Orchidaceae Masdavallia Dracula Bella, 1992-3, etching, 35 x 30 cm 6. Orchidaceae Taeniophyllum Latipetalum, 1992-3, etching, 35 x 30 cm 7. Japanese Garden, Kyoto, 1992, etching, 14 x 20 cm 8. Orchidaceae Coelogyne Cristata, 1999, aquatint and carborundum, 44 x 54.5 cm 9. Lilies and Poppies, 2003, screenprint, 63.5 x 93 cm 10. Arum Lilies, 2003, lithograph, 61 x 80 cm 11. Japanese Garden II, 2005, etching, 38 x 55 cm 12. Japanese Garden I, 2005, etching, 36 x 54 cm 13. Ludisia Discolor, 'Jewel Orchid', 2008, etching, 51 x 30.5 cm 14. Orchidaceae Laeliocattleya Chinco ‘La Tuilerie', 2009, etching, 35.5 x 30 cm 15. Gloriosa Superba, 2010, etching, 30.5 x 9 cm 16. Oriental Poppies, 2010, screenprint, 56 x 76 cm 17. Gladioli, 2011, screenprint, 57 x 76 cm 18. Meconopsis, 2011, screenprint, 50.5 x 40.5 cm 19. Four Poppies, 2011, screenprint, 61 x 49 cm 20. Poppy Study, 2011, screenprint, 61 x 49 cm 21. Tulips, 2012, screenprint, 57 x 67 cm 22. Wild Flowers, 2013, screenprint, 72.5 x 89.5 cm 23. Wild Flower, 2014, screenprint, 76 x 56 cm
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2 Orchidaceae Masdevallia, 1987 etching, 61 x 45 cm
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3 Orchidaceae Coelogyne Cristata, 1992 etching and aquatint, 30.5 x 35.5 cm
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4 Orchidaceae Dendrobium Atroviolaceum, 1987 etching, 60.5 x 45.5 cm
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5 Orchidaceae Masdavallia Dracula Bella, 1992-3 etching, 35 x 30 cm
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6 Orchidaceae Taeniophyllum Latipetalum, 1992-3 etching, 35 x 30 cm
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7 Japanese Garden, Kyoto, 1992 etching, 14 x 20 cm
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ORCHIDS The suite of Orchid etchings were created by Elizabeth Blackadder for an exhibition Orchids and Other Flowers at the Glasgow Print Studio in 1993. The exhibition was created to coincide with the 14th World Orchid Conference held in Glasgow that year. “The idea of this portfolio came about when John Mackechnie invited me to exhibit at Glasgow Print Studio Gallery at the time of the 14th World Orchid Conference in Glasgow in 1993. Intrigued by orchids, I have drawn and painted them for many years now. I have been helped to understand and appreciate at least a little about this fascinating family of plants by Paddy Woods of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. The choice of the etchings in the portfolio has been a subjective one. I chose the plants which appealed to me as an artist and which I found visually exciting in terms of shape, colour and structure. I make no claims to botanic truth or accuracy.”
E L I Z A BE T H BL AC K A DDE R , 19 93
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8 Orchidaceae Coelogyne Cristata, 1999 aquatint and carborundum, 44 x 54.5 cm
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9 Lilies and Poppies, 2003 screenprint, 63.5 x 93 cm
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10 Arum Lilies, 2003 lithograph, 61 x 80 cm
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Elizabeth Blackadder in a Japanese Garden, c.1996
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JAPAN Elizabeth Blackadder visited Japan in 1985, and also after her retirement from Edinburgh College of Art the following year. Her work had long chimed with Japan’s aesthetic style, but from then she added distinct Japanese subject matter, from kimonos to chopsticks to formal gardens. GUY PEPLOE
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11 Japanese Garden II, 2005 etching, 38 x 55 cm
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12 Japanese Garden I, 2005 etching, 36 x 54 cm
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13 Ludisia Discolor, ‘Jewel Orchid’, 2008 etching, 51 x 30.5 cm
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14 Orchidaceae Laeliocattleya Chinco ‘La Tuilerie’, 2009 etching, 35.5 x 30 cm
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15 Gloriosa Superba, 2010 etching, 30.5 x 9 cm
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16 Oriental Poppies, 2010 screenprint, 56 x 76 cm
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17 Gladioli, 2011 screenprint, 57 x 76 cm
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18 Meconopsis, 2011 screenprint, 50.5 x 40.5 cm
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19 Four Poppies, 2011 screenprint, 61 x 49 cm
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20 Poppy Study, 2011 screenprint, 61 x 49 cm
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21 Tulips, 2012 screenprint, 57 x 67 cm
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22 Wild Flowers, 2013 screenprint, 72.5 x 89.5 cm
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Elizabeth Blackadder collected wild flowers as a schoolgirl, pressing them and recording them with their botanical names beginning a lifelong fascination with botany.
23 Wild Flower, 2014 screenprint, 76 x 56 cm
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PAINTINGS 24. Cat in Garden, 1976, oil on canvas, 91 x 90 cm 25. Orchids and Bananas, 1989, watercolour, 102 x 69 cm 26. Flower Studies - Lilies, Pink Cistus, Vinca, Codonopsis, Acanthus and Kniphofia, 1990-91, watercolour, 58 x 77 cm 27. Still Life with Cherry Bark, 1995, oil on canvas, 152.5 x 152.5 cm 28. Black Cat and Irises, 2001, watercolour, 52 x 61 cm 29. Pavement Leaves, 2013, watercolour, 58 x 77 cm 30. Purple Table with Orange Dish, 2013, oil on canvas, 102 x 111 cm
Elizbeth Blackadder painting in her Edinburgh studio, 1989
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24 Cat in Garden, 1976 oil on canvas, 91 x 90 cm
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The devotees of plant illustration, with its origin in Linnaeus’ Species Plantarum of 1753, a key work of Enlightenment science, cannot not complain about Blackadder’s verisimilitude. What makes her plants and flower watercolours distinct from the other genre is in terms of compositions and context. Blackadder’s composition has both originality and subtlety beyond the simple requirement of placing the subject on the sheet. GUY PEPLOE
25 Orchids and Bananas, 1989 watercolour, 102 x 69 cm
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Blackadder’s immense popularity is in large part down to her flower painting in watercolour. Indeed, many assume this is all she painted. Much has been written in an attempt to redress this imbalanced viewpoint but she herself makes no distinction between the value or importance of different subjects and media. Her practice in watercolour, the subjects taken from her cherished garden – tulips, irises and lilies, pursued in a separate studio are no more or less important than her oil painting or printmaking of a great variety of subject matter. Flower Studies is a perfect exemplification of the sophistication of her composition as well as truthfulness to the natural beauty of her subject: the rhythm of the stems and spacial relationship of the blooms seems simple but provides a feast of the visual and intellectual. GUY PEPLOE
26 Flower Studies - Lilies, Pink Cistus, Vinca, Codonopsis, Acanthus and Kniphofia, 1990-91 watercolour, 58 x 77 cm
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27 Still Life with Cherry Bark, 1995 oil on canvas, 152.5 x 152.5 cms
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28 Black Cat and Irises, 2001 watercolour, 52 x 61 cm
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29 Pavement Leaves, 2013 watercolour, 58 x 77 cm
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30 Purple Table with Orange Dish, 2013 oil on canvas, 102 x 111 cm
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DA ME ELIZ ABETH BL ACK ADDER D B E , R A , R S A , R S W, R G I
1931 Born Falkirk, Scotland
1985 First visit to Japan
1949-54 Studied Edinburgh University
1987 Portrait of Mollie Hunter
and Edinburgh College of Art, MA
commissioned by The Scottish
Hons Fine Art
National Portrait Gallery
1956 Married John Houston
purchased by National Portrait
Elected Member of Society of Scottish
Gallery, London
Artists 1961 Elected Member of The Royal
1988 Watercolour Foundation joint winner Royal Academy
Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolours
1989-2001 Honorary Doctorates, DLitt, Heriot Watt University, University of
1962 Guthrie Award,
Edinburgh, University of Aberdeen,
Royal Scottish Academy 1962-86 Lecturer in drawing and painting, Edinburgh College of Art 1972 Elected Member of The Royal
University of Strathclyde,
and Limner in Scotland 2002 Honorary Doctorate, University of Stirling
Academy 1982 Awarded O.B.E. 1983 Elected Member of The Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts
Pimms Award for Work on Paper, Royal Academy
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University of Glasgow
2001 Appointed Her Majesty’s Painter
Scottish Academy 1976 Elected Member of The Royal
Portrait of Naomi Mitchison
2003 Honorary Doctorate, University of St. Andrews
Made a Dame of the British Empire, D.B.E.
2021 Died in Edinburgh, Scotland
Elizabeth Blackadder in her Edinburgh studio, c.1980. Photo by Frank Raffles
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EXHIBITIONS AT PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS
1977
Middlesbrough Art Gallery
1981
Scottish Arts Council Retrospective Touring Exhibition: Edinburgh, Sheffield, Aberdeen, Liverpool, Cardiff, London
1989
Welsh Arts Council Retrospective Touring Exhibition: Aberystwyth, Brighton, Bangor, Cardiff, Bath, Lancaster
1992
D.L.I. Museum, Durham, Retrospective Exhibition
1999-2001
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
2001
University of Edinburgh, Talbot Rice Gallery, Festival Exhibition
2011
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
2019
Winchester Discovery Centre
2021
Garden Museum, London
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PUBLIC COLLEC TIONS
Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums
Perth Museum and Art Gallery
Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal
Reading Museum and Art Gallery
Argyll City Council
Robert Fleming Holdings
Bolton Central Museum and Art Gallery
Royal Bank of Scotland
Carlisle Museum and Art Gallery
Royal Edinburgh Hospital
Doncaster Museum and Art Gallery
Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh
Dundee Museum and Art Gallery
Scottish Arts Council
Edinburgh City Art Centre
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
Eastbourne, Towner Art Gallery
Scottish National Portrait Gallery
Glasgow Museum and Art Gallery
Sheffield, Graves Art Gallery
Government Art Collection
Tate Gallery, London
Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh
University of Cambridge, Kettle’s Yard
Hove Museum and Art Gallery
University of Edinburgh
Huddersfield Art Gallery
University of Glasgow,
Kirkcaldy Museum and Art Gallery
Hunterian Art Gallery
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio
University of St. Andrews
Middlesbrough Art Gallery Museum
University of Stirling
of Modern Art, New York National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC
Victoria & Albert Museum, London West Riding County Museum Wustum Museum, Racine, Wisconsin
National Portrait Gallery, London Paisley Art Gallery
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The Scottish Gallery Established in South St. David Street, Edinburgh by Aitken Dott in 1842 as "Gilders, Framers, and Artists' Colourmen", the firm, as it does today, also exhibited and sold work by the leading Scottish artists of the day. As all areas of the business grew, larger premises were found in Castle Street in 1860 and a new dedicated gallery space was opened in 1897 as "The Scottish Gallery". The Scottish Gallery is the oldest private gallery in Scotland, exhibiting the best in Scottish painting, from the 20th century and contemporary, as well as museum quality international applied art. The Gallery has been situated on Dundas Street, in the heart of Edinburgh’s New Town, since 1992.
Museum patrons include: Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums / University of Wales, Aberystwyth / Arts Council of Northern Ireland / The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge / The National Museum and Gallery of Wales, Cardiff / The McManus Art Gallery and Museum, Dundee / Gracefield Arts Centre, Dumfries / City Arts Centre, Edinburgh / National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh / Scottish Arts Council / Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh / Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh / Museums and Galleries Edinburgh (City of Edinburgh Council) / Glasgow Art Gallery and Museums / Lillie Art Gallery, Glasgow / Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal / Museum and Art Gallery, Kettering / Kirkcaldy Museums and Art Gallery / Crafts Council, London / National Portrait Gallery, London / The Contemporary Arts Society, London / The Tate Gallery, London / Victoria and Albert Museum, London / Manchester City Art Gallery / Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester / Institute of Modern Art, Middlesbrough / Laing Art Gallery and Museum, Newcastle / Paisley Museum and Art Galleries / Perth Museum and Art Gallery / Reading Museum and Art Galleries / Sheffield Museums; Sheffield Graves Art Gallery / National Museums Northern Ireland, Ulster / Ulster Museum / National Gallery of Art, Sydney, Australia / National Museum of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia / Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada / Kunstmuseum Dusseldorf, Germany / Ridderkerk District Council, Holland / Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, New Zealand / Art Museum of Santa Barbara, California, USA
THE
SCOTTISH
GALLERY
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CONTEMPORARY ART SINCE 1842 16 DUNDAS STREET • EDINBURGH EH3 6HZ +44 (0) 131 558 1200 • mail@scottish-gallery.co.uk • scottish-gallery.co.uk