The Edinburgh School and Wider Circle | January 2019 | The Scottish Gallery

TH E EDI N BURGH SC HOOL AND WIDER CIRCLE

TH E EDI N BURGH SC HOOL AND WIDER CIRCLE EDINBURGH 5 – 26 JANUARY 2019 • LONDON ART FAIR 16 – 20 JANUARY 2019 • BORDERS ART FAIR 14 – 17 MARCH 2019

FOREWORD

We open 2019 with The Edinburgh School and Wider Circle which refers to a group of artists associated with Edinburgh and Edinburgh College of Art after the First World War. The same group were all represented, at various stages, by The Scottish Gallery. The core group consisted of Adam Bruce Thomson (1885-1976), Anne Redpath (1895-1965), Sir William Gillies (1898-1973), Sir William MacTaggart (1903-1981), John Maxwell (1905-1962) and Sir Robin Philipson (1916-1992). These painters were bound together as students and tutors, by their memberships of the Edinburgh-based Exhibition bodies: RSA, SSA and RSW, and were foremost friends and colleagues who shared an intense interest in the development of art and ideas. The leitmotif was still life painting and the landscape of Scotland; their collective contribution represents a brand of painting which was unique to Scotland during a time when the School of Paris was at the heart of progressive, modernist thinking.

After the end of The War, with the birth of the Edinburgh Festival and availability of access to continental Europe and the activity of the Scottish Committee of the ACGB, an atmosphere of possibility and optimism existed for artists which found full expression in Edinburgh.

We hope the works in this exhibition will help to highlight some of the main strengths of the Edinburgh School. Elizabeth Blackadder (b.1931), John Houston (1930-2008), David Michie (1928-2015) and David McClure (1926-1998) represent the ‘second generation’ of the Edinburgh School painters and are core inclusions, but our exhibition cannot seek to include every graduate or staff member, or pretend that the College, for example, did not briefly provide courses for artists as diverse as William Gear, Eduardo Paolozzi and John Byrne.

However if core attributes are to be identified then we see how drawing is used both as a means of observation, to underpin or construct and to produce lyrical works in their own right; the use of strong, vibrant colour and an enjoyment in the wide range of possibilities and effects to be achieved through the exploration of the properties of any chosen medium is apparent. Our exhibition also contains many fine early examples of works by the

younger generation where common influences variously drawn from their mentors may be discerned.

The Wider Circle is included for several reasons: the most important being that artists such as William Johnstone (1897-1981), Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912-2004), William Gear (1915-1997) and Alan Davie (1920-2014) pursued their careers outwith Scotland but, nonetheless, their education at Edinburgh College of Art enabled them to shape and form their art from a firm foundation.

The Barns-Graham Trust has given us generous access to some rare, early works on paper after Wilhelmina had graduated from Edinburgh, which demonstrate a strong visual connection to the Edinburgh School whilst displaying interests she shared with the St Ives School.

William Johnstone is one of the most elusive of early abstract expressionist painters; his intellectual power as an artist and educator is yet to be fully realised and appreciated – his views on art and art education seemed in direct opposition to those of William Gillies but the truth is that they had more in common than that which divided them. We have included photographs of the artists throughout our publication not only to bring the artists back to life but to also demonstrate, for possibly the first time, the close bonds that existed between them.

We are very grateful to Geoffrey Bertram from the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust for his insightful essay and for giving us access to early works by the artist including several Edinburgh related photographs.

We thank Robin McClure for his insightful picture notes (and valuable editing skills) on his father’s work and special mention must be made of the Michie family who have provided us with archive photographs of Anne Redpath and David Michie in addition to giving us some wonderful vintage works recently discovered in the studio.

An edited selection of our exhibition will be shown at the London Art Fair later this month and then on to the Borders Art Festival in March.

Christina Jansen The Scottish Gallery

Left: Anne Redpath in her London Street studio, 1960 Photograph courtesy of the Michie family 3

Denis Peploe, Diploma Exhibition, Edinburgh College of Art, 1936

David McClure, Diploma Exhibition, Edinburgh College of Art, 1951

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TH E EDI N BURGH SC HOOL AND WIDER CIRCLE

In Scottish painting there is a long tradition of major figures placing a great emphasis on the importance of works on paper within their individual oeuvres and nowhere is this better seen perhaps than in the work of the painters of ‘The Edinburgh School’. This term is generally used to refer to a group of influential and highly successful Scottish artists who are closely associated with Edinburgh College of Art either through receiving their training or through teaching there; many did both. It was a place where the excitement of the times and new ideas were shared both between and within generations.

The Scottish Gallery, commonly referred to as Aitken Dott’s, was very much at the heart of fostering the notion of a ‘school’ of generally like-minded painters, it being the main commercial and exhibiting hub in the capital, if not the country. Major figures of the school regularly held shows with us, both those of the older generation and from the later 1950s those younger artists who they had helped to inspire.

Every art market is to some degree parochial, or local.

Paris in the last two decades of the nineteenth and first of the 20th being particularly blessed with local talent dominated the art market worldwide up until the end of WWII. Paris was the first destination for scholarship students from the College, with the teaching atelier of André Lhôte the most common locus for study; Gillies himself downplayed the influence of Lhôte and modernism on himself, but nonetheless carried the influence of Braque through his studio practice and recommended many post-diploma students to study in Paris. Edinburgh has also nurtured a disproportionate number of talented painters and The Scottish Gallery has been a beneficiary through their representation.

More than this perhaps The Gallery’s long history and ambitious plans have been an integral part of the reputation achieved by Edinburgh and Scottish artists over the last one hundred and twenty years or so. The Scottish Gallery provided the nearest and most significant opportunity for various members of the Edinburgh School to exhibit, very often first in mixed exhibitions.

MacTaggart was the earliest to have a solo exhibition in 1929, followed in the 1940s by shows for William Gillies, Adam Bruce Thomson, Anne Redpath, Robin Philipson and others. A second wave of Edinburgh graduates began exhibiting in the late 1950s and early 1960s, principally David McClure, John Houston, Elizabeth Blackadder and David Michie. The final generation of the

Edinburgh School painters, before the atomisation of the contemporary art world and its eventual reforming in the homogeneity of contemporary conceptual practice, is best represented by John Bellany. A rebel in his day, exhibiting on the railings outside the RSA, his close relationship with Philipson and Houston, his respect for Gillies and his acceptance of the primacy of drawing and technique link him back to the School origins.

Many cultural commentators have attempted to make generalisations about Scottish painting: something in the water, or even the whisky, a Celtic commonality or a Presbyterian work ethic. These musings are seldom worthwhile and, in any case, do not begin to explain the wealth and diversity of the history of Scottish art.

In the last hundred years or so we have the four Scottish art colleges to thank. The Edinburgh School might contain artists as diverse as Gillies and Bellany, but the description is more meaningful than the bald list of alumni of Edinburgh College of Art since its inception in 1909. Most of the most prominent exemplars were also staff at the College and inevitably the choices in selecting new colleagues, falling to the Heads of School and Principal, could perpetuate an ethos while of course enriching the intellectual and stylist diversity of the College. In this respect William Gillies and then Robin Philipson were hugely influential. Yes, Gillies gave a job to Denis Peploe after serving six years in the War and returning to gain his teaching qualifications. But he also employed Robin Philipson, a subject painter of immense and precocious talent but with no previous connection to Edinburgh. In his turn Philipson staffed the College with several prominent graduates but brought the likes of Leonard Rosoman and later Victoria Crowe to provide new impetus and stimulation from outside. Many Edinburgh artist graduates escaped their colleges and country by taking port-graduate positions, making their career in England or further afield, like William Johnstone, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, William Gear, Alan Davie and Eduardo Paolozzi, figures whose reputations have never been framed in a Scottish context. All valued their College education and in their exhibition careers often made connections to their artistic origins.

Guy Peploe The Scottish Gallery

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Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, William Gear and Denis Peploe. Edinburgh College of Art, c.1936 Photograph courtesy of the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust

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L I ST O F A RT I STS THE EDINBURGH SCHOOL William BAILLIE 10 Penelope BEATON

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Dame Elizabeth BLACKADDER

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Robert Henderson BLYTH

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Gordon BRYCE

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James CUMMING

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Jack FIRTH 38 Edward GAGE 40 Sir William GILLIES

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Katie HORSMAN 58 John HOUSTON

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Sir William MACTAGGART

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David MCCLURE

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David MICHIE

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Leon MORROCCO 92 Denis PEPLOE

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Sir Robin PHILIPSON

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Perpetua POPE 116 Anne REDPATH

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Adam Bruce THOMSON

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William WILSON

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THE WIDER SCHOOL Wilhelmina BARNS-GRAHAM

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John BELLANY

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Alan DAVIE 152 William JOHNSTONE

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Edinburgh College of Art. School of Drawing, Painting, Design & Sculpture, 1949-50 8

TH E EDI N BURGH SC HOOL

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William Baillie. Photograph by Kingfisher Gallery

WILLIAM BAILLIE CBE, RSA, PPRSW (1923-2011) William, ‘Bill’ Baillie is a key figure in the development to the Edinburgh School. He was half a generation older than John Houston, Elizabeth Blackadder and David Michie, his colleagues and friends at the College, whose reputations have perhaps outstripped his own. He was a senior tutor under Gillies and then Deputy Head under Robin Philipson and was President of the Royal Scottish Academy from 1990. As a painter he is best known for his minimal, cool still life and interior works, pushing towards the abstract.

Typically, of the Edinburgh School painters, he divided his practice between oil and watercolour, also serving as President of the RSW from 1974-1979.

WIlliam BAILLIE

1/ High Summer Landscape, 1964 oil on canvas, 85 x 110 cm signed and dated lower right This painting is made with a rich impasto, typical of this earlier period, and is close to the sixties Fife works of John Houston with whom he shared an admiration for European Tachism and American Abstract Expressionism.

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WIlliam BAILLIE

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WIlliam BAILLIE

2/ Baptistry – Pisa gouache and chalk on card, 17.5 x 17.5 cm signed lower left; signed and titled verso PROVENANCE Private collection, Edinburgh This energetic work on paper is compellingly close to Blackadder works of a similar period, particularly those made in Siena. The drawing is decisive, describing sufficient detail to make the building easily identifiable but preserving a painterly character lending atmosphere.

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WIlliam BAILLIE

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PENELOPE BEATON RSW, ARSA (1886-1963) Penny B (as she was affectionately referred to) was a formidable blue-stocking figure on the staff of the College in the interwar years running the foundation course. Her painting was close to Gillies in both oil and watercolour, the former vigorously handled, the latter combining pen and ink and rich colour washes.

Penelope BEATON

3/ Still Life, Orange oil on canvas, 51 x 61 cm signed lower right PROVENANCE Henry Lorimer, Edinburgh; Private collection, London 14

Penelope BEATON

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DAME ELIZABETH BLACKADDER DBE, RA, RSA, RSW, RGI (b.1931) In considering the last hundred and twenty or so years of Scottish art, the period broadly covering the modern and of course the contemporary (those artists who enjoy the distinction of still being with us), we can detect commonalities: those that spring from a consideration of the same landscapes for example, or those to do with the enjoyment of the medium of oil paint. This allows us to make comparison between Peploe, Redpath and Eardley or George Leslie Hunter, MacTaggart and John Houston.

For more than half of this period the images of Elizabeth Blackadder have surprised and beguiled us, a presence that has grown and achievements that can be considered as quite discrete from the usual fodder for the survey of our national school. She can 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.

We have celebrated a consistent relationship between the artist and Gallery, having held ten exhibitions, the last six coinciding with the Edinburgh Festival, put on with The Scottish Gallery. Of course she has shown elsewhere, not least with the National Galleries of Scotland 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) has added to her national profile. The list of honours and exhibitions runs to a book in itself and it is hard to grasp the breadth of her achievement across many media.

For many she is best understood 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. Blackadder, like several Edinburgh School painters, has maintained separate watercolour and oil studios. Her compositions in oil must be seen as her greatest contribution, brilliant fusions of real objects and imaginary space, limitless colour invention moderated by impeccable combination, the perfect balance of sharp focus and free drawing with the brush and an unerring sense of restraint and harmony, never overworked.

Guy Peploe

Left: Elizabeth Blackadder by Norman McBeath, 2003, courtesy of National Portrait Gallery 17

Dame Elizabeth BLACKADDER

4/ A Fife Farm near Burntisland, c.1952 ink on paper, 33 x 45 cm signed lower right EXHIBITED Elizabeth Blackadder – Decades, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2016, ex. cat.; Modern Masters VI, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2017, cat. 10; Portrait of a Gallery, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2017, cat. 29 PROVENANCE Private collection, Edinburgh This early sketchbook drawing dates from the artist’s time at Edinburgh College of Art. The high horizon may take influence from her tutor and friend William Gillies, but the nervous energy of line, and assured mark making are entirely Blackadder’s own.

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Dame Elizabeth BLACKADDER

Dame Elizabeth BLACKADDER

5/ Italian Church, c.1956 ink and watercolour, 57.5 x 78 cm signed lower left PROVENANCE David Michie and thence by descent David Michie and John Houston shared their itinerary for their travelling scholarships and were joined by Blackadder in Italy, where they exchanged drawings. As with many examples of works on paper from the fifties by these Scots and others, the links to English Neo Romanticism (the term used by the critic Raymond Mortimer in 1942) are strong as is the joint inspiration going back to Blake and Palmer.

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Dame Elizabeth BLACKADDER

6/ Roman Wall I: Castle Nick, 1963 lithograph, 55 x 72 cm edition of 50 signed and dated lower right EXHIBITED Elizabeth Blackadder – Decades, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2016, cat. 5 ILLUSTRATED Elizabeth Blackadder Prints by Christopher Allen, Lund Humphries, 2003, pl.6 20

Dame Elizabeth BLACKADDER

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Dame Elizabeth BLACKADDER

7/ White Still Life, 1967 oil on canvas, 102 x 152 cm signed and dated lower left; signed and titled verso Flowers are often present in Elizabeth Blackadder’s still life compositions and increasingly they became a subject in themselves. She acquired her first garden with her move to Queens Crescent in 1963.

There can be no other painter as prolific in the number of things included in her painting: toys, wrappers, ceramics, postcards, fabric, fruit (real and carved), boxes, bowls, parcels and so on. When she travelled she accumulated things and then, eventually, they might be put to use, often crumpled, upside down, rescaled, flattened or partial.

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Dame Elizabeth BLACKADDER

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Dame Elizabeth BLACKADDER

8/ Soutra, 1971 oil on canvas, 65 x 70 cm signed and dated lower left EXHIBITED Modern Masters VII, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2017, cat. 4 PROVENANCE The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1990; Private collection, Newcastle Blackadder’s landscape, like that of her friend and mentor William Gillies, can be dark on dark; a view in the gloaming, perfectly true to time and place and at once a satisfying abstract composition.

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Dame Elizabeth BLACKADDER

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Dame Elizabeth BLACKADDER

9/ Tortoiseshell Cat, Lilies and Iris, 1984 watercolour, 28 x 38 cm signed and dated lower left EXHIBITED The Scottish Gallery at Duke Street, Gallery 8, London, 2017; Modern Masters VIII, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2018, cat. 5 While Blackadder should be known as a painter of a diverse and original range of subjects her watercolours including flowers and a succeeding dynasty of cats have rightly formed a significant portion of her reputation. Both cat and flower are accorded the simple elegance they possess in natural abundance, unmodified by sentimentality or symbolism creating a diffident beauty which, like the cat, cares not if it pleases but pleases nonetheless.

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Dame Elizabeth BLACKADDER

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Robert Henderson Blyth. Photograph by Richard Collins

ROBERT HENDERSON BLYTH RSA, RSW (1919-1970) Bobby Blyth, as he was known amongst his fellow artists, was a popular, familiar figure in the academic and institutional corridors, in Edinburgh and Aberdeen. He took his diploma at Glasgow School of Art before serving in the Army Medical Corps from 1941 until VE Day. Gillies then offered him work at Edinburgh before he moved to Aberdeen in 1954. He had already become a friend of the young students McClure, Houston and Blackadder, with whom he remained close. His response to War had been in a few surrealist influenced subject pictures but his subsequent development was in lyrical landscape owing something to Gillies and English Neo Romanticism.

Robert Henderson BLYTH

10/ Spanish Camerawoman, 1958 lithograph, 26.5 x 30 cm made as an edition of 70, signed in plate PROVENANCE David Michie and thence by descent 28

Robert Henderson BLYTH

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Gordon Bryce, Self Portrait, 2018, oil on board

GORDON BRYCE RSA, RSW (b.1943) Gordon Bryce studied at Edinburgh College of Art 1960 to 1965 and began lecturing at Aberdeen from 1968. He has quietly emerged over the last thirty years or so as the Scottish painter who carries the torch for contemporary belle peinture, a torch borne in previous generations by Anne Redpath and SJ Peploe. He is an easel painter with an endless fascination for his chosen medium, for composition and the subtle expressions of familiar landscape. His paintings do not shout for attention, they are the antithesis of the current vogue for artworks arising out of identity politics, instead giving us pause to recognise the value of simple pleasure and truth; his technical gifts are great, but they have never been set to serve the ego.

Gordon BRYCE

11/ Surf, 2018 oil on board, 60 x 120 cm signed lower right 30

Gordon BRYCE

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Gordon BRYCE

12/ Woodlands Midwinter, 2016 oil on panel, 30.5 x 61 cm signed lower right 32

Gordon BRYCE

Gordon BRYCE

13/ Headland Ardnamurchan, 2016 oil on panel, 26 x 29 cm signed lower right 33

James Cumming and William Mason, Edinburgh College of Art, 1939

JAMES CUMMING RSA, RSW (1922-1991) Cumming’s art education at Edinburgh College of Art was interrupted by the War, when he trained as a fighter pilot and acquired an RAF moustache which he kept! He was one of the most inspirational teachers on the College staff and very fondly remembered by all who came across him. His first and enduring subject arose from a year on Lewis at Callanish (as the result of a travelling scholarship) when painting became a servant of anthropology, but other very differently handled groups of works arose from an obsessive interest in subjects as varied as puppetry, cell culture, space travel and geometric abstraction. This very early lithograph allies him with Philipson works of the same time.

James CUMMING

14/ The Waverley Circus, c.1948 lithograph, 57 x 81 cm edition 3 of 4 signed lower right PROVENANCE David Michie and thence by descent This very early lithograph allies him with Philipson works of the same time.

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James CUMMING

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James CUMMING

15/ The Carloway Woman, c.1950 mixed media, 37 x 38 cm signed lower left; titled on label verso PROVENANCE Private collection, Edinburgh Carloway is a hamlet on the west coast of Lewis where a black house now is maintained as a museum but perhaps, when Cumming was living on the island, it might have been the home of the subject of our watercolour.

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James CUMMING

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Jack Firth. Photograph courtesy of family

JACK FIRTH RSW (1917-2010) Jack Firth, whose book Scottish Watercolour Painting (1979) remains arguably the best work on the subject, was an accomplished painter who specialised in watercolour.

Here he uses strong, primary colour, a classic Edinburgh School motif (the view from a window) and deft drawing with the brush to make a brilliant and charming image, worthy of his great hero William Gillies. He studied under Gillies during his time at Edinburgh College of Art from 1935 to 1939, returning to teach drawing from 1955 to 1970.

Jack FIRTH

16/ Sanded Window with a Cup, c.1974 watercolour, 31.5 x 27.5 cm signed lower left; titled on label verso and inscribed “To Viola with best wishes J 1974� verso EXHIBITED Gallery Paton, 1974 PROVENANCE Private collection, Peeblesshire 38

Jack FIRTH

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Edward Gage at Edinburgh College of Art, c.1950

EDWARD GAGE (1925-2000) Teddy Gage was a polymath artist, writer and teacher, for many years the art master at Fettes College and subsequently the influential, erudite critic for The Scotsman newspaper. His imagery is drawn from the natural world but like David McClure and Johnny Maxwell is enriched with personal, enigmatic references. This work along with cat. 6 and 10 were produced at Harley Brothers Printmakers in Edinburgh. Many leading artists of the older and younger generations of the Edinburgh School produced works at the studio, as well as other leading figures Earl Haig, John Piper, Terry Frost, Michael Ayrton and Aleksander Zyw.

Edward GAGE

17/ Queen of Birds, 1958 lithograph, 60 x 45 cm edition 9 of 38 signed lower right PROVENANCE David McClure and thence by descent 40

Edward GAGE

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SIR WILLIAM GILLIES CBE, RSA, RA, PPRSW (1898-1973) It is the personality and presence of Bill Gillies, over a fifty year period, which gives meaning to the idea of the Edinburgh School. His teaching and professional example at the College of Art, his encouragement of women artists as equals to their male peers, his formative influence upon several generations of younger painters: Philipson, Henderson Blyth, McClure and then Houston and Blackadder and the fact that he gave equal weight to the importance of both oil and watercolour in his practice, all dictate that without Gillies there would be no Edinburgh School. Although interrupted by war service he studied at the College from 1916 to 1923. He served on the staff from 1925 to his retirement in 1966. He took the post of Head of Drawing and Painting in 1946 and served as Principal from 1960.

“I have been trying to pin down my thoughts on the great man. I do not find it easy. In a way he remains an enigma. I was a student for five years while Gillies was Head of Paintings and yet I had only three or four lessons from him in all that time. The first was when MacTaggart called for Bill Gillies to come and see a painting I had done. He admired it generously and commended it for its tonal values. I had on the easel a much more freely painted thing with apples and a jug. He looked at it and said ‘Apples are not tennis balls. They have planes.’ He then proceeded to push the wet paint around with his horny thumb, making the apples truly three-dimensional, and expressed in ‘planes’. On another occasion I was propounding a theory I had come across about ‘Organic Colour Values’… I asked him if he did not agree with this. His response was typically anti-intellectual. ‘No. Nature always gets the colour wrong, so you have to try to improve it.’” – David McClure, quoted in W.G. Gillies by W Gordon Smith, Atelier Books, 1991

Left: William Gillies on top of Green Lowther, Wanlockhead, photograph taken by Emma Gillies, c.1920s. Royal Scottish Academy of Art & Architecture (William Gillies Bequest) 43

Sir WIlliam GILLIES

18/ West Gruinard Bay, c.1938 watercolour & ink, 55 x 75 cm signed lower right PROVENANCE Private collection, Angus 44

Sir WIlliam GILLIES

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Sir WIlliam GILLIES

19/ St Valery-en-Caux, 1938 watercolour, 47 x 62 cm signed lower right; inscribed and titled on label verso EXHIBITED 20th Century Scottish Paintings and Drawings, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1976 PROVENANCE Private collection, Edinburgh; The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh Aside from war service, Gillies made only one trip abroad, to Normandy in 1938.

His bright, breezy view demonstrates the free technique he deployed at this time, still inspired by the Edvard Munch works he saw at the Scottish Society of Artists in 1931.

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Sir WIlliam GILLIES

Sir WIlliam GILLIES

20/ The Beach, Kippford, on the Solway, 1949 ink drawing, 43.5 x 57 cm signed lower right PROVENANCE Dr. Robert A. Lillie Collection, cat. 593; British Linen Bank, Edinburgh Gillies made several pen studies of sailing boats at Kippford on the Solway and at least one oil painting. As ever his spare, informative drawing renders a full understanding of the subject.

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Sir WIlliam GILLIES

21/ Still Life, Blue and Red, 1957 oil on canvas, 91.5 x 99 cm signed lower right EXHIBITED The John Moores Exhibition, Liverpool, cat. 142; Six Scottish Painters, Nottingham University, 1959, cat. 15; 14 Scottish Painters Exhibition, Commonwealth Institute, London, 1963/4, cat. 35; William Gillies Retrospective, Scottish Art Council, 1970, cat. 73; William Gillies Centenary Exhibition, Royal Scottish Academy, 1 August – 11 October 1998, cat. 25 PROVENANCE Collection of Dr. Henry Walton Still life was Gillies’ second subject, alongside landscape. While landscape remained a largely instinctive response to the particular, his studio still life painting has a rich, sonorous, considered quality he shares with Braque (the French master exhibited at the RSA Edinburgh Festival exhibition of 1956). His cottage in Temple was filled with collected objects and many, particularly the pots of his sister Emma are familiar, repeatedly included in his compositions over the decades. This magnificent still life is painted with a rich impasto, giving the surface of the painting a strong textural quality. The table top, surrounded by shifting squares and rectangles frames the still life arrangement in an ambiguous space. Some of the still life objects are cleverly ‘transforming’ into abstract shapes. The intellectual play between squared and curved forms is a familiar element in Gillies’ later still lifes.

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Sir WIlliam GILLIES

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Sir WIlliam GILLIES

22/ Still Life with Jug and Apples oil on canvas, 47 x 62 cm PROVENANCE David McClure and thence by descent This unsigned work by Gillies comes from the Estate of David McClure who studied under him at Edinburgh College of Art. Like many of his generation, McClure was a great admirer of the older artist’s work and his relentless work ethic.

Gillies’ younger sister Emma was a highly talented potter whose work often featured in the artist’s still life paintings. The McClure family remember growing up with a large earthenware apple “piggybank” painted in exactly the colours as the upper apple depicted here.

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Sir WIlliam GILLIES

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Sir WIlliam GILLIES

23/ On Eddleston Water, 1960 oil on canvas, 47 x 61 cm signed lower left EXHIBITED Christmas Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1971, cat. 14 PROVENANCE Private collection, Edinburgh 52

Sir WIlliam GILLIES

Sir WIlliam GILLIES

24/ The Lay By oil on canvas, 43.5 x 63.5 cm signed lower right; titled on label verso A lay by was a frequent, useful spot from which Gillies could park up and make a drawing or watercolour. His ‘love affair with the internal combustion engine’ as W Gordon Smith put it, led to frequent changes of motorised transport including motorbikes and grand tourers. Here his picture is across the valley to a dark hillside and a darker sky promising rain.

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Sir WIlliam GILLIES

25/ Blyth Bridge, 1956 watercolour, 26 x 23 cm signed and dated lower right 54

Sir WIlliam GILLIES

Sir WIlliam GILLIES

26/ Near Burnhouse, 1958 watercolour, 25 x 35 cm signed and dated lower left EXHIBITED Modern Masters VIII, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2018, cat. 14 PROVENANCE The Scottish Gallery; Private collection, Edinburgh 55

Sir WIlliam GILLIES

27/ Near Clovenfords, c.1960 watercolour, 24 x 25 cm signed lower right 56

Sir WIlliam GILLIES

Sir WIlliam GILLIES

28/ Tweed at Stobo pencil drawing, 26 x 35 cm signed lower right PROVENANCE Private collection, Newcastle 57

David Michie, Anne Redpath and Katie Horsman on Skye, 1946. Photograph courtesy of the Michie family.

KATIE HORSMAN MBE (1911-1998) Katie Horsman was born in North London in 1911 and studied at the Royal College of Art, graduating in 1936. She joined the staff of Edinburgh College of Art in 1943 where she lectured in Design and Ceramics until 1976. She became a close friend to many of the artists of the Edinburgh School, in particular Redpath, Michie, McClure, Houston and Blackadder.

Although Katie Horsman was known as a potter who made a significant contribution to Edinburgh College of Art’s craft department, Horsman’s early training covered many areas of design and fine art and indeed she continued to paint, draw and at times exhibit paintings throughout her career. She was a highly accomplished illustrator, a fine etcher, an incisive and often very amusing draughtswoman and a watercolour painter of great sensitivity. A trip to Skye in 1946 with her close friend Anne Redpath (accompanied by Anne’s son David Michie and his future wife Eileen) saw the beginning of a significant group of gouaches of the island which in their structure, colouring, technique and charm owe as much to her response to a newly discovered landscape as to the presence of the great artist. Her close relationship with the Edinburgh School of painters of the 50s and 60s and her regard for their work was a huge influence on her own.

Katie HORSMAN

30/ Skye Church, c.1946 Katie HORSMAN

29/ Fife Harbour Scene, c.1940s pen and watercolour, 38.5 x 47 cm 58

watercolour and gouache, 38 x 58 cm PROVENANCE David Michie and thence by descent

Katie HORSMAN

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JOHN HOUSTON OBE, RSA, RSW (1930-2008) John Houston, who gained his diploma in 1952 and completed his travelling scholarship with David Michie in 1954, is regarded alongside his wife Elizabeth Blackadder, as the key figure in the continuation of the Edinburgh School. His senior position at the College (where he taught from 1955-1989) and profile in art education, for which he received an OBE in 1990, did not prevent him from travelling extensively, including to Japan, and having a prodigious exhibiting career, showing twelve times with The Scottish Gallery over fifty years.

Houston pushed his response to the natural phenomena of sunset and rise, which had always inspired him, to a dramatic, expressionist resolution in works like Lake at Sunset. His admiration for the northern European romanticism of Emil Nolde and the expressionism of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner is given full rein, but in a language of confidence that is his own achievement. For his final exhibition in 2007, Guy Peploe wrote the foreword: “Houston’s paintings have as many moods as landscape under an ever-changing sky; from the ecstatic to the sombre, from vivid sunset to the gloom of the night sky over the sea. His emotional response to his subject is tempered by his painter’s experience; sometimes a thin watercolour wash enlivened with flecks of pastel will be perfectly sufficient, in the best oriental tradition, to capture soft summer light over still water.

At other times he deploys an impasto as thick as Frank Auerbach to represent the weight of a cornfield after heavy rain. All responses are true to his experience, to the place and to the day, made permanent in oil, watercolour and pastel.”

Left: John Houston and Elizabeth Blackadder, 1954 61

John HOUSTON

31/ Tobermory, 1959 charcoal, 43 x 70 cm signed lower left; titled on label verso PROVENANCE Fine Art Society, Edinburgh 1955 was the year Houston joined the staff at Edinburgh college of Art where he would stay until his retirement in 1989. Tobermory shares similarities in style and technique from his work completed in the Italian hill towns of Orvieto and Anticoli during his travelling scholarship 1954. Although primarily an east coast painter, Houston did often venture to the west coast of Scotland, including two successful painting trips to Harris in the 1970s.

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John HOUSTON

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John HOUSTON

32/ Harvest Landscape, c.1961 oil on canvas, 112 x 102 cm signed lower right 64

John HOUSTON

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John HOUSTON

33/ Lake at Sunset, 1989-90 oil on canvas, 100 x 100 cm signed lower right EXHIBITED John Houston, Festival Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, August 1990, cat. 71; Modern Masters II, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2014, cat. 17 In 1989 John Houston retired from the Edinburgh College of Art to focus on painting full time and this painting was exhibited and sold at his famous ‘sell out’ show of 1990.

He exhibited five works at the exhibition depicting Lake Lucerne in the Swiss Alps.

He admired Emil Nolde (1867-1956) and in particular Max Beckman (1884-1950), and his own artistic personality was certainly Expressionist. “[Mood] is one of the things I will take away in memory from a subject – the light and the mood. The mood will be caught up with light, certain things to do with the light and the time of day, the weather and so on. And that is something I would probably retain in the studio, maybe more than being truthful to the sketch as far as the physical nature of things might be… I might make certain features or colours more dominant for the mood or the light of the composition.” – ‘John Houston in conversation with Philip Long’, John Houston, National Galleries of Scotland, 2005 66

John HOUSTON

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John HOUSTON

34/ Summer, Gullane, 1994 watercolour, 20 x 28 cm signed lower right, titled on verso PROVENANCE Ewan Mundy Fine Art, Glasgow; Private collection, Newcastle 68

John HOUSTON

John HOUSTON

35/ Towards the Bass Rock, c.2005 oil on canvas, 101.5 x 101.5 cm signed lower right PROVENANCE The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh; Private collection, Liverpool 69

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SIR WILLIAM MACTAGGART PPRSA, RA, RSW (1903-1981) Too young for war service MacTaggart, grandson of the great landscape painter, took his Diploma at the same time as Gillies and Geissler and followed the same route to Paris. Back in Edinburgh he was a founder member of the 1922 Group (of younger painters), in 1927 he joined the Society of Eight whose members included Cadell and Peploe and began a consistently successful exhibition career starting at The Scottish Gallery in 1929. A sumptuous painter in oils, he was a prolific draughtsman and preferred pastel to watercolour; instinctively an expressionist and romantic painter his outlook shifted dramatically after the Munch exhibition at the SSA in 1931 (eventually marrying the Norwegian curator Fanny Aavatsmark!) and again after studying Roualt in Paris in the early sixties.

Left: William MacTaggart in his studio, c.1963 71

Sir WIlliam MACTAGGART

36/ The Waning Moon, c.1958 oil on board, 28 x 22.5 cm signed lower right EXHIBITED Festival Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1959, cat. 33 MacTaggart lived for many years at Drummond Place in the Edinburgh New Town, and made many pictures looking from his windows over the gardens to the far side of the Square. In one painting, now destroyed by fire, he depicted a crocodile of nuns walking through the gardens (his neighbours were a nunnery at number four). The motif formed a framing device and the challenge of interior/exterior handling of light and depth of field.

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Sir WIlliam MACTAGGART

Sir WIlliam MACTAGGART

37/ The Studio Window, c.1966 mixed media on blue paper, 63 x 47 cm signed lower left EXHIBITED Festival Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1966, ex. cat.

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DAVID MCCLURE RSA, RSW (1926-1998) David McClure was born in Glasgow and attended Edinburgh College of Art, but is primarily associated with Dundee. He was ten years junior to Alberto Morrocco, but a close friend and colleague; together, their emphasis on belle peinture, strong colour and their instinctive ability as picture-makers lent a strong character to their contributions to college life and the many group and annual exhibitions in which they participated together. McClure’s most direct Scottish influences however were Gillies, Redpath and the Edinburgh School; he painted with Anne Redpath and Hamish Reid on more than one occasion and his work on paper owes much to Gillies, just as the whimsy and poetry of his subject pictures owes something to John Maxwell. David McClure will be the subject of a solo exhibition at The Gallery in April 2019.

Left: David McClure at his studio in Casteldaccia, Sicily, 1957 Photograph courtesy of the McClure family 75

David MCCLURE

38/ Creels at Crail, 1952 Conté, 52.5 x 34.5 cm PROVENANCE The Artist’s estate This superb drawing follows the artist’s graduation from Edinburgh College of Art in 1951 when he was then awarded a Post-Graduate year. In the summer of 1952, he went on a painting “holiday” to Fife with his wife Joyce, his good friends Hamish Reid, David Michie and the latter’s mother Anne Redpath. They stayed in Cupar at the house of Willie and Elizabeth Lindsay, friends of Anne, and the four artists painted and drew in the various fishing villages along the East Neuk coast. In later years David was to express a hint of regret as many of the villages were conserved and renovated, the buildings losing their rich texture and colour of weathered harling and paintwork. The winter of 1952/3 saw McClure and Reid together again on their travelling scholarships to France, Spain and Italy.

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David MCCLURE

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David MCCLURE

39/ Paola, Owl and Doll, 1962/1963 oil on canvas, 63 x 76 cm signed and dated lower left; signed and dated verso EXHIBITED Paintings by David McClure, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1962, cat. 41; The Art of Picture Making, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2014, cat. 29 PROVENANCE Private collection, Dunfermline The work is part of a significant early series from the beginning of 1960s that feature the artist’s young daughter Paola that could come under the general title of Paola’s Dreams of Flying. In these, flowers and obvious night symbols of an owl or the moon feature along with the dungareed figure of Paola and in this case a large blue-faced doll.

The series owes something to the joyful floating figures in the work of Chagall while Redon is perhaps not far away, much of this undoubtedly channelled through his college tutor John Maxwell, on whom the artist was later to write a fine monograph (Edinburgh University Press, 1976).

(Curiously the work is signed and dated twice for both 1962 and 1963. It was certainly included in his Scottish Gallery show in 1962 and remained unsold but was perhaps reworked and shown elsewhere the following year.)

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David MCCLURE

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David MCCLURE

40/ Dried Flowers, 1961 oil on board, 43 x 22 cm signed lower left PROVENANCE The Artist’s estate 80

David MCCLURE

David MCCLURE

41/ Blue Tablecloth with Girl at Window, c.1970 oil on board, 27 x 25 cm EXHIBITED Christmas Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1970, cat. 38 PROVENANCE Private collection, Fife McClure painted many variations on this motif of a draped nude standing, often arms akimbo, against the light coming through the living room window of the family home in Strawberry Bank, Dundee. Some of these show the figure as if regarding herself in the large Venetian mirror that hung in the room with the window reflected behind her; an interesting psychological ploy since the viewer is thus invited to assume the role of the female figure.

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David MCCLURE

42/ Flowers in a Chalice with Butterfly oil on canvas board, 49 x 38 cm signed lower right PROVENANCE The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2003; Private collection, Liverpool 82

David MCCLURE

David MCCLURE

43/ Flowers on a Pink Ground oil on board, 35 x 29 cm signed lower left; signed and inscribed verso EXHIBITED Modern Masters VII, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2017, cat. 29 PROVENANCE Private collection, Peebles 83

David MCCLURE

44/ Fruit and Garlic, 1989 oil on canvas, 60 x 82 cm signed lower right PROVENANCE The Artist’s estate The “tipped-table” still life is typical of the work of many artists of the Edinburgh School, the unnatural perspective allowing the artist a larger field on which to arrange the shapes, colours and textures of his composition. Perhaps it was this device that suggested another of McClure’s genres, The Picture on a Easel. He would often play visual games with the viewer, blurring the boundaries between the two, as when one might notice a leaf or flower drifting beyond what was thought to be the edge of a canvas but then realise is the end of a table. This is perhaps a reverse piece of mischief – undoubtedly a table but with hints of a movable easel shelf at its front edge.

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David MCCLURE

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DAVID MICHIE OBE, RSA, FRSA (1928-2015) Born in San Raphael, France and the son of painter Anne Redpath, David Michie graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 1953 following a travelling scholarship to Italy with fellow student John Houston. He lectured at Gray’s in Aberdeen and from 1961–1982 at ECA from where he retired in 1990 as Head of School of Drawing and Painting. He died in Edinburgh in 2015, and The Scottish Gallery held his Memorial Exhibition in March 2017. Public collections include HM The Queen, National Galleries of Scotland, Glasgow Museums and Aberdeen Art Galleries and Museums.

“If I hadn’t been a painter, I’ve not the slightest idea what I would have done, but I’m pleased I spent my life painting. For better or for worse, I’ve inflicted my paintings on the world but I paint because I’ve had such endless entertainment from what I’ve found around me…” – David Michie speaking to filmmaker Sana Bilgrami, 24th June 2015

Left: David Michie taken by Eric Thorburn for a RGI exhibition in Autumn 1995 87

David MICHIE

45/ Borders Landscape, Winter, 1963 oil on canvas, 62 x 91.4 cm signed and dated lower right EXHIBITED Memorial Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2017, ex. cat.

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David MICHIE

David MICHIE

46/ Telegraph Pole, 1964 oil on canvas, 35 x 50.5 cm signed lower right EXHIBITED David Michie, Paintings from the Artist’s Studio, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, November 2008, cat. 37; Memorial Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2017, cat. 11 89

David MICHIE

47/ Lily pads, Lupins, c.1990 oil on canvas, 100 x 100 cm signed lower left EXHIBITED Memorial Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2017, ex. cat.

PROVENANCE Private collection, East Lothian David was a keen gardener of interesting plants and flowers as well as vegetables and herbs for the kitchen. Some of his most impressive works of later years are his large garden paintings, inspired in part by the garden of John Houston and Elizabeth Blackadder, and from exotic gardens seen on his travels abroad. These works are ambitious, joyful, tapestry or carpet-like compositions, weaving a complex image from the distilled essence of various plants and their formal or informal arrangements.

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David MICHIE

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Leon Morrocco. Photograph by Dan Weill, courtesy of John Martin Gallery

LEON MORROCCO RSA, RGI (b.1942) Leon Morrocco, the eldest son of painter Alberto Morrocco, was born in Edinburgh and studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and The Slade before Edinburgh College of Art. He was a lecturer in drawing and painting at Edinburgh College of Art from 1965-1968, and then took up a similar post at Glasgow School of Art from 19691979 before moving to Australia to take up the post of Head of Fine Art at the Chisholm Institute in Melbourne. He has been painting full time since 1984.

Leon MORROCCO

48/ Italian Hill Town, 1963 lithograph with mixed media, 52 x 40 cm signed and dated lower left PROVENANCE David Michie and thence by descent 92

Leon MORROCCO

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DENIS PEPLOE RSA (1914-1993) Having taken his diploma at Edinburgh College of Art and then spent several years on post-dip travel to France, Italy, Yugoslavia and in particular Spain, Peploe had six years of war service with little chance to pick up a paint brush. He would go on to teach at Edinburgh, working on still life and figure paintings from a studio at home and resuming a successful exhibiting career at The Scottish Gallery in 1985. Immediately after the War, when he had ended up in the Special Operations Executive in North Africa and then Italy, Denis Peploe threw himself into work and in particular the mountain landscape of the West Highlands. Often based in Plockton, where his friends Torquil and Isobel Nicolson had moved to the Old Manse, he would drive, walk and sail to remote places and capture the rugged terrain, experience and record the volatile weather and find an equivalent in his impasto and palette for the ancient rocks of Torridon and Assynt.

His friends from college days John Guthrie and his wife Vivienne had moved to Northern Cyprus in the mid-fifties and Peploe made several visits. The still life on page 75 is Cypriot and painted with a rich impasto, vigorously handled. This enjoyment of the physical property of the paint allies him with Redpath, Gillies and MacTaggart as well as his father Samuel John Peploe.

Left: Denis Peploe c.1936. Photograph courtesy of the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust 95

Denis PEPLOE

49/ Spanish Hill Village, c.1955 oil on canvas, 63.5 x 76 cm signed lower right EXHIBITED Paintings from the Artist’s Studio, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1984, cat. 30; Denis Peploe, Centary Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2014, cat. 37 The rudimentary, primitive buildings he found in the villages of Southern Spain on the visit he made to Peniscola in 1955 gave subjects for many paintings. He loved the harsh, mineral landscape, hard outlines and soft colouration of the village houses. This was still the Spain of George Borrow’s Bible in Spain, which he had read before his first visits in the mid-thirties, little changed since the Middle-Ages.

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Denis PEPLOE

Denis PEPLOE

50/ Still Life with Three Jugs, 1951 oil on canvas, 51 x 61 cm signed lower right 97

SIR ROBIN PHILIPSON PPRSA, RA, HRA, RSW (1916-1991) Sir Robin Philipson was a charismatic figure in the Scottish art world as Head of the School of Drawing and Painting and then Principal of Edinburgh College of Art and President of the RSA for a decade from 1973. He held nine one-person shows with The Scottish Gallery from 1954 to 1983. His work is thematically rich, ambitiously scaled (like Francis Bacon he embraced the polyptych) but equally able to hit the quiet notes on an intimate scale. His dedication to Scotland during decades when a move to London was a prerequisite to national and international recognition (he was already in his forties when he tentatively approached Lillian Browse at Roland, Browse & Delbanco to see if he might have a show in London) makes him ripe for rediscovery.

“However we see his art, its free handling, its meaningful decorative values and its sometimes dark subjects, it remains a serious investigation of life. For him the production of art was essential but brave. He once spoke of the dread of starting a studio day, of the waiting easel – but then good art is never an easy business.”

– Dr Elizabeth Cumming, in her introduction to his centenary exhibition with The Scottish Gallery, March 2016.

Robin Philipson by Dr Elizabeth Cumming, Sansom and Co, 2018.

Available to purchase in The Gallery

Left: Sir Robin Philipson in his Edinburgh College of Art studio, 1970 99

Sir Robin PHILIPSON

51/ Princes Street, Looking East, c.1955 oil on canvas, 77 x 102 cm signed lower right; titled on label verso EXHIBITED A Celebration of Edinburgh, Fine Art Society, Edinburgh, 1988 Philipson acknowledges a debt to Oskar Kokoschka in his painting of the fifties, particularly in terms of palette and technique. The subject of Edinburgh, depicted as a grand, renaissance city, the ‘Athens of the North’, has challenged painters for two hundred years and Philipson marshals all his painterly skills to give the view over Princes Street the expressionist treatment, while at the same time celebrating the primacy of its architectural structure. The Hunterian Art Gallery collection in Glasgow holds another important example from this period: View from my Studio, 1954.

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Sir Robin PHILIPSON

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Sir Robin PHILIPSON

52/ Nude and Soldier, Study, 1965 oil on board, 40 x 29 cm EXHIBITED Christmas Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1965 102

Sir Robin PHILIPSON

Sir Robin PHILIPSON

53/ Talk in the Afternoon, 1970 watercolour, 33 x 34 cm EXHIBITED Robin Philipson 100, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2017, cat. 15 PROVENANCE Cyril Gerber Fine Art, Glasgow; Private collection, Kirkcudbrightshire 103

Sir Robin PHILIPSON

54/ Interior III, c.1971 oil on canvas, 61 x 51 cm signed on verso EXHIBITED Roland, Browse & Delbanco, London, June 1971 PROVENANCE Mrs Scott-Hay, Edinburgh 104

Sir Robin PHILIPSON

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Sir Robin PHILIPSON

55/ Women Observed, 1977 watercolour, 33 x 35 cm signed and titled on verso 106

Sir Robin PHILIPSON

Sir Robin PHILIPSON

56/ Women Observed, 1980 oil on canvas, 22.5 x 14.5 cm signed verso EXHIBITED The Macaulay Gallery, East Lothian, 1980 107

Sir Robin PHILIPSON

57/ Cockfight, c.1980 oil and vinyl toluene on canvas, 122 x 122 cm signed verso EXHIBITED Sir Robin Philipson, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, May 2012 The motif of the easel allowed Philipson to include a picture within a picture and to locate the studio as the real setting for the painting. Towards the end of his life this emphasis on his real location seems like a meditation on the life of a painter and in this work we can see a retrospective of subjects; cockfight, horsemen and waiting women.

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Sir Robin PHILIPSON

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Sir Robin PHILIPSON

58/ Interior with Figures, 1983 pastel, 58 x 77 cm signed verso PROVENANCE Private collection, Edinburgh 110

Sir Robin PHILIPSON

Sir Robin PHILIPSON

59/ Red Circus Horses, 1986 pastel, 23 x 38 cm titled ‘Study’ on label verso PROVENANCE Private collection, London 111

Sir Robin PHILIPSON

60/ Fruit, 1984 oil on canvas, 91 x 76.5 cm signed verso EXHIBITED Modern Masters II, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2014, cat. 27; Robin Philipson 100, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2017, cat. 27 PROVENANCE Private collection, Kirkcudbrightshire 112

Sir Robin PHILIPSON

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Sir Robin PHILIPSON

61/ Poppies, 1988 oil on board, 56 x 56 cm signed and dated on verso The late flower paintings of Robin Philipson are amongst the most popular and successful of his long, distinguished career. The poppies and tulips are painted with a rich impasto, in pure oil paint, depicting delicate and brilliant blooms, overscale and overwhelmingly present. He painted the subject through the scales, from heroic to domestic, though not in miniature. They convey delicacy and decadence, are memento mori while affirming life and, not surprisingly command the highest prices paid for Philipson paintings.

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Sir Robin PHILIPSON

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Pip Pope at Stoer, 1953

PERPETUA POPE (1916-2013) Perpetua Pope was born in Solihull but grew up in rural Aberdeenshire where her father was a business man and passionate art buyer. Her time at Edinburgh College of Art was interrupted by the War, during which she served with the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.

She lectured at Moray House before she retired in 1973. Her time at the College of Art and the exciting milieu in the capital in the preceding years were formative for her own practice which was split between oil and watercolour. She first exhibited with The Scottish Gallery in 1956 and The Gallery held seven more exhibitions during her lifetime.

Perpetua POPE

62/ Flowers in the Window oil on canvas board, 29 x 24 cm signed lower left 116

Perpetua POPE

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ANNE REDPATH OBE, RSA, ARA, RWA (1896-1965) Anne Redpath was the pivotal figure in the Edinburgh School. She attended the Edinburgh College of Art, receiving her diploma in 1917. After a lengthy spell in the South of France, Redpath returned to Hawick in the mid 1930s. Her brilliant manipulation of paint, left in delicious peaks or eked across a rough surface with a palette knife, is characteristic of her varied responses to different subjects at different times. In the last years of her output she often favoured a limited palette – perhaps a few brilliant, jewel-like notes enlivening a dark or white composition. Redpath was an inspirational person and formed many enduring friendships. Her flat in London Street became an artistic salon, celebrated by Robin Philipson’s famous, affectionate group portrait in The Scottish National Portrait Gallery. She had considerable commercial success in her lifetime, enjoying a fruitful, consistent relationship with The Scottish Gallery and latterly with Reid & Lefevre in London. Since her passing, her reputation has been further enhanced with retrospective and centenary exhibitions, so that now she is established as one of the great figures in twentieth-century Scottish painting.

Left: Anne Redpath with fellow students at Edinburgh College of Art, c.1915.

Courtesy of the Artist’s estate 119

Anne REDPATH

63/ Street in Menton, c.1949 gouache, 37 x 45.5 cm signed lower right EXHIBITED The Edinburgh School – Works on Paper, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, April 2010, illus. p.15; The Michie Family, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, June 2012, illus. p.22; Modern British Heroines – Edinburgh Festival Exhibitions, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, August 2014, illus. p.49, cat. 13; Anne Redpath, Fifty, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2015, cat. 8 120

Anne REDPATH

Anne REDPATH

64/ Canaries, c.1960 oil on board, 36 x 45 cm signed lower right EXHIBITED Anne Redpath, Fifty, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2015, cat. 24 PROVENANCE The Artist’s Family 121

Anne REDPATH

65/ Anemones, c.1962 oil on panel, 38 x 51 cm signed lower left EXHIBITED Modern Masters I, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, July 2013, illus. p. 55; Anne Redpath, Fifty, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2015, cat. 27 PROVENANCE Dr. Robert Lillie Collection, cat. 165; Private collection, Toronto 122

Anne REDPATH

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Anne REDPATH

66/ Still Life with White Jug, c.1963 oil on board, 32 x 25 cm PROVENANCE Fine Art Society, Edinburgh; Private collection, Edinburgh 124

Anne REDPATH

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Above: Adam Bruce Thomson, Self Portrait, 1907

ADAM BRUCE THOMSON OBE, RSA, PPRSW (1885-1976) Bruce Thomson – or ‘Adam B’, as he was often called – was a painter of great integrity whose long, productive life tells the story of Scottish painting for the first three quarters the twentieth century. Thomson was born in 1885, attending first the Trustees Academy and then the newly established Edinburgh College of Art where he received diplomas in both Drawing and Painting, and Architecture before scholarships took him abroad to Spain and then Paris. He was an accomplished etcher and lithographer and he also sought expertise in the difficult media of pastel and watercolour. By the 1920s, his technique was closest to SJ Peploe, Cadell and other contemporaries favouring the technique of painting on a gesso ground with an oil-reduced vehicle so the subjects tended to be treated in flat areas of colour.

Thomson served in the Great War before returning to the College where he taught etching, composition and still life to the painting school and colour theory to the architecture students. His association with Edinburgh College of Art continued until his death as, although he retired from teaching in 1950, he continued as an examiner and a Trustee. His links with both the RSA, where he was Treasurer for seven years and the RSW, where he served as President for a further seven years from 1957 were very important to him. He was awarded an OBE in 1963.

Adam Bruce THOMSON

67/ Flowers in a Blue Vase, c.1965 watercolour on paper, 66 x 53 cm signed lower right EXHIBITED Untroubled Certainty, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2017, cat.35 126

Adam Bruce THOMSON

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Adam Bruce THOMSON

68/ Stormy Day, St Abbs Harbour, c.1952 watercolour, 27.5 x 35.5 cm EXHIBITED Untroubled Certainty, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2017, cat. 25 128

Adam Bruce THOMSON

Adam Bruce THOMSON

69/ Stornoway Harbour, c.1954 tempera on board, 51 x 63.5 cm EXHIBITED Untroubled Certainty, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2017, cat. 26 129

William Wilson in his stained glass workshop, c.1946

WILLIAM WILSON OBE, RSA, RSW (1905-1972) Willie Wilson was apprenticed to the stained glass designer James Ballantine in Edinburgh before attending the College of Art. By the early thirties his brilliant etchings had made his reputation but it was further study in Germany in 1934 that encouraged him to open his own glass studio. His glass was brilliantly coloured and expressionist but his highly admired work on paper, while still strongly structured, in pen & ink, watercolour and gouache tends to be cool in colour. He tragically lost his sight in 1961 as a result of his diabetes but remarkably was able to continue to design glass with the help of assistants.

WIlliam WILSON

WIlliam WILSON

70/ A Street in Paris, c.1957

71/ Church Gate, Colinton, 1933

watercolour and ink, 73 x 89 cm signed lower right

etching, 18.5 x 23 cm (Trial State) signed lower right

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WIlliam WILSON

131

TH E WI DER C I RC LE

WILHELMINA BARNS-GRAHAM CBE, HRSA, HRSW (1912-2004) Much against her father’s wishes Wilhelmina BarnsGraham enrolled at Edinburgh College of Art in October 1931. At that time the General Preliminary Course (Foundation Year) of the Diploma Course consisted of Drawing and Painting (Elementary Drawing, Pass); Sculpture (Foliage, Pass; Ornament, Fail); Architecture (Geometry, Pass; Perspective, Fail); and Applied Art (Plant Form, Pass; Lettering, Pass; Formal Writing, Pass).

In the second Academic Session (1932-33) there were the same Sections which on the whole she passed; surprisingly, given her later reputation as a dynamic colourist, she failed Theory of Colour! She had to forego the 1933/34 academic year due to illness but returned to college in the autumn of 1934, winning the Annual Life Painting Prize in 1935. Barns-Graham graduated with her Diploma in 1937. Her friends at the college included Margaret (Peggy) Mellis, with whom she was to reconnect in St Ives, Denis Peploe, William Gear and Charles Pulsford.

Barns-Graham’s time at ECA gave her a strong, sound foundation to her career. Under the inspirational direction of Hubert Lindsay Wellington, she received a broad knowledge of art movements not just within the UK but on the continent to which many Scottish artists travelled. He gave her much support when she most needed it and it was his crucial advice that saw her move to St Ives in 1940. The Staff – from Donald Moodie she learned the process of distillation in drawing, in capturing the complex character of her subject in a few lines, of recognising the essence of form. Her principal painting tutors were David Foggie and David Alison though SJ Peploe left a lasting impression on her. The tutors who lived most vividly in her memory were William Gillies and his close friend John (Johnny) Maxwell. Willie certainly shared Gillies’ delight in the visible world, his acute powers of observation, and confidence to select and simplify.

The College supported Willie financially as well as with her education. In 1932 she was awarded her first two-year Maintenance Scholarship, a second coming in 1935. She received the Andrew Grant Bequest Vacation

Scholarship on several occasions which allowed her to travel to London (1935 and 1936) and to study at the International Exhibition, Paris (1937). She received further awards in 1940 even after leaving for Cornwall.

It was only very many years later that she found out that the Maintenance Awards were the secret support from her aunt Mary Neish from whom, in 1960, Willie inherited her Scottish home, Balmungo House, near St Andrews.

Drawing was a highly important way for Willie to engage with the world around her. She considered it vital to make studies “…to develop one’s awareness to inner perception, collecting shapes that become my shapes.”

It was “a discipline of the mind” that might nourish and inform the visual imagination. One can see from this collection that she carried drawing materials not only around Cornwall (St Ives, Cape Cornwall, Portreath) but on her annual trips to Italy (Chiusure, Fiesoli) and Spain (Formentera) between 1953 and 1958. In these drawings one sees the economy of line which would have been appreciated by her tutors.

The featured Cornwall drawings were done mainly in the 1940s, within the first decade of her time in St Ives, and reflect her exploration of the town and its environs in a relatively straight forward manner. Although she never lost this ability to capture a scene, the noted groups of drawings post 1950 are more investigative of the structure of landscape. Following her Damascene moment on the Grindelwald Glacier, Switzerland, in 1949 which brought her into direct contact with a giant of nature that is a glacier, her drawings attempt to combine a sense of not only what is seen on the surface but what also lies beneath a landscape, attending to the forces that give it its shape and form. In Tuscany she found also another landscape, one shaped by Man rather than the elements, in which marble quarries and clay workings are carved into the terrain.

Geoffrey Bertram

Left: Wilhelmina Barns-Graham and Margaret Mellis, c.1936 Photographs courtesy of the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust 135

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham in her Alva Street Studio, Edinburgh, 1937 Photographs courtesy of the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust 136

Wilhelmina BARNS-GRAHAM

Clockwise from left: Wilhelmina Barns-Graham and Denis Peploe, Princes Street, Edinburgh, 1936-37 (photograph from Walking Pictures, Edinburgh); Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Graduation; Wilhelmina Barns-Graham sketching, Edinburgh Photographs courtesy of the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust

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Wilhelmina BARNS-GRAHAM

72/ St Ives Harbour, 1940 pen & ink, 26.5 x 41.7 cm signed and dated lower right PROVENANCE Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust Inventory No. BGT1363 138

Wilhelmina BARNS-GRAHAM

Wilhelmina BARNS-GRAHAM

73/ St Ives, 1942 pen and ink, 24 x 28.5 cm signed and dated lower left PROVENANCE Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust Inventory No. BGT1358 139

Wilhelmina BARNS-GRAHAM

74/ Cottages, Stone, 1948 pen, ink and watercolour, 35.2 x 45 cm signed and dated lower left PROVENANCE Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust Inventory No. BGT6019 140

Wilhelmina BARNS-GRAHAM

Wilhelmina BARNS-GRAHAM

75/ Railings, St Ives, c.1948 pencil, 38.2 x 55.9 cm PROVENANCE Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust Inventory No. BGT1554 141

Wilhelmina BARNS-GRAHAM

76/ Portreath, 1950s pencil and wash, 42.5 x 54.6 cm PROVENANCE Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust Inventory No. BGT6331 142

Wilhelmina BARNS-GRAHAM

Wilhelmina BARNS-GRAHAM

77/ Chiusure July 9 & 10, 1953 pencil and wash, 42.2 x 54.1 cm signed and dated lower right PROVENANCE Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust Inventory No. BGT1670 143

Wilhelmina BARNS-GRAHAM

78/ Fiesoli 13th June, 1954 pencil and wash, 42.8 x 54.2 cm signed and dated lower right PROVENANCE Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust Inventory No. BGT1675 144

Wilhelmina BARNS-GRAHAM

Wilhelmina BARNS-GRAHAM

79/ Untitled, 1955 pen, ink and wash, 47 x 58.2 cm PROVENANCE Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust Inventory No. BGT7262 145

Wilhelmina BARNS-GRAHAM

80/ Chiusure, 1955 pencil and wash, 42.6 x 54.5 cm PROVENANCE Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust Inventory No. BGT1668 146

Wilhelmina BARNS-GRAHAM

Wilhelmina BARNS-GRAHAM

81/ View of St Ives Harbour, 1956 pencil and wash, 42.8 x 54.3 cm signed lower left PROVENANCE Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust Inventory No. BGT1638 147

Wilhelmina BARNS-GRAHAM

82/ Chiusure Tuscany, 1953-55 pencil and tempera, 43 x 54 cm dated lower right PROVENANCE Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust Inventory No. BGT6354 148

Wilhelmina BARNS-GRAHAM

Wilhelmina BARNS-GRAHAM

83/ Rocks Formentera, 1958 pencil and wash, 42.8 x 54.3 cm signed lower right PROVENANCE Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust Inventory No. BGT1548 149

JOHN BELLANY CBE, RA (1942-2013) John Bellany was born in 1942 in the Scottish fishing village of Port Seton. He attended Edinburgh College of Art from 1960 to 1965. His early work in Northern European Expressionist-Realist tradition allied to personal symbolism and iconography, often drawn from his family’s seafaring past. Bellany believed that art should show the realities of life and his art reflects both his personal triumphs as well as tragedies. His work is often highly challenging and at times autobiographical as epitomised by a series of brutally unflinching self portraits produced in hospital following a major operation in the 1980s.

John BELLANY

84/ Woman with Owl oil on canvas, 166 x 144 cm This ambitious painting dated to around 1972 is associated with other works made in the artist’s Clapham studio, set in a theatrical interior like Lap Dog (SNGMA, cat. 24, 1986). The action is set on a floor, but curved, perhaps the top of a model’s throne, against a background here indicating a flaming, hellish maw in which spectral figures: human skeleton, bird skull and skate woman are lit with internal flames.

On the stage a woman with a white face mask and long black hair and gloves sits on an amorphous throne, protecting an owl which, most disquietingly, looks up as well as out; has it pecked at her nose? In front is a self-portrait as a dog, wearing a painter’s cap, the only actor who engages the viewer directly, with a mordant resignation. Within a few years Bellany shifts towards a more Germanic inspired expressionism, an outdoors setting and dominantly sea-symbolism. In Woman with Owl he is in the thrall of Bacon, Soutine and Fuseli and a nightmare vision of sex and death from which he somehow remains detached and protagonist.

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John BELLANY

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Alan Davie Š The Scotsman Publications Ltd.

ALAN DAVIE CBE, HRSA (1920-2014) Alan Davie was born in Grangemouth and studied at Edinburgh College of Art from 1937 to 1940. He performed as a jazz musician after war service but also wrote poetry, designed textiles and made jewellery. From 1953 to 1956 Davie taught in London at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, where he became interested in African and Pacific art.

He first visited St. Lucia in 1971 and began to spend six months a year there, bringing a Caribbean influence to his art. Further influence on his work over the years include Paul Klee, American Abstract Expressionism, Zen Buddhism and Indian mythology.

A major international figure, his Edinburgh Festival exhibition Magic Pictures was held at The Scottish Gallery in 1979.

Alan DAVIE

85/ Birth of the Gobbleme, 1969 watercolour, 55 x 76 cm signed and dated upper right PROVENANCE Private collection, USA 152

Alan DAVIE

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WILLIAM JOHNSTONE OBE (1897-1981) William Johnstone was born in Denholm in the Scottish Borders in 1897. His father was a farmer and expected him to follow the same path but the fallout from WWI made him resolutely determined to become a painter.

He attended Edinburgh College of Art (1919-1923) and in 1925 he studied at the Paris School under André L’hôte; he also travelled to Spain, Italy and North Africa and lived for a short time in California but the financial crash forced him back to Scotland. The opportunity of a teaching position took him to London where he settled from 1931-1960. During this period much of his energy was directed towards art education, becoming Principal at Camberwell College of Art from 1938-1946 and then Principal at Central School of Arts and Crafts from 1947-1960. He developed the Basic Design course which stemmed from the Bauhaus and his instinct to defy convention and his eye for talented staff made Central a tour de force. “Design is Experience.” Alan Davie, Anton Ehrenzweig, Patrick Heron, Earl Haig, John Minton, Eduardo Paolozzi, Victor Pasmore, Gordon Baldwin, William Turnbull, Dora Batty, Naum Slutzky, Marianne Straub, Dora Billington all worked for him – which made for an explosive, creative mixture of artistic personalities.

Described as autocratic in style, he didn’t suffer fools gladly but he looked after artists and students like a good shepherd. He received an OBE for his contribution to art education in 1954 then returned home to the Borders in 1960 to concentrate on painting and return to farming.

The 1970s were incredibly productive; exhibitions of large and small scale works, a collaboration with Hugh MacDiarmid combining lithographs and poems was published in 1977 and a similar project with Edwin Muir’s poetry was published a few years later. Two films were also produced including A Point in Time. In 1980 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Edinburgh for artistic achievement and two publications were released; Monograph by Douglas Hall (Edinburgh University Press) and his autobiography Points in Time (Barrie & Jenkins). Shortly before he died in 1981, The Hayward Gallery, London, held a major retrospective which included over 200 works.

William Johnstone’s impressive curriculum vitae cannot conceal his chequered artistic career in Scotland. In 1934, George Proudfoot of The Scottish Gallery arranged for his solo exhibition to tour starting with the Wertheim Gallery, London then to The Gallery in Edinburgh. We know that his exhibition in London included The Eildon

Hills, Portrait of Richard Church, Sanctuary and Street Musicians and we know that one important patron Sir Edwin Marsh bought a painting. When it came to Edinburgh in October 1935, it seems to have disappeared without trace. Decades later Johnstone made light of this but rejection on his home territory must have hurt.

SJ Peploe had died just a few months earlier and The Gallery held a Memorial Exhibition where the artist’s loyal collectors made purchases but these were difficult times in the Scottish art world. Johnstone would wait a lifetime for artistic recognition; Scotland was simply not ready to accept his uncompromising abstraction.

His ambivalence towards the art world didn’t help his career path, he resisted being managed by any one gallery and he would never paint on demand.

Instead, there are several key figures who admired and supported Johnstone in different ways. RR Tomlinson (Chief Inspector for the London County Council) held a shared belief in cultivating and promoting the freedom of expression in children’s art and enabled Johnstone to secure a number of educational positions in London.

In the 1950s Sir Michael Culme-Seymour became a lifelong patron and promoter of his work after reading Johnstone’s Creative Art in Britain. “I was determined to seek out his own paintings and found, often to my surprise, that they were among those that fitted most happily into the old house…” When Johnstone returned to Scotland, he became friends with Douglas Hall who was the first director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. He encouraged Johnstone to date his pictures, to make recordings of his life and was instrumental in pushing his work into the public arena.

In 1969, he met Mrs Hope Montagu Douglas Scott, a widowed aristocrat who had amassed a picture collection of avant-garde work. Her effortless joie de vivre and unusual eye had a profound effect on Johnstone. She became a major collector and patron and also encouraged him to exhibit. She donated the significant Point in Time (c.1929-1935), a painting which presages WWII to the SNGMA amongst other works and so delighted was she with Edinburgh University for honouring her friend with a doctorate, she donated the majority of her art collection to the Talbot Rice Gallery, before setting up the Hope Scott Trust. William Johnstone remains one of the most enigmatic figures in Scottish Art. Christina Jansen

Left: William Johnstone, graduation, Edinburgh.

GMA A56, William Johnstone Archive, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Archive, Edinburgh 155

WIlliam JOHNSTONE

86/ Countryside in Wartime – Broomhill, 1923 oil on board, 73.7 x 63.5 cm EXHIBITED South America Fine Arts, 1943; Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes, Cordoba, Argentina; Museu Nacional de Bellas Artes, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Arts Council of Great Britain, London, William Johnstone, 1981, cat. 4 ILLUSTRATED p.4, William Johnstone (1897-1981) A Centenary Celebration, 1997, Talbot Rice Gallery, curated by Duncan Macmillan PROVENANCE The Stafford Gallery, London; with Alex Reid and Lefevre, London Note (verso) reads that this picture was painted when the artist applied (and was rejected for) the position of war artist, 1923-24.

The Countryside in Wartime, Broomhill was painted shortly after Johnstone had graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 1923. This picture was exhibited overseas in 1943 as part of a British Council Exhibition and the title was probably political propaganda.

William had worked with his father during the First World War at Greenhead Farm near Selkirk; 600 acres. There were times when it was only his father and William working the land and it must have been backbreaking work – farmers were particularly patriotic and during the War the land emptied of both men and horses. This picture evokes a certain kind of dreamlike stillness; he paints the idea and memory of the landscape but this work also looks forward to his later, abstract, calligraphic works.

For William Johnstone the Border Hills remained a rich source of inspiration either on a subconscious or conscious level; his understanding of the cycles of life, of death and renewal sprang from his family background in sheep farming and the landscape had an enduring fascination for him.

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WIlliam JOHNSTONE

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WIlliam JOHNSTONE

87/ Abstract II ink on paper, 56 x 76 cm signed lower right In the last 20 years of his career, Johnstone created numerous abstract works in pen and ink worked on large sheets of paper. The technique was a form of personal meditation; the end result a moody evocation of a captured moment. Johnstone understood the beauty and sorrow of the landscape and in this abstract, there is a sense of his beloved Border Hills.

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WIlliam JOHNSTONE

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TH E EDI N BURGH SC HOOL A BRIEF CHRONOLOGY Unless otherwise stated all exhibitions held at The Scottish Gallery.

1842

1860

1895

1897

Aitken Dott opens frame makers and artist’s shop at South St. David Street, Edinburgh.

Moved to 26 Castle Street where the business remained for 122 years.

Anne Redpath born in Galashiels.

The naming of the Gallery space as The Scottish Gallery. Birth of William Johnstone.

1889

1909

1912

1913

William Gillies born in Haddington.

The opening of Edinburgh College of Art (ECA).

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham born in St Andrews.

Anne Redpath enrols at ECA.

1914

1916-1922

1919

1926

Denis Peploe born in Edinburgh.

William Gillies studies at ECA (interrupted by war service). Robin Philipson born in Broughton-inFurness.

Robert Henderson Blyth born.

David McClure born in Lochwinnoch.

1928

1929

1930

1931

David Michie born St. Raphael, France.

William MacTaggart solo exhibition, the first of his career.

John Houston born in Buckhaven.

Elizabeth Blackadder born in Falkirk. Denis Peploe and Wilhelmina BarnsGraham start studies at ECA.

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Photographs, from left to right: Aitken Dott by Robert McGregor, 1891; Life Class, School of Art at the Royal Institution on the Mound, Edinburgh, c.1908. Adam Bruce Thomson is first on left; Anne Redpath with fellow students at Edinburgh College of Art, c.1915.

Courtesy of the artist’s estate; William Johnstone, Graduation, Edinburgh College of Art, 1924; SJ Peploe and his students, Edinburgh College of Art, Easter 1934; The Revels, 1936, Tony Castello, Pip Pope, Denis Peploe, Lennie; The Scottish Gallery on Castle Street, 1940; William Gillies teaching at Edinburgh College of Art, 1946; David McClure Graduation, Edinburgh College of Art, 29th June 1951; David Michie graduating Edinburgh College of Art, 1954

1935

1936-40

1942

1945

First William Johnstone solo exhibition.

Robin Philipson studies at ECA.

The Gallery celebrates 100.

Solo exhibitions for William Gillies and Earl Haig, the first of their careers.

1946

1946

1947

1948-52

First Adam Bruce Thomson solo exhibition, the first of his career.

William Gillies appointed Head of the School of Drawing and Painting, ECA.

First Edinburgh Festival Exhibition – SJ Peploe.

Denis Peploe solo exhibition, the first of his career.

John Houston studies at ECA.

1949-54

1950

1952

1954

Elizabeth Blackadder studies at ECA.

First Anne Redpath solo exhibition.

Anne Redpath elected first woman painter to Royal Scottish Academy.

Robin Philipson exhibition, the first of his career.

Festival exhibition of Anne Redpath, William Gillies, William Wilson and Ian Fleming.

1955

1956

1957

1959

Six Scottish Painters Festival Exhibition. Works by Joan Eardley, Brenda Mark, Henderson Blyth, William Burns, David Donaldson, Robin Philipson.

First Wilhelmina BarnsGraham solo exhibition.

First David McClure exhibition.

William Gillies appointed Principal at ECA.

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Photographs, from left to right: Elizabeth Blackadder working at Harley Brothers Printmakers, 1960; Robin Philipson, c.1964; Robin Philipson, President of the RSA, introducing the Queen to Elizabeth Blackadder, 1973; HRH Duke of Edinburgh visits The Scottish Gallery, 1973; Edinburgh College of Art, c.1975; The Scottish Gallery, 2017

1960

1961

1962

1963

First John Houston solo exhibition. Robin Philipson appointed Head of the School of Drawing and Painting, ECA.

First Elizabeth Blackadder solo exhibition.

William MacTaggart knighted.

Penelope Beaton Memorial exhibition.

1965

1970

1972

1973

Anne Redpath dies in Edinburgh. Memorial Exhibitions held at The Scottish Gallery and Arts Council (Scottish Committee).

Death of Robert Henderson Blyth.

Retrospective exhibition WG Gillies, Royal Scottish Academy and Scottish Arts Council Gallery, Edinburgh.

William Gillies knighted.

Robert Henderson Blyth Memorial Exhibition.

Sir William Gillies dies in Temple.

1976

1981

1982

1990

Visit of HRH Duke of Edinburgh to The Gallery.

Robin Philipson knighted.

Death of William Johnstone.

Gallery moves to 94 George Street.

John Houston 60th Birthday Festival exhibition.

1992

1993

1995

1998

Sir Robin Philipson dies in Edinburgh. Gallery turns 150.

The Gallery moves to 16 Dundas Street, Edinburgh. Death of Denis Peploe in Edinburgh.

Sir Robin Philipson and Denis Peploe Memorial Exhibitions.

Death of David McClure in Dundee.

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1999

2000

2003

2004

Sir Robin Philipson retrospective exhibition held at Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh.

David McClure Memorial Exhibition.

Elizabeth Blackadder made a Dame of the British Empire.

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham dies in St Andrews.

2005

2007

2008

2009

John Houston exhibition held at National Galleries of Scotland.

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Memorial Exhibition.

John Houston dies in Edinburgh.

John Houston Memorial Exhibition.

2011

2014

2015

2016

National Gallery of Scotland and The Scottish Gallery hold exhibition to celebrate Dame Elizabeth Blackadder’s 80th birthday.

Denis Peploe Centenary Exhibition.

Death of David Michie in Edinburgh.

Sir Robin Philipson Centenary Exhibition.

2017

2019

David Michie Memorial Exhibition. The Gallery celebrates its 175th anniversary.

The Edinburgh School and Wider Circle exhibition.

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Published by The Scottish Gallery to coincide with the exhibition THE EDINBURGH SCHOOL AND WIDER CIRCLE Edinburgh 5 – 26 January 2019 London Art Fair 16 – 20 January 2019 Borders Art Fair 14 – 17 March 2019 Exhibition can be viewed online at www.scottish-gallery.co.uk/edinburghschool ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Scottish Gallery would like to thank Robin McClure and the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust for their help with the exhibition.

ISBN: 978 1 910267 94 3 DESIGN Kenneth Gray PHOTOGRAPHY John McKenzie PRINT J Thomson Colour Printers, Glasgow All rights reserved. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced in any form by print, photocopy or by any other means, without the permission of the copyright holders and of the publishers.

Cover: Edinburgh College of Art. School of Drawing, Painting, Design & Sculpture, 1949-50 164