Modern Masters IX |Festival Edition | August 2019 | The Scottish Gallery

modern masters ix

modern masters ix festival edition

24 july – 24 august 2019 P 3

MODERN MASTERS FESTIVAL EDITION

by Christina Jansen

P 4 VICTORIA CROWE, 50 YEARS OF PAINTING

by Guy Peploe P 7

REMEMBERING KITTLEYKNOWE

by Michael Walton MBE

P 18 A STUDIO LIFE: SIR WILLIAM GILLIES AND SIR WILLIAM MACTAGGART P 32 THE ESSENCE OF A SUBJECT

by Guy Peploe P 55 RECENT ACQUISITIONS

Cover: Donald Morrison Buyers, Fields and Trees, Aberdeenshire, 1962, oil on board, 60 x 122 cm (detail) (cat. 24) Opposite: Victoria Crowe, Messages, 1986–87, oil on board, 122 x 72.5 cm (detail) (cat. 4)

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Modern Masters Festival Edition CHRISTINA JANSEN

Welcome to our Modern Masters Festival Edition for 2019. This year sees Victoria Crowe’s career honoured in a major retrospective, 50 Years of Painting, which is now open at the City Art Centre in Edinburgh and runs until mid October; the exhibition is mounted over four floors, with every level revealing a different aspect and facet of the artist’s life and career. We therefore open our catalogue with a special tribute to Victoria Crowe, an artist whom The Gallery is proud to have been associated with since 1970, and with a group of paintings which relate to the artist’s early years in Kittleyknowe, in the Scottish Borders.

Her husband, Michael Walton, has given us access to wonderful archive images which give us a vital, visual understanding as well as providing a personal recollection of the period.

In September, to coincide with her retrospective, The Gallery will celebrate Victoria Crowe’s career with our own curated exhibition 50 Years of Drawing and Thinking. Victoria Crowe, together with Michael Walton, has given The Gallery exclusive access to hitherto unseen works spanning fifty years to date. The catalogue will include personal reflections and vintage photographs.

Our Festival edition also explores the studio life of two artists who were fellow artists and colleagues at Edinburgh College of Art and

form part of the Edinburgh School of painting: Sir William Gillies and Sir William MacTaggart – we look at ‘the good habit’ and how the home environment and working studio were sources of inspiration.

Guy Peploe has written an insightful essay on the subject of portraiture, an important aspect of Crowe’s practice and a key element within our Festival programme, exemplified by Derrick Guild’s masterful Ever After exhibition where classical portraiture is turned on its head; in this powerful presentation, the relationship between subject and viewer raises intriguing questions of identity.

Beyond our opening vignettes, we present a collection of recent acquisitions which reflect, celebrate and remind us of our historical heritage in conjunction with our commitment to contemporary art. We hope you find something to cherish and enjoy from our Festival edition and we look forward to seeing you in The Gallery.

I would like to thank my colleagues Tommy Zyw for keeping a close eye on the market for trends and meticulous picture research and Guy Peploe for his unique Scottish art history knowledge, insight and reflections. We would like to thank Michael Walton for his contribution to our publication.

Opposite: Victoria Crowe painting R.D. Laing, 1984, photograph by Michael Walton 2

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Victoria Crowe 50 Years of Painting GUY PEPLOE

Victoria Crowe found the reality of life, harsh and idyllic by turn, around her new home in the Pentlands at Kittleyknowe, to be the roots of her development in Scotland, lending her the confidence and fortitude to develop into the great painter she is today. She came first in 1970, happier to commute into Edinburgh College of Art after moving from London, head-hunted

by Robin Philipson to the School of Drawing and Painting; in the country she was a different person. Her neighbour Jenny Armstrong was a hill sheep farmer, in an environment where being neighbours meant something, a kinship in times of adversity, sharing in times of plenty. The winter fence, hencoop and kennel, the view out

from the warm comfort of a room with a coal fire, the twilight shape of a familiar landmark, all became fit subjects, little pieces creating a world of hardship shared and a landscape fully inhabited. We are deeply grateful for Michael Walton’s following text providing personal insight into life at Kittleyknowe with Victoria.

The first major survey devoted to the art of Victoria Crowe has now opened at the Edinburgh City Art Centre. Victoria Crowe: 50 Years of Painting features over 150 artworks stemming from youthful student works to the assured, timeless landscapes and portraits of recent years, tracing the rise of this exceptional artist.

The exhibition runs until the 13th October 2019.

Above, left: Victoria in her West Linton studio, 2012, photograph by Kenneth Gray Above, right: Victoria Crowe: 50 Years of Painting, Sansom & Company, 2019 Opposite: Victoria Crowe, Gateway, 1976, oil on board, 24 x 29 cm (cat. 3) 4

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Remembering Kittleyknowe MICHAEL WALTON MBE

Imagine, for a moment, leaving London, in 1968 when parking meters were just being installed – heading north, where only one of us had been before, to arrive in the middle of real countryside. When driving into Edinburgh you could find you were the only vehicle on the road – This was Kittleyknowe (a remote hamlet in the Scottish Borders close to Carlops), – the inspiration behind these paintings.

The paintings on the following pages all fall in the period covered by the exhibition A Shepherd’s Life, Paintings of Jenny Armstrong

by Victoria Crowe, first shown at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in the year 2000 as part of a programme of exhibitions celebrating the lives of extraordinary, ordinary people.

A book by Julie Lawson and Mary Taubman was published by SNPG to coincide with and provide a catalogue for the exhibition. The book provides a good background to what our lives were like at Kittleyknowe during those years.

The exhibition was a huge success, attracting over 30,000 visitors. It received critical acclaim

and subsequently toured to several other venues.

In 2009 it was regathered and shown at the Fleming Collection in London.

The weather at Kittleyknowe needs a little explanation regarding its relationship to ‘normal weather’! At 1,000 feet up, around 17 miles south of Edinburgh, it lies on open peat moorland, between the Pentland Hills and the Moorfoots. In winter, it was extreme: deep, deep snow (fence posts disappeared); extremely cold (heating spark plugs under the grill); and digging the car out to get into Edinburgh for work was a frequent occurrence, making one grateful for shovels and crank handles. I had a beard at the time and, walking down the road, ice crystals froze around your face; something only seen previously in Dr. Zhivago. The ground could become like permafrost from Christmas to beyond Easter; snow came once in June.

The children made igloos and deep snow allowed us to throw them backwards off our high stone wall into the snow drifts below, leaving only child-shaped dents.

Gae far’er up the burn to Habbie’s How, Where a’ the sweets o’ spring and summer grow: There ’tween twa birks, out ower a little lin, The water fa’s and maks a singin’ din; A pool breast-deep, beneath as clear as glass, Kisses, wi’ easy whirls, the bord’ring grass. extract from The Gentle Shepherd, 1725,

by Allan Ramsay Allan Ramsay (1686–1758) based his famous poem on the countryside around Newhall Estate where Kittleyknowe is located.

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A Shepherd’s Life, Paintings of Jenny Armstrong by Julie Lawson and Mary Taubman, National Galleries of Scotland, 2000

Opposite: Jenny Armstrong at Kittleyknowe, 1968 7

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Victoria Crowe OBE, DHC, FRSE, MA (RCA), RSA, RSW (b.1945) 1 Chicken Hut I, 1973 oil on board, 16.5 x 20.5 cm signed and dated lower right provenance The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh

Our neighbour Jenny Armstrong was usually surrounded by dogs, sheep and chickens. The latter she kept in two locations, the far away ones seen in Jenny and the Faraway Hens, 1974 (collection: HM The Queen and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh) which were a short walk away, past the trees in Large Tree Group, 1975 (collection: National Galleries of Scotland) were kept next to a small burn so that their water could be topped up.

The second location was at the back of her cottage where collections of aged kennels, huts, sheds and coops resided. There are a few small-scale paintings of chicken huts; Chummy and Micky is included in the current City Art Centre retrospective of Crowe’s work. These were most likely seen as pets and being brought on to join the older, hardier hens (far away) which Jenny relied on for her eggs.

As ever, there is more going on than meets the eye – the care and attention of the mother hen to her chicks is reflected in the fact that subject and artist are both perhaps broody. Ben, our first child, was born in 1973.

Michael Walton MBE 8

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Victoria Crowe OBE, DHC, FRSE, MA (RCA) RSA, RSW (b.1945) 2 Cow Still Life II, 1973 oil on board, 18 x 20.25 cm signed and dated lower right exhibited Victoria Crowe Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1973, cat. 19

This painting like Chicken Hut I, was painted in 1973. I had started collecting Staffordshire figures (both rural and religious) and underglaze blue transfer printed chinoiserie earthenware, with the odd slip into similar porcelain. They all found a home in a bow fronted cabinet, homemade plate rack, and other available places!

This still life contains a small late 18th century earthenware figure, most likely a prize at a fair, and a cow creamer of a similar date probably of Yorkshire or Scottish manufacture. Finally, a tiny Worcester coffee cup circa 1710-20.

However, the most important point is that this painting is in reality an experimental work. It is the first of Victoria’s paintings with a black ground, trying to see how the simply arranged conversation of ceramics become thrown into sharp focus, defined space and creates great vibrancy of colour, in contrast to the dark behind the picture plane. This is a device used many times subsequently particularly in Victoria’s plant studies.

It neatly sums up this period at Kittleyknowe, deeply involved in rural life, setting up home – with a family on the way.

Michael Walton MBE 10

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Jenny Armstrong with her dogs, 1968

Victoria Crowe OBE, DHC, FRSE, MA (RCA), RSA, RSW (b.1945) 3 Gateway, 1976 oil on board, 24 x 29 cm signed and dated lower left exhibited The Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh

This is a rare and unusual work showing a twilight view of the gate pillars leading to Newhall House. To the left is the Gate Cottage and original old toll window. Our cottage, ‘Monksview’, and Jenny Armstrong’s, ‘Monk’s Cottage’, were further along the track to the right. At the top of the road was an assemblage of ruinous barns that belonged to Tom Wickham (see Tom Wickham’s Barns in the City Art Centre retrospective). ‘Monksview’ was originally the gamekeeper’s cottage for the Newhall Estate and ‘Monk’s Cottage’ the kennel man’s, hence the large hard standing to the front of the cottage. The more usual view for Victoria to paint was looking down the road towards the gate pillars as in Winter at Kittleybrig, 1974 (private collection). In conversation, Vicky suggests that the inspiration behind the painting was about gaining greater understanding of the positioning of the cottages.

There are very few twilight paintings at Kittleyknowe. This one was later developed into a larger version now in the collection of the Reader’s Digest, America.

Michael Walton MBE 12

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Jenny does not appear in this painting but is present by virtue of her absence. For those who knew it, this could be nowhere else but the interior of Jenny Armstrong’s cottage.

It is an interior, but this has to be set in context – not quite how we think of an interior, with its warmth and comfort, but with snow able to blow in through chinks and gaps around the front door and pipes liable to freeze (even when the fire was on), it was more of a halfway house between outside and inside.

The key to this painting is the apple on the edge of the sideboard, the reward to the postman for bringing a by now infirm Jenny her ‘messages’ or groceries. The postman was an important contact with the outside world; he always had a moment to put a new log or coals on the fire and rake it back to life. (Interestingly, French postmen in country districts have as part of their job the same role offering company, contact and practical help.)

Jenny always had bananas going dark and ripe with black patches and speckles on them.

Messages is a highly significant painting of that period of Crowe’s work; the sideboard also appears in Last Portrait of Jenny Armstrong (collection of City Art Centre, Edinburgh) and in several of the charcoal drawings acquired by The

Opposite: Messages, 1986–87 (detail) (cat. 4) 14

National Galleries of Scotland. Also of interest in the painting are the photographs on the sideboard and the appearance of the cover on Jenny’s bed at bottom-left, dating it to the period when Jenny was out of hospital and slept in the same room as ‘the range’ for warmth and comfort.

The patterned 1920s floor covering was the ideal surface for dogs, sheep and hens running in and out; the wallpaper suggests very clearly, like the thinning of the curtains, that they had been there some time. The wall surface was often slightly damp so the paper was marked and stained and slightly peeling.

The left hand photograph is of ‘The Fraser Boy’, a young man holding a dog. In the 1950s/60s he lived with his mother and father, shown in the photograph on the right, at the Gate Cottage. In the centre are images of three of Jenny’s working dogs: The Old Laddie, Fly and one long gone by the time we arrived. In the lower part of the sideboard you can see The Peeblesshire News, no doubt about to be used to light the fire, and a collection of kindlers and split logs. In the left-hand glass panel, the pane is reflecting light from the other, brighter side of the room.

Michael Walton MBE

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Victoria Crowe OBE, DHC, FRSE, MA (RCA), RSA, RSW (b.1945) 4 Messages, 1986-87 oil on board, 122 x 72.5 cm signed lower right exhibited Mercury Gallery, Edinburgh, 1986; A Shepherd’s Life, Paintings of Jenny Armstrong, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, 2000 (touring exhibition); A Shepherd’s Life, Paintings of Jenny Armstrong, The Fleming Collection, London, 2009 (touring exhibition) illustrated A Shepherd’s Life, Paintings of Jenny Armstrong by Julie Lawson and Mary Taubman, National Galleries of Scotland, 2000, p.51 provenance Private collection, Edinburgh 16

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A Studio Life

Sir William Gillies and Sir William MacTaggart

Sir William Gillies was the dominant figure of the Edinburgh School over which both his personality and his work had a quiet authority. He led by example at the College of Art, encouraging his students to experiment but from a firm grounding in looking, and of course practice, drawing in particular. He also selected his staff to reflect this ethos: men and women who had a similar independence but respected hard work, what William McTaggart called ‘the good habit.’ The duties of teaching for Gillies and many of his colleagues in the School of Drawing and Painting were combined with their own practice without conflict; being a professional painter: working and exhibiting, was understood as integral to the reputation and health of the School. Robin Philipson, Elizabeth Blackadder, John Houston, David Michie and James Cumming were the beneficiaries of this attitude, along with their students, quietly instilled by Gillies over his fifty years of influence.

William MacTaggart was five years younger than Gillies, a vital difference which meant that he missed War service and attended The College of Art from 1918. He did join the staff of the College in 1933 but this was after he had

forged a considerable exhibition career as one of the up-and-coming men in the firmament of modern Scottish painting. He was the youngest member of The Society of Eight alongside the senior modernists Cadell and Peploe and an active light in the Society of Scottish Artists. He would eventually become President of the Royal Scottish Academy from 1959 and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a Royal Academician. In the recollection of Denis Peploe, however, these honours did not spare him a sharp rebuke from Gilles when he was prodded awake in the staff room with the imprecation to ‘get out there and teach’. As a painter he was an expressionist. He took something from his grandfather, William McTaggart (the grandson adding the first ‘a’ to his surname to distinguish himself from his famous antecedent): his work was richly worked with a fine impasto, displayed confident drawing with the brush and in a palette of sonorous blues and reds. He painted the Lothians, sea and land, the great trees of Drummond Place Gardens from his studio and after he married the Norwegian curator Fanny Aavatsmark in 1937 made many trips to Norway and Denmark.

Opposite: William Gillies in the garden at Temple, 1939 Royal Scottish Academy of Art & Architecture (William Gillies Bequest) 18

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Sir William Gillies CBE, RSA, RA, PPRSW (1898–1973) 5 Two Old Gateways, Fife, 1937 ink on paper, 50 x 63 cm signed and dated lower left provenance Private collection, East Lothian

Unlike the old masters, Gillies’s drawings were rarely studies for future oil paintings. Instead most of them were completed as a first response to the scene in front of him and in this sense they offer a far more intimate and personal view than many of his paintings. His line varies from a languorous grace to breathless fury, every mark, scribble and dot offers an image of something observed by a passionately aware and purposeful mind. Unlike his watercolours which can be contemplative, his drawings are lighthearted, energetic and spirited.

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Sir William Gillies in his studio at the Edinburgh College of Art, c.1952 Royal Scottish Academy of Art & Architecture (William Gillies Bequest)

Sir William Gillies CBE, RSA, RA, PPRSW (1898–1973) 6 Still Life – Pot with Daisies, c.1952 oil on canvas, 58.5 x 112 cm signed lower left

Still life was Gillies’s 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. His cottage in Temple was filled with collected objects and many, especially the pots of his sister Emma are familiar, repeatedly included in his compositions over the decades. This painting hung in Gillies’s Edinburgh College of Art studio, seen in the accompanying image, and is still presented in Gillies’s hand-finished frame.

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Sir William Gillies CBE, RSA, RA, PPRSW (1898–1973) 7 Arthur’s Seat from Temple, 1962 watercolour and ink, 25.5 x 35.5 cm signed lower left exhibited Christmas Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1968; William Gillies Retrospective Exhibition, The Scottish Arts Council, 1970, cat. 201 provenance Dr. R.A. Lillie collection; Private collection, California, USA

Gillies divided his energy between oil and watercolour; painting in oils was his studio routine, whilst he was happiest working in front of the landscape on his watercolour block. The originality and spontaneity of his landscapes on paper in pencil, pen and ink and pure watercolour, form the core of his reputation.

When filmed for the BBC in 1970 he spoke eloquently about his watercolour practice: “My landscape painting began with watercolour and a great part of my work has continued in this medium and I feel the peculiar qualities of the medium have had a strong influence on my conception of landscape.” And again: “I would plead that… in landscape I have perhaps opened many people’s eyes to some unexpected, some subtle beauties in our daily surroundings.

This has been I hope a by-product of my own enjoyment of what I perceive and my great delight in the very act of handling the paint.”

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Sir William Gillies in his Temple Cottage, c.1965

Sir William Gillies CBE, RSA, RA, PPRSW (1898–1973) 8 In Temple Cottage, c.1972 watercolour and pencil, 51 x 35.5 cm signed lower left; inscribed with title verso exhibited Christmas Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1972, cat. 19

Gillies moved to Temple, 13 miles south of Edinburgh, in 1939.

The landscape around his home provided endless subject matter for the artist. His small cottage was filled with collected objects, many now familiar from recurring in his still life painting.

The view from his window looking into his back garden was a favourite winter subject painted in monumental scale in oil and brilliantly here in watercolour in an upright format. This painting, rendered first in pencil then completed in watercolour, was exhibited and sold in December 1972, four months before his death in April 1973.

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Sir William MacTaggart in his Edinburgh studio, c.1963

Sir William MacTaggart PPRSA, RA, RSW (1903–1981) 9 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; The Edinburgh School and Wider Circle, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2019, cat. 37

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).

The motif formed a framing device and presented the challenge of interior/exterior handling of light and depth of field.

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MacTaggart’s home at 4 Drummond Place, c.1970

Sir William MacTaggart PPRSA, RA, RSW (1903–1981) 10 From Studio Window, 1977 oil on canvas board, 60.5 x 50.5 cm signed lower right; titled on label verso provenance Private collection, Brighton 30

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The Essence of a Subject GUY PEPLOE

The only difference between a portrait and a figure subject is that the latter is not a commission, or an advertisement for a future commission. Some of the greatest works of art in our history are portraits; Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci, Holbein and so on. Only in the last century, as artists defied categorisation and declared redundant a pecking order for subject matter, has portraiture become territory reserved for the journeyman, the true artist rising above such a commercial, old-fashioned enterprise. However, the portrait has not gone away, partly thanks to Bacon and Freud and now to a general resurgence in our atomised art

world encouraged by the BP Portrait Award and other prizes.

This is as true in photography as painting, the serious photographer is not leery of the human figure: new insights can always be extracted, the fascination is endless. David Eustace has made many images of his friend John Byrne over the years and Byrne is a brilliant model, immutable and vulnerable in front of the lens, his humanity palpable and genius unquestionable.

Pat Douthwaite seldom moved away from the human figure after a brief period of abstraction in the fifties. She extracted public figures from notorious news headlines, resurrected heroines

Only in the last century, as artists defied categorisation and declared redundant a pecking order for subject matter, has portraiture become territory reserved for the journeyman‌

Left: Pat Douthwaite, Male Figure, 1987, chalk on paper, 84 x 59.5 cm Opposite: Pat Douthwaite, Bateman Street Girl, Cambridge, c.1968 (detail) (cat. 16) 32

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John Bellany, like Freud and Bacon, chose to put the human figure at the centre of his complex, troubled world.

John Bellany, Self Portrait in Hospital II, 1988, etching, 45 x 40 cm

John Bellany, Woman with Owl, c.1972, oil on canvas, 166 x 144 cm 34

William Johnstone, Autonomous Portrait, 1975, ink on paper, 77 x 57 cm

Pat Douthwaite, Happiness is Green Shield Stamps, 1969, oil and collage on board, 120 x 90 cm (cat. 17)

and looked at friends and family: pinned, exposed by the artist, unflinching in front of pathos or venality.

William Crosbie remains something of an enigma in Scottish painting. His surrealist paintings made principally during the Second World War have found proper context as significant examples of British Surrealism but otherwise the breadth and scope of his painting: portraiture, murals, landscape, the nude, still life and subject painting defy easy categorisation.

Like many painters of his generation who emerged from surrealist influence, like Paul Delvaux in Belgium and Tristram Hillier in England, his work often contains a hallucinatory quality. The doll was a favourite subject for a number of years, a fetishized object – the child in arrested development – strange to modern taste.

In Catriona (cat. 14), sent to the Academy in 1969 the child stands, psychologically isolated, in a staged space, theatrically lit from the front and above as if about to be transported, Alice-like, into another world.

In Anne (cat. 15), who is his second wife, he presents a simple bust, the almond-eyes Modigliani-like, denying the ‘window to the soul’, after all he knows her, and we do not.

John Bellany, like Freud and Bacon, chose to put the human figure at the centre of his complex, troubled world. To begin, his family provided the actors inhabiting the fishingboats and gutting tables of his Port Seton upbringing. Then a damaged cast of men and women represent the pathos and cruelty of the twentieth century before his own alcoholism restricted his world to a troubled internal dream-set of temptation and perdition.

In 1985 life changed when he received a liver 35

The self-portrait is a subject in art history that has always fascinated, from Rembrandt, to Ramsay to Freud. It might be a powerful assertion of status: an image that says, ‘choose me’, or the painful laying bare of the artist’s soul.

transplant and emerging from the death sentence alive, he called for pen and paper.

Now the self-portrait dominated, reasserted Bellany’s life force in a creative impulse which never diminished.

The self-portrait is a subject in art history that has always fascinated, from Rembrandt, to Ramsay to Freud. It might be a powerful assertion of status: an image that says, ‘choose me’, or the painful laying bare of the artist’s soul. Any portrait needs to seek the essence of the subject so that a pared down, near abstract version of self seeks to do this without the slavish accretion of detail. William Johnstone’s Autonomous Portrait of 1975 is a good likeness: the shape of the head and hair, the craggy face are powerfully descriptive, but the freedom of the pen-marks and energy in their swirling application speak of a restless intellect.

Another painter from the Borders, Anne Redpath made a dozen or so figure paintings in her life including a few of family, her daughterin-law Eileen Michie in particular. She also

made a series of studies of schoolgirls when she visited her friend Elsie Bain, headmistress at Withington School in Manchester in the late forties. The origin and sitter of Portrait of a Woman (cat. 19) is lost, but it belongs stylistically to the early fifties and is likely to have been opportunistic: a student or friend of one of her sons, and as with her best work the drawing is sure, the paint beautiful and image poignant.

Finally, we can draw Derrick Guild (shown opposite) into this aspect of Modern Masters IX through his label portraits, where the whole image is fragmented into a grid of painted labels each of which carries its portion of the whole. He has also made dozens of details of faces to be arranged at random (though in an aesthetically pleasing configuration). These are subversive to a traditional reading of a portrait as our brain seeks to rationalise and reassemble, encouraged and beguiled by the realism of the fractured parts.

Opposite: Derrick Guild, Label Anne Hyde after Sir Peter Lely, 2019, oil on linen, 173 x 122 cm 36

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F.C.B. Cadell RSA, RSW (1883–1937) 11 Portrait of Iain V.R. Harrison, 1932 oil on panel, 42.5 x 34.5 cm signed and dated lower right; inscribed on verso provenance The Harrison family, thence by descent

The Glasgow shipowner, Major Ion R. Harrison (1889–1952), was one of the most notable patrons of the Scottish Colourists, a collection he amassed at his home, Croft House in Helensburgh.

He purchased his first painting by Cadell in 1925, The Pink Azaleas and the two met in 1928. A friendship quickly developed and Cadell became a regular visitor to Croft House, often staying en route to Iona.

We suspect that Cadell painted this portrait of Ion’s elder son (who went on to run Harrison Clyde) whilst staying in Helensburgh on his return from Iona in 1932. On the same trip he painted his renowned painting Interior, Croft House (private collection). Cadell painted a number of the Harrison family members, including a portrait of Mrs. Harrison in 1933.

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William Crosbie RSA (1915–1999) 12 Portrait of T.J. Honeyman, 1945 oil on canvas, 101.5 x 76 cm signed and dated lower left provenance The Artist’s Estate

The portrait of T.J. Honeyman (1891–1971) reminds us of Crosbie’s considerable portrait practice, while the subject is a man whose significance in the Scottish art world cannot be overstressed. As a dealer with Reid & Lefevre, Honeyman was one of the principal supporters of the Scottish Colourists, becoming Hunter’s executor and biographer and then writing his Three Scottish Colourists in 1951. As Director of Kelvingrove Art Gallery he oversaw the expansion of the modern and contemporary collections, including the purchase of Salvador Dalí’s controversial Christ of St John of the Cross.

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William Crosbie RSA (1915–1999) 14 Catriona, 1969 oil on canvas, 127 x 76 cm William Crosbie RSA (1915–1999) 13 Still Life with Doll, 1982 oil on canvas, 46 x 35.5 cm

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signed upper right exhibited

signed and dated lower left; signed verso

Annual Exhibition, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, 1969, cat. 103

provenance

provenance

Private collection, Nairn

Private collection, Nairn 43

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William Crosbie RSA (1915–1999) 15 Anne, c.1978 oil on board, 25.5 x 20 cm signed lower left provenance The Artist’s Estate

William Crosbie remains something of an enigma in Scottish painting. His Surrealist paintings made principally during the Second World War have found proper context as significant examples of British Surrealism but otherwise the breadth and scope of his painting: portraiture, murals, landscape, the nude, still life and subject painting defy easy categorisation. Like many painters of his generation who looked at Surrealism for influence, his work often contains a hallucinatory quality. The doll was a favourite subject for a number of years, a fetishized object – the child in arrested development – strange to modern taste.

Anne, the artist’s second wife, is presented as a simple bust, the almond-eyes Modigliani-like, denying the ‘window to the soul’; after all, he knows her and we do not.

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Pat Douthwaite, York, 1984

Pat Douthwaite (1934–2002) 16 Bateman Street Girl, Cambridge, c.1968 oil on board, 120 x 120 cm signed lower left exhibited First Edinburgh Open Exhibition, Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh, 1968 illustrated Pat Douthwaite by Guy Peploe, Sansom & Company, 2016, pl. 14

Bateman Street Girl, Cambridge was one of a number of artworks exhibited at the First Edinburgh Open Exhibition held between David Hume Tower and the Demarco Gallery in 1968. Bateman Street in Cambridge (where Pat Douthwaite lived from c.1961 to c.1969) is close to the Botanic Gardens in the heart of the university quarter. The grotesque figure and accompanying beasts are characteristic of her work at this moment, placed in the heart of Douthwaite’s immediate surroundings. The starting point for Douthwaite’s emotionally charged works is always real experience, the truth of which is central to the success of the finished painting.

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Pat Douthwaite by Guy Peploe, Sansom & Company, 2016

Pat Douthwaite (1934–2002) 17 Happiness is Green Shield Stamps, 1969 oil and collage on board, 120 x 90 cm signed and dated upper left exhibited Pat Douthwaite, Paintings & Works on Paper, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2011; Cut and Paste: 400 Years of Collage, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Two, Edinburgh, 2019 illustrated The Technique of Collage by Helen Hutton, Batsford, London, 1968; Cut and Paste: 400 Years of Collage, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2019, p.144 provenance Private collection, Edinburgh

Green Shield stamps were introduced in the late fifties and quickly became part of the homogenised, aspirational culture of the sixties. Their use was referenced, in gentle satire, in songs

by Jethro Tull, Genesis and Flanders and Swann and here by Pat Douthwaite clasped in the hands of her chic, miniskirted shopper. This painting will be exhibited at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art’s exhibition Cut and Paste: 400 Years of Collage which runs from 29th June to 27th October 2019.

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David Eustace (b.1961) 18 John at Mayfield Gardens, 2019 archival pigment print, 37.5 x 27.8 cm (image size), edition of 12

The City of Edinburgh Council’s acquisition committee have recently agreed to purchase a suite of photographs by David Eustace for their Art Collection. These are the first photographs

by Eustace to enter the Council’s collection and represent a significant addition to the collection of historic and contemporary Scottish photography. Eustace, now resident in Edinburgh, is a vital figure in our culture through his creative work, stewardship of Napier University as Chancellor and his extraordinary oeuvre of photographic work.

David Eustace has made many images of his friend John Byrne over the years and Byrne is a brilliant model, immutable and vulnerable in front of the lens, his humanity palpable and genius unquestionable.

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MODERN MASTERS IX

Anne Redpath OBE, RSA, ARA, RWA (1895–1965) 19 Portrait of a Woman, c.1950 oil on board, 59 x 44 cm provenance The Artist’s family

Anne Redpath was a pivotal figure in the group of painters now referred to as The Edinburgh School. She had attended the 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 the varied responses to different subjects at different times.

Redpath was an inspirational person and formed many enduring friendships. She moved permanently to Edinburgh in 1949 and her flat in London Street became an artistic salon, celebrated by Sir Robin Philipson’s famous, affectionate group portrait in The Scottish National Portrait Gallery. We do not know who the sitter is in the portrait opposite but perhaps it was a chance meeting and the artist was inspired to paint her portrait; the sitter’s striking dark hair and features offset by a very pale and floral background.

Anne Redpath had considerable commercial success in her lifetime, enjoying a fruitful, consistent relationship with The Scottish Gallery and then with Reid & Lefevre in London.

Since her passing, her reputation has been further enhanced with retrospective and centenary exhibitions resulting in her being established as one of the great figures in 20th Century Scottish Painting.

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Recent Acquisitions Barbara BALMER 56 Dame Elizabeth BLACKADDER 58 Donald Morrison BUYERS 64 F.C.B. CADELL

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Kate DOWNIE 68 J.D. FERGUSSON 72 Ian FLEMING 74 The Earl HAIG 76 John HOUSTON 78 George Leslie HUNTER 84 John Maclauchlan MILNE 86 James MORRISON

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Alberto MORROCCO

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James PATERSON

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Sir Robin PHILIPSON

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Anne REDPATH

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Opposite: Ian Fleming, Blue Theme, Ferryden, c.1950, oil on board, 50 x 39.5 cm (detail) (cat. 31) 54

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Barbara BALMER

Barbara Balmer seated on right, 1969. Courtesy of Demarco European Art Foundation & Demarco Digital Archive, University of Dundee

Barbara Balmer RSA, RSW, RGI (1929–2017) 20 Kitchen at Cults, 1968 watercolour, 51 x 37 cm signed and dated lower left provenance Private collection, Aberdeen

Barbara Balmer was born in Birmingham and studied art in Coventry before continuing her education at Edinburgh College of Art. Barbara Balmer was a regular exhibitor at The Scottish Gallery from the 1960s – 1990. This painting, an interior of her kitchen, is a typical subject, often deploying a view from interior to exterior. Her style is immediately recognisable: pastel shades, precise drawing and a flattened sense of perspective creating an ethereal atmosphere. Her work can be found in many private and public collections including The Royal Collection, The Scottish National Portrait Gallery and Leicester City Museum.

Between 1970 and 1980, Barbara taught at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen. She was honoured with a major retrospective at Aberdeen Art Gallery in 1995.

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Dame Elizabeth BLACKADDER

Dame Elizabeth Blackadder RA, RSA, RSW, RGI (b.1931) 21 Abyssinian Cat, 1973 pastel & pencil, 32.5 x 47 cm signed and dated lower left; titled and inscribed on verso exhibited 148th Annual Exhibition, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, 1974, cat. 368

There is an alternative biography for Elizabeth Blackadder marked in cat dynasties. In the early seventies an elegant Abyssinian moved subtly camouflaged through Blackadder’s still life and interiors. Here he is caught in contemplation of a leap, the impossibly fine features in sharp focus, the soft body rendered beautifully in rubbed pastel. This is not a preparatory drawing, it is the artist expressing her love for the animal: its lithe, imperious independence.

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Dame Elizabeth BLACKADDER

Dame Elizabeth Blackadder RA, RSA, RSW, RGI (b.1931) 22 Still Life with Ribbons, 1974 oil on canvas board, 35 x 37 cm signed and dated lower right exhibited Festival Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1974, cat. 30

Forty-five years ago, this beautiful little picture featured in our Festival Exhibition, a one-person show for Dame Elizabeth in 1974. Real forms, organic forms, abstract forms are subtly organised in a picture space denied a conventional reading by horizontal and vertical divisions. Elements of pop and op are floated across beautifully modulated paint, which might have been inspired by Rothko or Milton Avery.

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Dame Elizabeth BLACKADDER

Elizabeth Blackadder with Kikko, c.1988

Dame Elizabeth Blackadder RA, RSA, RSW, RGI (b.1931) 23 Kikko, 1988 pastel, 38 x 38 cm signed and dated lower left

Elizabeth chose a Japanese name for her cat, Kikko, who perhaps reminded her of the Koi she had seen on her first trip to Japan in 1985. There are several drawings of Kikko, growing out of kitten-hood, here just waking giving a sleepy look to the viewer.

In still life and interior, she is a more defined presence than the Abyssinian, a solid tortoiseshell, but still unlikely to disturb the perfect arrangements.

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Donald Morrison BUYERS

Donald Buyers at ABBO group opening. McLellan Galleries, Glasgow, 1960, photography www.mcjazz.f2s.com

Donald Morrison Buyers RSW (1903–2003) 24 Fields and Trees, Aberdeenshire, 1962 oil on board, 60 x 122 cm signed and dated lower right provenance The late Hilary Bryson Estate

Donald Buyers was born in 1930 in Aberdeen where he attended the Grammar School and then Gray’s School of Art after which he assisted his tutor Robert Sivell in the murals at the University Union in Schoolhill. His was a quiet life, well lived, throughout which family and painting were his twin loves. A honeymoon in Paris turned into an extended stay and the School of Paris was always present in his work. Back in Aberdeen he began to teach in schools: Robert Gordon’s and eventually as a visiting lecturer at Gray’s, but he never stopped working and exhibiting.

Fields and Trees, Aberdeenshire of 1962 is one of his finest works.

It certainly owes something to the Modern British period, to Nash, Christopher Wood, Gillies and perhaps Robert Henderson Blyth, who was by then living in Aberdeen. But more it seems a heartfelt response to a deeply familiar landscape, understood as winter releases its grip, the uplands in the light, the banks of the river in shade, the fields and copses of trees at once real and a satisfying abstract pattern.

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F.C.B. CADELL

F.C.B. Cadell, 1932

F.C.B. Cadell RSA, RSW (1883–1937) 25 By Linlithgow, c.1909 watercolour, 20.5 x 30.5 cm signed lower left; label with painting details, cat. no. 91 verso provenance Private collection, Kilmarnock

The subject is likely to be near The Grange, by Linlithgow, the seat of the senior branch of the Cadell family finished in 1909 and where Cadell was a frequent visitor before the War. His technique in watercolour still owes a clear debt to his godfather Arthur Melville, wet washes on the edge of control where detail is suggested rather than drawn and the surface is a unified whole.

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Kate DOWNIE

Preparatory sketch for Digital Natives on napkin, 2019

Kate Downie RSA (b.1958) 26 Digital Natives, 2019 oil on canvas, 100 x 100 cm signed lower right exhibited There and Back, Panter & Hall, London, 2019

It was late January 2019. I was sitting alone for a good half hour in a pub in Tollcross after a day in the studio, waiting for my friend, who had missed her bus and was late.

I had prepared my canvases for the Digital Native/Tourist paintings that day and my head was full of compositional and colour ideas and memories of that day by the winter fair in Edinburgh. How best to begin the painting?

A borrowed ballpoint pen from the barman, a napkin and peering at photos taken on the back of my small iPhone, I scribbled away trying to get the core plan, the way to begin these paintings. It was in that delightful but strange incongruity of this temporary fun city thrown up helter-skelter upon the more sober and functional stone infrastructure of Edinburgh.

Or perhaps like a large set of colourful Lego or Meccano had been tipped out onto the floor of the city and arranged into pleasing swirls and inviting passages of bunting and noise.

All of this started to make sense to me as a jumble of lines on a napkin, all leading to that full-size, full colour painting.

Kate Downie 68

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Kate DOWNIE

Kate Downie RSA (b.1958) 27 South Tower Yellow Crane, 2017 hand-tinted etching, 57 x 74 cm

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Kate Downie RSA (b.1958) 28 Long Light on the Late Train, 2005

signed lower right

lithograph, 67 x 103 cm

artist’s proof

edition of 36 71

J.D. FERGUSSON

Fergusson was attracted to strong, independent women and led his life surrounded by models, art students and later the dancers studying with the Margaret Morris Dance Movement Schools.

From his time in Paris onwards he drew them constantly, draped and undraped, each work an act of love and admiration in recognition of the vital creative role they played in his artistic life. These two works date from Fergusson’s time in Paris in 1907.

J.D. Fergusson RBA (1874–1961) 29 Parisian Model, c.1907 chalk, 35.5 x 25.5 cm exhibited S.J. Peploe and his Contemporaries, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1985, cat. 33 Fergusson in his Paris studio, c.1910 © The Fergusson Gallery, Perth & Kinross Council 72

J.D. Fergusson RBA (1874–1961) 30 La Servante, Paris, 1907 conté, 21 x 13 cm

provenance

exhibited

Private collection, Buckinghamshire

Duncan Miller Fine Art, London 73

Ian FLEMING

Ian Fleming at Gray’s School of Art staff and students, Aberdeen, 1971. Fleming seen with pipe. Courtesy of Demarco European Art Foundation & Demarco Digital Archive, University of Dundee

Ian Fleming RSA, RSW (1906–1994) 31 Blue Theme, Ferryden, c.1950 oil on board, 50 x 39.5 cm signed lower left; signed and inscribed with title verso

Ian Fleming was born and schooled in Glasgow and taught at the Glasgow School of Art from 1931 until 1947. He was an encouraging teacher who quietly nurtured the careers of many painters, including the Roberts, Colquhoun and MacBryde, and Joan Eardley. He moved to Aberdeen (by way of Hospitalfield House in Arbroath) and eventually became Head of Painting at Gray’s School of Art. An early love of etching was sustained and in 1987 he showed a series of etchings at The Scottish Gallery.

In painting, he was an influence on many, including William Burns, Robert Henderson Blyth and Joan Eardley. Ferryden, which lies directly South of Montrose on the banks of the River Esk, is now home to the shipping industry and Montrose Port Authority. In this painting, Fleming finds his subject at the harbourside amongst the verticals of the sea wall and posts.

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The Earl HAIG

The Earl Haig, c.1981, photography by Robert Mabon

The Earl Haig OBE, RSA (1918–2009) 32 The Bridge at Hever Castle, 1980 watercolour, 27 x 38 cm signed and dated lower right provenance Private collection, Aberdeen

Prince Philip, an old friend of Earl Haig, noted in his foreword to Dawyck’s ninetieth birthday show ten years ago, that “A prison of war camp is not the most likely place to start a career as a painter, but it led to studies at Camberwell Art School, it was obviously more than a way of passing the time at the notorious Colditz Castle in Germany. His first show at The Scottish Gallery was of work done in captivity, but then he went on to exhibit regularly; this is his fifteenth.”

We hosted his Memorial show at The Gallery in Edinburgh in 2010. These shows helped to secure his reputation as a significant artist, finally seeing off the taint of dilettantism, the sense that his aristocratic heritage somehow disbarred him from serious consideration. The Gallery was always a champion and our sixtyfive years of representation can have few parallels in the annals of the art world. While his work on paper is informational, colour local rather than expressionist in character, his achievements in watercolour are a significant part of his legacy. This painting was completed in 1980 whilst staying with his sister at Hever Castle in Essex, the home of the Astor family. His sister, Lady Irene Haig, married Baron Astor in 1945.

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John HOUSTON

John Houston OBE, RSA, RSW (1930–2008) 33 Table in a Landscape, c.1962 gouache, 17.5 x 23 cm signed lower left exhibited Festival Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1962, cat. 63

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John Houston OBE, RSA, RSW (1930–2008) 34 Tulips, Red and Yellow, c.1975

provenance

oil on canvas, 36 x 25.5 cm

Private collection, Fife

signed lower left; signed and titled verso 79

John HOUSTON

John Houston and the Bass Rock, 1991, photograph by Elizabeth Blackadder

John Houston OBE, RSA, RSW (1930–2008) 35 East Lothian Sunset, 1978 watercolour on Japanese paper, 60 x 90 cm signed and dated lower left provenance Private collection, Edinburgh

“[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 80

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John HOUSTON

John Houston OBE, RSA, RSW (1930–2008) 36 Shinto Temple, Ise, 1989 oil on canvas, 30.5 x 35.5 cm signed and dated lower right; inscribed with title verso exhibited Mercury Gallery, London, September 1989 provenance Private collection, London

“There is a contemplative side to Houston’s nature, a gentleness that reflects his love of Japan, an admiration for traditional Japanese art and architecture, for the grace and symbolism of its gardens and the quiet mysteries of its Shinto religion.”

Roger Billcliffe, 1996 82

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George Leslie HUNTER

George Leslie Hunter, c.1920

George Leslie Hunter (1879–1931) 37 Fife Landscape, c.1922 pen & wash, 8.5 x 18 cm exhibited Colourist Exhibition, Cork Street, London, The Scottish Gallery, 2011, cat. 17 provenance Private collection, Anstruther; St Andrews Fine Art, c.1980; Private collection, Kilmarnock

Fife proved one of Hunter’s most productive painting grounds in the early twenties. He painted and drew the villages and harbours of the East Neuk as well the interior of the Ancient Kingdom: the mills, farms and cottages with their distinctive red pantile roofs provided inspiration.

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John Maclauchlan MILNE

The Beach and Goat Fell, Brodick, Isle of Arran, c.1930, archive postcard

John Maclauchlan Milne RSA (1885–1957) 38 Goat Fell, c.1940 oil on board, 52 x 60 cm signed lower left provenance Private collection, Grantown-on-Spey

Milne is often referred to as the fifth Scottish Colourist and indeed his work and life have strong connections to his betterknown contemporaries. Like Fergusson he enjoyed a long, productive life and his many paintings of the hills and harbours of Arran, where he moved at the outset of the War, are a distinct and important legacy.

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James MORRISON

James Morrison in Sutherland, c.2000

James Morrison RSA, RSW (b.1932) 39 Mountains, Sutherland, 1990 oil on board, 81 x 115 cm signed and dated lower right exhibited Riverside Gallery, Stonehaven

In the summer of 1983, Morrison made his first painting trip to the west coast of Scotland to Morar in Locahaber, just south of Skye. After resigning from Duncan of Jordanstone in Dundee in 1987, Morrison made annual trips to the north-west mostly in May and June. These huge, light-filled paintings completed en plein air capture the changing weather and light of a primordial landscape, devoid of human influence. The ancient geology of Sutherland had an attraction for Morrison, where the great vistas, low islands in the sea and mountains rising from sea level provided endless scope for painting. This view is from an inlet at Achnahaird looking south over mountains at Torridon; Suilven, Canisp and Cul Mhor.

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Alberto MORROCCO

Alberto Morrocco, 1996, photograph by Chris Close

Alberto Morrocco OBE, FRSA, FRSE, RSW (1917–1998) 40 Flowers in a White Jug, c.1972 oil on canvas, 66 x 46 cm signed upper right; signed and inscribed with title on label verso provenance Private collection, Edinburgh

Flowers in a White Jug is a simple realisation of a bunch of flowers: unpretentious, rustic, domestic. It might be called academic, but it is more like an observation of a real flower arrangement, perhaps in the cool corridor of a little pensione, the commemorative jug sitting on a lace cloth, the flowers from the garden rather than the flower shop.

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Alberto MORROCCO

Alberto Morrocco OBE, FRSA, FRSE, RSW (1917–1998) 41 Sunbather at Circeo, 1981 oil on canvas, 36 x 40 cm signed and dated lower right; signed and inscribed with title verso exhibited The Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh provenance Private collection, Edinburgh

Round a corner, by a cactus, underneath a high whitewashed wall: this is serious sunbathing. Beyond are two beach umbrellas: one up, one down and a deckchair, beyond these the solid blue of the Tyrrhenian Sea with a sail on the horizon. Perhaps Morrocco is looking out from an apartment window, or more likely he has wandered past, registered the information and made a drawing which that winter, or years later, could become a picture.

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James PATERSON

James Paterson, c.1910, The Glasgow Boys

by Roger Billcliffe, John Murray, 1985, p.16

James Paterson PRSW, RSA, RWS (1954–1932) 42 Windmill, Santa Cruz, Tenerife, 1902–03 oil on canvas, 61 x 51 cm signed lower right provenance Fine Art Society, Edinburgh, 1973; Private collection, East Lothian

Paterson spent his early professional life with his wife in a cottage in Moniaive and these are the works principally associated with the Glasgow Boys. In the early years of the 20th Century he moved to Edinburgh and travelled more extensively making more than one visit to Tenerife. Here his subject was the wild coast and rough mountainous interior. The capital of Santa Cruz is a port lying in the lee of the Anaga mountains, the coastal plain dotted with stone windmills, all elements which make up Paterson’s painting, whose foreground may well be the stone surround of another windmill.

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Sir Robin PHILIPSON

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

Sir Robin Philipson PPRSA, RA, HRA, RSW (1916–1992) 43 Crowing Cock, c.1960 oil on board, 61 x 46 cm inscribed with title and artist’s name on label verso exhibited Roland, Browse & Darby, London provenance Private collection, Aberdeen

Philipson’s Fighting Cock series originated in the Second World War when he was stationed in India and made sketches of men watching a cock fight. When he returned to them in the 1950s, he reversed the subject – instead focusing on the birds. Cockerels became a recurrent theme in his painting well into the 60s.

He sketched them in France, studying their colour and movement, and in poultry research facilities at home. The style of the work is free, gestural and abstract and while the nature of the subject and the Wartime influence speak to violence and the primal in human nature, Philipson took effort to make them decorative and beautiful – his concern perhaps being technical invention and the act of painting over symbolism. Crowing Cock is part of this rich series of painting, painted shortly after his first wife’s death, when his painting was reflecting his grief. The bird stands high on its legs, the paint free of any definitive outline, conveying sound and frenetic movement.

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Sir Robin PHILIPSON

Dr. Elizabeth Cumming’s biography of Robin Philipson published last year is a full, overdue and splendid tribute.

It is not the first book on the artist, however, and might well not be the last dedicated to a painter of complexity, brilliance and ambition who remains steadfastly individual, impossible to fit into a narrative history of Scottish or British painting. The monumental scale of his work in triptych is only matched by his student and friend John Bellany who also, up until 1985, shared a fearlessness in tackling complex and disturbing subject matter. With Philipson we are often seduced by his brilliant colour and dazzling technique, and he was studious in avoiding an overt moral position, or indeed any single reading of his work. But the pity in subjects such as The Great War and The Passion, the violence of the cockfight or charging horse, the sexual tension in his brothel scenes are treated with the same glorious élan. He was also attracted to the decorative, to the rose window and church interior and towards the end of his life the poppy paintings which represent one of his most successful subjects.

Robin Philipson by Elizabeth Cumming, Sansom & Company, 2018

Sir Robin Philipson PPRSA, RA, HRA, RSW (1916–1992) 44 The Embrace, c.1976 oil on canvas, 50.8 x 50.8 cm inscribed with the title and artist’s name on label verso exhibited Festival Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery Edinburgh, 1976, cat. 59 provenance Private collection, Edinburgh 98

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Sir Robin PHILIPSON

Sir Robin Philipson PPRSA, RA, HRA, RSW (1916–1992) 45 Poppies on a Dark Ground, 1984 oil on board, 76 x 76 cm signed verso; inscribed with title and artist’s name on label verso exhibited Sir Robin Philipson Exhibition, The Macaulay Gallery, East Lothian, September 1984, cat. 52 provenance Private collection, Perthshire

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.

“What attracted me to poppies was their splendour – the sheer power and yet the delicacy of their colour – the cold and warm reds and very subtle translucent lights. I began modelling their form in whites and a range of neutral colours. When this ‘white’ stage was quite dry, the strong colours were created by laying thin glazes of pale translucent paint over the top, sometimes up to ten or more on top of the other. Some of the blacks are built up in the same way over a bed of very rich blue or crimson.”

Robin Philipson by Elizabeth Cumming, Sansom & Company, 2018, p.134 100

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Sir Robin PHILIPSON

Sir Robin Philipson PPRSA, RA, HRA, RSW (1916–1992) 46 Painter and Trouvères, 1990–91 oil on board, 84 x 96 cm signed and dated verso exhibited Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London, 1991 provenance Private collection, Edinburgh

The masked figures of the troubadours and the painter in the right-hand side of the frame remind us of Carnival in Venice. The stylistic link is to the Expressionism of Ernst Kirchner or Philipson’s one-time student John Bellany. The painting describes an ambiguous series of spaces, playing with perspective and planes of vision heightening the haunting and surreal quality of the painting. In reviewing Philipson’s 1991 exhibition at the Bruton Gallery in Bath (one of the last in the artist’s lifetime), the critic Richard Jacques described his latest works as “magnificent… encapsulating Philipson’s qualities at their painterly and philosophical best”.

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Anne REDPATH

Anne Redpath in her studio, c.1960.

Courtesy of the artist’s family.

Anne Redpath OBE, RSA, ARA, RWA (1895–1965) 47 Flowers in a Jug, c.1963 oil on board, 82.5 x 72.5 cm signed lower left provenance Tom Bell Fine Art, Troon, Ayrshire; Private collection, Ayrshire

This late still life by Anne Redpath has the qualities in her art which made her name: a strong use of colour, bold handling of paint and an understanding that a painting was to be enjoyed by both artist and viewer alike.

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BUY FROM US SELL WITH US The Scottish Gallery first exhibited the work of Joan Eardley in 1955 and we have championed her work for over 70 years.

We have done much to maintain and develop her profile through significant exhibitions and publications; we have sold numerous important works to public and private collections. If you own an artwork by Joan Eardley bought from The Scottish Gallery or elsewhere and are considering selling, we would be delighted to hear from you.

The Scottish Gallery offers a comprehensive and discreet service to those seeking advice on valuation or wishing to sell works of art. Sometimes it will be our advice to seek an appraisal with an auctioneer but these days the costs of conducting business at auction, particularly for a potential vendor, are such that today the Gallery option is much more attractive. How much better to have an entirely private arrangement with The Scottish Gallery who will take every consideration into account and charge considerably less for so doing. Do get in touch for a free appraisal and advice from Guy Peploe, Tommy Zyw and Christina Jansen, who between them have over sixty years of experience of the market to draw on.

Joan Eardley, Drying Salmon Nets, oil on board, 91 x 69 cm. Sold 2013.

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NEXT VALUATION DAYS 19 and 21 September 2019 PLEASE CONTACT THE GALLERY mail@scottish-gallery.co.uk 0131 558 1200 107

Published by The Scottish Gallery to coincide with the exhibition MODERN MASTERS IX 24 July – 24 August 2019 Exhibition can be viewed online at www.scottish-gallery.co.uk/modernmasters ISBN: 978 1 912900 05 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Scottish Gallery would like to thank Michael Walton MBE for his text and archive photographs (p.2, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14).

Thanks to Kate Downie for her catalogue text (p.68). For access to artist photographs we would like to thank the Royal Scottish Academy (p.19, 22) and the Demarco Digital Archive (p.56, 74).

Designed by Kenneth Gray Photography by John McKenzie Printed by Barr Colour Printers 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.

Right: William Crosbie, Anne, c.1978, oil on board, 25.5 x 20 cm (cat. 15) 108