The J.G. Scott Collection | August 2021 | The Scottish Gallery

The J.G. Scott Collection

The J.G. Scott Collection 30 July – 28 August 2021

the j.g. scott collection

The home of J.G. Scott 2

The J.G. Scott Collection What can we tell about the man from his collection of art? Graham Scott lived a contained life, unadorned by pretention or pride, no possession was a trophy, nothing placed for effect or designed to satisfy requirements of interior decoration; nor were his pictures just possessions – like stamps or coins. No, they were to be seen, contemplated and enjoyed. In his modest flat, he could not have accommodated work on a grand scale. He had the world of the museum, always at the disposal of the inveterate traveller, to satisfy his need for the masterpiece. Within the crowded walls of his home, we find many subjects and individual voices, and can surmise correctly that he was a polymath.

The landscape of his beloved Scotland is well represented, from William Daniell to Geoff Uglow and William Gillies; topography matters, but so does expressionism – what we feel is as true as what we see. There are hints as to some of the areas of special interest in the mind of the collector, but the collection is much more personal than a mere survey of intellectual territory. With certain artists – Gillies, Joan Eardley, and Michael McVeigh being good examples, he has strength in depth. Acquiring a work was not ticking a box, it was an act of support, an affirmation (albeit private) and many painters recognised in Graham Scott the heart of a true collector.

He also made his purchases in a spirit of generosity and would quietly become an advocate for the young creative, as he had been for so many sixth-formers at George Watson’s College. He often asked of a gallery owner (with no hint of self-interest), if they had considered the merits

of this or that painter, and the gallerist would be a fool who dismissed his considered opinion. Like many collectors, the works of art become little way markers in a life, reflecting a moment – a moment, perhaps, when after years of saving he found he could afford choice examples of work by his favourite artists.

With changing times, his tastes had developed and could accommodate the pure, joyous abstraction of Alan Davie or Antoni Tàpies. He was not constrained by media: he bought the fantastical ceramics of Stephen Bird and revelled in the esoteric world of the artist print, which brought original imagery by European greats into the realm of affordability. He cared not a jot for fashion and some of his favourites may remain obscure, but he was up to date in his exploration, however personal his take. He bought the New Wave Glasgow painters like Howson and Conroy in the mid-eighties, and he responded to the expressionist Joseph Urie and the damaged genius Ian Hughes, when they showed in The Vigorous Imagination in 1987 (and made them friends).

He was a modest man, recognising that his own taste was a private matter, he was surprised if a visitor appreciated his latest purchase, and was willing to share his insights but never to lecture or impose a view. In a life dedicated to carefully tailored and inspired didacticism, his own home and collection were a private matter: a resting place for the intellect, an extension of self but devoid of ego through which we can certainly know the man.

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J.G. Scott: The Quiet Man

J.G. Scott, c.2002

When I made my first appearance in Watson’s as a nervous trainee teacher in 1969, I could not help but be made aware of a number of striking figures on the then predominantly male staff. I use the phrase striking figures without the connotations which it would carry in relation to the now more interestingly mixed staff of teachers. One of these striking figures at the end of the sixties was a dark, handsome man of 39 – the evergreen age of Jack Benny (for those who remember) and with something of that old time American comedian’s distinguished and unassailable air.

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I was soon to discover that the ebony-haired schoolmaster, a teacher of French and Russian, also possessed something of Jack Benny’s droll humour, because, although I did not make Graham’s acquaintance during my five weeks as a student teacher, I was fortunate enough to be introduced to him shortly afterwards at The Edinburgh Filmhouse. I found at once a kindred spirit – and also found myself sitting in his bachelor flat at Abbotsford Court, drinking Drambuie into the small hours of the morning.

This allowed our wonderfully clarified minds to range over what even then represented some of Graham’s abiding interests: 20th century French and American literature, Baudelaire and Rimbaud, Scottish literature, politics and art, Hugh McDiarmid, classical music and jazz, European history and politics, international affairs and the survival of the Democratic Intellect in Scottish life and education.

Born in 1930 in Douglas, Lanark, where he did his primary schooling, Graham became Dux of Lanark Grammar School in 1947, graduating with honours French and German from Glasgow University in 1952 and with the distinction you would expect.

Two years’ National Service with the R.A.F were spent mainly at Cambridge University School of Slavonic Studies, pursuing a course as military interpreter in Russian. If a year spent as a trainee inspector of Taxes could be rightly described as a curious hiccup, it might be said with equal certainty that the decision to enrol at Moray House in 1955 brought the high-flying Flight Lieutenant and failed taxman back onto the right runway.

The course from then on seems predetermined. After two years at Dalkeith High School, he was appointed to George Watson’s College in 1958, the very year when an exceptional young Headmaster took office and bade fair to transform the school. Watson’s had been fortunate in its staff both before and after, but it seems to me a masterstroke of fate that two such intellectual giants were appointed to the School in the same year. Typically, Graham taught for more than a decade in Watson’s before he was persuaded with some difficulty, as I remember, to take on the post of Head of the Modern Languages Department.

But Roger Young would not leave him alone!

The Head of Department’s post was a fleeting stepping stone to that of Assistant Principle as Head of The Upper School in 1970, a post which again Graham thought deeply about before accepting it and one which he has occupied with distinction, earning the admiration of all his colleagues for his gravitas, his freedom from flashiness, self-aggrandisement and display. In particular, many younger members of staff have seen Graham as their mentor and friend, having recognised in him a talent they could envy, a mind they could admire, a champion they could rely on and turn to when the going got rough.

Pupils speak with awe of his knowledge and his inspirational teaching, the high point of which, unquestionably, were his lessons on Baudelaire, delivered with a charisma that has made hot-blooded Frenchmen themselves gasp – and declare that George Watson’s College is one of the last places in the world where one may drink the milk of paradise.

Alas no more. The Modern Languages Department will feel keenly the loss of a brilliantly gifted teacher; Sixth form masters and mistresses will feel the loss of an enlightened and liberal spirit who has spent 21 years teaching pupils and colleagues alike that the Sixth must be viewed with a difference, otherwise we merely emerge in sterile repetition and deprive our eldest pupils on the very doorstep of the world of their best lesson for life.

In the last week of session, I stood once again in the Abbotsford flat with Pat, my wife, and half a dozen other colleagues, astonished by the diversity and richness of Graham’s ever-growing collection of contemporary paintings. As an overbookish man myself, I have always tended to the view that a man’s library is the best index to his mind, and we all know J.G. to be a well-read man.

It is Graham’s paintings however, that possess the power to startle; not merely for their inherent art but because they shout from the walls that the man who brought them together in one place – “infinite riches in a little room” – is in reality a complex man, of whom, over many years, you have seen merely the surface. Perhaps not even the surface. Most people never penetrated the crust.

And yet, is it not the case that this outwardly stern and maybe even a little forbidding figure is actually one of the gentlest and kindest of men?

Yes, that is so – if, in his opinion, you have merited the discovery.

Adapted from a text by Christopher Rush (upon Graham’s retirement in the early 1990s)

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List of Plates Mardi Barrie RSW (1930–2004) [1] Dark Sky, Snow Valley, 1981

JD Fergusson RBA (1874–1961) [26] Man in a Hat, Paris, c.1908–09

John Bellany CBE, RA, HRSA (1942–2013) [2] The Snowdon Skate, 1990 [3] Fury, 1993

Josef Herman OBE, RA (1911–2000) [27] Dusk [28] Figure in Space

John Brown RSW (b.1945) [4] Magnificent Magnolia, 2014

Peter Howson OBE (b.1958) [29] The Jokers, 1985

Alan Davie (1920–2014) [5] Gigantic Feather Machine, 2000

Ian Hughes (1958–2014) [30] Portrait (Kierling), 1987 [31] Untitled (Refugees), 1995 [32] Untitled, Double Portrait, 1996 [33] Amputation, c.1996–98 [34] Untitled, Figures, 1999

Joan Eardley RSA (1921–1963) [6] The Close Mouth, c.1958 [7] Group of Figures, c.1955–60 [8] The Coal Cart, c.1955–60 [9] Old Woman, c.1948 [10] Jetty with Crane, c.1950–55 [11] Tenement, c.1950 [12] Boy, c.1950–55 [13] Head of a Boy, c.1950–55 [14] Red Sandstone Gable End, c.1958–60 [15] Tenement Corner, Townhead, c.1958–60 [16] Glasgow Corner Shop, c.1955–60 [17] Boy in Red Jumper, c.1960–62 [18] Storm over the Sea, Catterline, c.1961–63 Sir William Gillies CBE, RSA, RA, PPRSW (1898–1973) [19] Study for Summer Moon [20] Pool in the Meldons, 1960 [21] Wet Weather, 1961 [22] The Tweed at Lyne, Winter, c.1967 [23] East Lothian, The Tyne, c.1968 [24] Anstruther [25] Gladhouse from Toxside

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Henry Kondracki RSA (b.1953) [35] The Summer Fair, 2012 Sir William MacTaggart PPRSA, RA, RSW (1903–1981) [36] Harbour Scene Ewan McClure (b.1975) [37] Tourists in the Rain John McLean (1939–2019) [38] Untitled, 1994 Mary McLean (1962–2018) [39] Ognissanti, Florence, 1985 James McNaught RSW, RGI (b.1948) [40] The Little Secret of Guillaume

Apollinaire, 2011 [41] The Arrival of Esmerelda, 2012 [42] The Scream, 2018 [43] The Confession of Fernando Rey, 2010

Michael McVeigh (b.1957) [44] Snow on the Canongate, 2013 [45] Eyemouth, 2014 [46] Pittenweem [47] Pogues, A Pair of Browneyes [48] Pogues, A Pair of Browneyes James Morrison RSW, RSW (1932–2020) [49] Middleton Wood, c.1990 Alberto Morrocco RSA, RSW (1917–1998) [50] Melon Seller and Bather, 1996 Leon Morrocco RSA, RGI (b.1942) [51] Selling Fish, Marina Beach, Chennai, 2009 Robert Powell (b.1985) [52] Ruinewart or the Architect of Ruins, 2013 [53] Bound for other Isolations, c.2019 [54] The Annunciation, 2019 [55] Winter Knight, 2019 Geoffrey Roper (b.1942) [56] East Sands, North Berwick, 2018 [57] The Bridge Geoff Uglow (b.1978) [58] 19.11.10 Joseph Urie (b.1947) [59] Figure and Dog, 1985 [60] Conflict, 1987 [61] Floating Figure, 1991 [62] Spanish Incidents, 2016 [63] Girl on a Bed, 1984

PRINTS John Bellany, CBE, RA, HRSA (1942–2013) [64] Ominous Presence I, 1971 [65] Woman with Tambourine, c.1994 David Byers Brown (b.1960) [66] Raising of Lazarus, c.1978 John Clerk of Eldin (1728–1812) [67] Stirling from Kinneil, 1776 [68] Dunbarton Castle from the West [69] Dunfermline, 1773 [70] Cambuskenneth Abbey and Stirling, 1773 Robert Colquhoun (1914–1962) [71] Woman and Crab (London Barmaid), 1946 Stephen Conroy (b.1963) [72] Megaphone Man, 1987 William Daniell RA (1769–1837) [73] Greenock on the Clyde [74] Near View of Shiant Isles [75] Pier at Tanera, Loch Broom [76] Steam Boat on the Clyde near Dunbarton Ian Fleming RSA, RSW (1906–1994) [77] Gilshochill, c.1935-38 Peter Howson OBE (b.1958) [78] Last Prayer, 1987 Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) [79] Untitled, Composition I, c.1990–2000 [80] Untitled, Composition II, c.1990–2000 [81] Mirada (A Glance), 1995 [82] Untitled, c.1990–2000 Frederik de Wit (1629–1706) [83] The Parliament House in Edinburgh,

after J. Gordon, c.1649

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Mardi Barrie, c.1980.

Photograph by Robert Mabon

Mardi Barrie RSW (1930–2004) [1] Dark Sky, Snow Valley, 1981 gouache on board, 19 x 23 cm signed lower left Exhibited Christmas Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1981

Mardi Barrie was an exact contemporary of Elizabeth Blackadder and John Houston and like Houston she came from Fife and attended Edinburgh College of Art from 1948. She went on to teach at Broughton School in Edinburgh. She exhibited widely, including latterly with the Bruton Gallery and the Thackeray in London as well as one-person and group shows with The Scottish Gallery. Like so many Edinburgh Diplomats she owes something to William Gillies, in particular his later oils when he employed a palette knife.

Also, like Gillies, she eschewed strong colour, preferring earth tones, her work inhabiting a stygian world of dusk and shadow. Her landscape routinely misses out the horizon, her subject as much in the landscape as of it. In this she is allied to painters such as Peter Lanyon and Ivon Hitchens and William Burns in Scotland, the abstract a means to address the natural world and a rich impasto and paint surface the plastic equivalent of the textures of the landscape.

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John Bellany CBE, RA, HRSA (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 and the Royal College of Art from 1965 to 1968. His early work in Northern European ExpressionistRealist tradition allied to personal symbolism and iconography, often drawn from his family's sea-faring past. 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 liver transplant in the 1980s. He is considered an artist of international standing, with works in both MOMA and Metropolitan Museum in New York as well as the Tate Gallery, London.

He was elected Royal Academician in 1991. In 2016 the National Galleries Scotland hosted a major retrospective of his work to mark the artist's 70th birthday.

John Bellany, c.1992 11

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John Bellany CBE, RA, HRSA (1942–2013) [2] The Snowdon Skate, 1990 watercolour, 58 x 37 cm signed upper right 12

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John Bellany CBE, RA, HRSA (1942–2013) [3] Fury, 1993 oil on canvas, 38 x 31 cm signed upper right 14

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John Brown, c.2017. Photograph by Pietro Cenini

John Brown RSW (b.1945) [4] Magnificent Magnolia, 2014 mixed media on board, 27 x 28 cm signed lower right Exhibited John Brown, Centro Habana, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2014, cat. 40 16

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Alan Davie, c.1987. Galerie Louis Carré & Cie

Alan Davie (1920–2014) [5] Gigantic Feather Machine, 2000 oil on board, 23 x 27 cm signed, titled and dated verso 18

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Joan Eardley RSA (1921–1963) There is an enduring fascination for Joan Eardley, far beyond her unconventional life and early death at the age of forty-two. Born in 1921 in Sussex, Joan Eardley’s family moved to Scotland in 1939, and a year later she joined The Glasgow School of Art. She found subjects in the shipyards of Clydebank and the slums of Townhead. In the run-down tenements and buildings, and later the children and streetlife around Rottenrow, where the character of the people and the place became the vital subject of her work. Her art education finished with scholarship visits to Paris and the cities of Renaissance Italy, and back in Scotland she ventured with her art school friends to Arran, and then back to the south of France. By the fifties, Joan Eardley divided her life between her studio in Townhead and the fishing village of Catterline, a place she had discovered in the North East of Scotland. Eardley felt at ease in these two contrasting localities; over the succeeding decade, as if by accident, she created an epic vision of the world from no more than two streets and one small fishing hamlet. While the slums of Townhead are no more, the harsh realities memorialised by the honesty of her vision, the spirit of the people invested in its children captured, endure like no other example in the history of art. Catterline remains unchanged, and the village is inevitably a place of pilgrimage for the thousands who admire the artist’s deep-felt engagement with nature on the Kincardineshire coast. The Scottish Gallery held its first Joan Eardley exhibition in 1961 and later her memorial in 1964.

Guy Peploe

Joan Eardley painting in Catterline, 1961.

Photograph by Audrey Walker 21

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Joan Eardley RSA (1921–1963) [6] The Close Mouth, c.1958 gouache, 24 x 22 cm signed lower left Exhibited Festival Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1958; Joan Eardley RSA – Paintings & Drawings, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2007; Joan Eardley, A Sense of Place, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 2016, cat. 34 22

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Joan Eardley RSA (1921–1963) [7] Group of Figures, c.1955–60 pastel on paper, 9 x 12.5 cm Provenance The artist’s studio inventory number ED315 24

Joan Eardley RSA (1921–1963) [8] The Coal Cart, c.1955–60 pastel on paper, 10 x 13 cm Provenance The artist’s studio inventory ED562; Roland Browse & Delbanco, London; Ewan Mundy Fine Art, Glasgow 25

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Joan Eardley RSA (1921–1963) [9] Old Woman, c.1948 pastel on paper, 18 x 13 cm Exhibited Christmas Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1968, cat. 90 Provenance The artist’s studio inventory number ED370 26

Joan Eardley RSA (1921–1963) [10] Jetty with Crane, c.1950–55 pastel on paper, 20.2 x 25.2 cm Exhibited Joan Eardley RSA – Paintings & Drawings, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2007 Provenance The artist’s studio inventory ED580 27

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Joan Eardley RSA (1921–1963) [11] Tenement, c.1950 pastel on three sheets, 23 x 16.5 cm Exhibited Joan Eardley, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 1985; Joan Eardley, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh and Portland Gallery, London, 2016, cat. 16 Provenance The artist’s studio inventory ED400; Cyril Gerber Fine Art, Glasgow 28

Joan Eardley RSA (1921–1963) [12] Boy, c.1950–55 pastel on paper, 17 x 10 cm signed lower left Provenance Ewan Mundy Fine Art, Glasgow 29

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Joan Eardley RSA (1921–1963) [13] Head of a Boy, c.1950–55 pastel and watercolour, 25 x 19 cm Exhibited Festival Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1958; Joan Eardley RSA – Paintings & Drawings, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2007; Joan Eardley, A Sense of Place, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 2016, cat. 35 Provenance The artist’s studio inventory number ED659 30

Joan Eardley RSA (1921–1963) [14] Red Sandstone Gable End, c.1958–60 pastel on paper, 10 x 12.5 cm Exhibited Joan Eardley RSA – Paintings & Drawings, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2007 Provenance The artist’s studio inventory number ED433 31

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Joan Eardley RSA (1921–1963) [15] Tenement Corner, Townhead, c.1958–60 pastel on paper, 12.5 x 10 cm Exhibited Joan Eardley, In Context, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2015, cat. 12; Joan Eardley, Restless Talent, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2017, cat. 11 Provenance The artist’s studio inventory number ED400 32

Joan Eardley RSA (1921–1963) [16] Glasgow Corner Shop, c.1955–60 pastel on paper, 25.5 x 24.5 cm Exhibited Joan Eardley, A Sense of Place, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 2016, cat. 12 Provenance The artist’s studio inventory number ED545 photographer: Andy Phillipson/livewireimage.com 33

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Joan Eardley RSA (1921–1963) [17] Boy in Red Jumper, c.1960–62 pastel on paper, 27 x 23 cm Provenance Roland Browse & Delbanco, London; Ewan Mundy Fine Art, Glasgow; Castlegate House Gallery, Cockermouth 34

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Joan Eardley RSA (1921–1963) [18] Storm over the Sea, Catterline, c.1961–63 pastel on paper, 25 x 20 cm Exhibited Joan Eardley, In Context, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2015, cat. 25 Provenance The artist’s studio inventory number ED1401 36

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Sir William Gillies CBE, RSA, RA, PPRSW (1898–1973) William Gillies was one of the most significant Scottish artists of the 20th century and still highly underrated in Modern British terms.

Born in Haddington, he trained and taught at Edinburgh College of Art. He led by example at the College, 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. 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. His still life and landscape oils tend to be composed studio pieces of subtle complexity, but watercolours, often created en plien air are lyrically observed renderings of the Scottish landscape, in particular the hills and countryside of Midlothian and the Scottish Borders. It was Gillies’ scenes of the Scottish landscape that Graham Scott was drawn to in particular, often noting the exact locations of the paintings on the reverse of the frame.

“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 antiintellectual. ‘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

William Gillies at Loch Tummel, 1936. Royal Scottish Academy of Art & Architecture (William Gillies Bequest) 38

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Sir William Gillies CBE, RSA, RA, PPRSW (1898–1973) [19] Study for Summer Moon pen and watercolour, 27 x 32 cm signed lower left, titled, and signed verso Exhibited William Gillies Centenary Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1998, cat. 40 40

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Sir William Gillies CBE, RSA, RA, PPRSW (1898–1973) [20] Pool in the Meldons, 1960 watercolour and pencil, 23 x 36 cm signed and dated lower right Exhibited Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour, Edinburgh; William Gillies Retrospective, Scottish Arts Council, 1970, cat. 197 Provenance William and Mary Armour, Glasgow 42

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Sir William Gillies CBE, RSA, RA, PPRSW (1898–1973) [21] Wet Weather, 1961 watercolour and pencil, 25 x 35 cm signed and dated lower right, signed and titled on label verso

J.G. Scott suspected this painting depicts Garvald Farm (Garvald translates as ‘wild burn’ in Gaelic) on the road between Innerleithen and Middleton.

Since Gillies painted the scene, a pine forest has now been planted.

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Sir William Gillies CBE, RSA, RA, PPRSW (1898–1973) [22] The Tweed at Lyne, Winter, c.1967 watercolour and pencil, 25 x 35 cm signed lower right Exhibited Christmas Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1967, cat. 5 46

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Sir William Gillies CBE, RSA, RA, PPRSW (1898–1973) [23] East Lothian, The Tyne, c.1968 watercolour, 47 x 62 cm signed lower left, titled on label verso Exhibited The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1968, cat. 26 Provenance Dr. Robert A. Lillie Collection, cat. 445 48

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Sir William Gillies CBE, RSA, RA, PPRSW (1898–1973) [24] Anstruther watercolour, 21 x 34 cm signed lower left Provenance Cyril Gerber Fine Art, Glasgow 50

Sir William Gillies CBE, RSA, RA, PPRSW (1898–1973) [25] Gladhouse from Toxside watercolour, 11 x 16 cm signed lower right Exhibited Christmas Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1976, cat. 28; New Acquisitions, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2008 51

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JD Fergusson RBA (1874–1961) [26] Man in a Hat, Paris, c.1908–09 conté on paper, 13 x 11 cm Exhibited JD Fergusson, La Vie Boheme, The Unseen Drawings Part II, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2020, cat. 13 52

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Josef Herman OBE, RA (1911–2000) Josef Herman was a highly regarded and influential realist Polish-British painter. His work often depicted workers and was inherently political. He was part of a generation of Eastern European Jewish artists who emigrated to escape persecution and worked abroad. As a student he attended the Warsaw School of Art, where he trained as a typesetter and graphic designer, and for two years he worked briefly as a graphic artist. In 1938, at the age of 27, Herman left Poland for Brussels. After the beginning of World War II, he escaped to France and then to the United Kingdom. He initially lived in Glasgow, where he met fellow artist Jankel Adler (1895–1949), and between 1940 and 1943 he contributed to a remarkable wartime artistic renaissance in the city. He moved to London, where he met numerous other European émigrés, such as the Hungarian Michael Peto. In 1942, Herman learned through the Red Cross that his entire family had perished in the Warsaw Ghetto. In 1943, he held his first London exhibition with L. S. Lowry, and for the next eleven years he lived in Ystradgynlais, a mining community in South Wales. Herman’s style was bold and distinctive, involving strong shapes with minimal detail. He continued to work prolifically on paper up until his death in 2000.

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Josef Herman OBE, RA (1911–2000) [27] Dusk watercolour, 25 x 19 cm 56

Josef Herman OBE, RA (1911–2000) [28] Figure in Space watercolour on paper, 25 x 19 cm 57

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Peter Howson OBE (b.1958) [29] The Jokers, 1985 pastel on paper, 20 x 28 cm signed and dated lower right 58

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Ian Hughes (1958–2014) Glasgow-born Ian Hughes graduated from Dundee College of Art in 1980, and after various travelling scholarships and awards, settled in Edinburgh.

Throughout his career his practice examined mental health issues, drawn from his experience as a psychiatric nurse. His deep empathy with the human condition is laid bare in his work. His paintings often take the form of selfportraits, and his practice is immersed in realism. He had major exhibitions at the Scottish National Gallery, and in Rostov-on-the-Don. In 1986, Hughes and his friend Philip Braham showed together at Main Fine Art, Glasgow in Double Vision. The two artists had objected to the lack of Scottish art in the festival programme, and decided to stir things up by hanging their pictures on the railings of Edinburgh’s Royal Scottish Academy. Consequently, The Vigorous Imagination took place in 1987, surveying the rich diversity of contemporary Scottish artists. In 1989, The Scottish National Gallery held a solo exhibition of Hughes’ work. His work is represented in the National Galleries of Scotland; The Whitworth, Manchester; Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh; Tate Modern, London; and The Fleming Collection, London.

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Ian Hughes (1958–2014) [30] Portrait (Kierling), 1987 oil on canvas, 53 x 53 cm signed and dated lower right 62

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Ian Hughes (1958–2014) [31] Untitled (Refugees), 1995 mixed media and collage on canvas, 75 x 75 cm signed and dated lower right 64

Ian Hughes (1958–2014) [32] Untitled, Double Portrait, 1996 charcoal and pastel, 27.5 x 20 cm (each) signed and dated lower centre 65

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Ian Hughes (1958–2014) [33] Amputation, c.1996–98 oil on canvas, 49 x 40 cm signed, titled and dated verso 66

Ian Hughes (1958–2014) [34] Untitled, Figures, 1999 oil on paper, 70 x 97 cm signed and dated lower right 67

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Henry Kondracki in The Scottish Gallery, 2015

Henry Kondracki RSA (b.1953) [35] The Summer Fair, 2012 watercolour, 11.5 x 15.5 cm signed lower left 68

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William MacTaggart in his studio, c.1963

Sir William MacTaggart PPRSA, RA, RSW (1903–1981) [36] Harbour Scene oil on panel, 33 x 43 cm signed lower left Exhibited New Acquisitions, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2008, cat. 26

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 Rouault in Paris in the early fifties.

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Ewan McClure, 2019.

Photograph by Vilja-Louise Skough Åborn

Ewan McClure (b.1975) [37] Tourists in the Rain oil on board, 20.5 x 34 cm signed lower left 72

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John McLean (1939–2019) [38] Untitled, 1994 acrylic on paper, 56 x 74 cm signed and dated lower right 74

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Mary McLean (1962–2018) [39] Ognissanti, Florence, 1985 mixed media on paper, 29 x 40 cm signed and dated lower centre 76

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James McNaught RSW, RGI (b.1948) James McNaught was born in Glasgow in 1948 and is known for his paintings of buildings and street scenes which incorporate narrative, figurative and fictional compositions. McNaught graduated from The Glasgow School of Art in 1970, and says he could happily have stayed there for the rest of his life. He uses watercolour and gouache to create his subtle, highly detailed scenes. He balances fantasy with realism to enhance each composition; fantastical figures or impossibly constructed streets are offset with carefully controlled light and shadow. His colours are deliberately muted, adding to the atmosphere of his paintings. He won the Royal Scottish Academy painting award in 1970 and in 2010 he won the Sir William Gillies Award at the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour.

McNaught creates a personal townscape, heavy with atmosphere but light on the people who must have built it. These streets, canals and railway platforms are as empty of people as the streets of Collioure and Port Vendres that Mackintosh was to paint in his final years. But these streets come not from life but from James’s imagination, enveloped in a grey-blue light, infused with a surrealist tension of things to come… or just past. They intrigue, bewilder and fascinate the viewer.

Roger Billcliffe

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James McNaught RSW, RGI (b.1948) [40] The Little Secret of Guillaume Apollinaire, 2011 watercolour and gouache, 19 x 22 cm signed and dated lower right Provenance Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh 80

James McNaught RSW, RGI (b.1948) [41] The Arrival of Esmerelda, 2012 watercolour and gouache, 14.5 x 20.5 cm signed and dated lower left 81

the j.g. scott collection

James McNaught RSW, RGI (b.1948) [42] The Scream, 2018 ink and gouache, 15 x 21 cm signed and dated lower right Exhibited Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh, 2018 82

James McNaught RSW, RGI (b.1948) [43] The Confession of Fernando Rey, 2010 watercolour and gouache, 31 x 54.5 cm signed and dated lower right Exhibited Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh 83

the j.g. scott collection

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Michael McVeigh (b.1957) Michael had no qualifications – he seems to have got a job modelling at Dundee College of Commerce, under James Johnstone, who taught him etching – this even before he had begun painting. He then started, unannounced, going to classes at Duncan of Jordanston College of Art, his presence being challenged eventually. James Morrison, then one of the lecturers, formalised his position and accepted him as a full-time student based only on his drawings and paintings.

He was seen also by Alberto Morrocco, the college Head. He told him that he wanted to be an artist. Morrocco said “There’s only one artist in Scotland – and that’s me. So you’ll be the second”.

Michael’s main support at art college was perhaps the artist/tutor John Johnstone, brother of the James Johnstone the joint founder with David Hendry and Donald Mackenzie of the Dundee Printmakers’ Workshop. (Johnstone was a quirky painter of extravagantly imagined people and scenes – rather like a benign version of the later Stephen Campbell. But he painted beautifully.) So here was the untutored schoolboy, finally among people who offered him a real understanding of his artistic talents – and who let these flourish.

At the time, under a set of distinguished teachers – Morrocco, Morrison, Johnstone – Dundee art college had begun to produced artists of interest and occasional distinction – Calum Colvin, David Mach, Philip Braham, Ian Hughes – and slightly later David Cook and Stephen Bird.

Not that the city of “Jam, Jute and Journalism” had been entirely an artistic desert. Dundee had a

business class which had made money, and had at least channeled some of that money into art. Hence the Fleming Collection and the more esoteric Keillor collection of surrealist painters – bought with money made from marmalade and jam.

Michael of course still stood out as different.

Sartre once said there were two questions one should ask any writer or artist – “Why do you write/paint? And for whom?” Unlike most artists, Michael just drew and painted because he had to. There was no aiming at a particular market or group of buyers. There is something of the medieval chronicler about him. He drew and painted what was there, and what was worth depicting because it was an essential, is occasionally quirky, part of human existence. He also drew an older Scotland, drawing on painters like Wilkie and Howe – the latter now almost forgotten – showing country fairs and gatherings.

However he also drew on more modern to show miners working underground, but also football matches, crowds of drunken revellers – even the opening of parliaments. (His painting of the Royal Mile at the opening of the Scottish parliament was bought, I think, by Sir David Steel).

So Michael is a primitive in the truest sense – uncontaminated by trends and fashions – a true folk artist with his own ways and his own style, and thus with real distinction of his own – and for us all.

J.G. Scott, 2016

Michael McVeigh in his Edinburgh studio, January 2021 85

the j.g. scott collection

Michael McVeigh (b.1957) [44] Snow on the Canongate, 2013 oil on canvas, 31 x 46 cm Exhibited The Romanticism, Folklore and Fantasy of Michael McVeigh, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2016, cat. 27 86

Michael McVeigh (b.1957) [45] Eyemouth, 2014 ink on stencil paper, 28 x 34 cm Exhibited The Romanticism, Folklore and Fantasy of Michael McVeigh, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2016, cat. 39 87

the j.g. scott collection

Michael McVeigh (b.1957) [46] Pittenweem gouache and pencil, 32 x 52 cm signed lower right 88

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Michael McVeigh (b.1957) [47] Pogues, A Pair of Browneyes ink, 20.5 x 27 cm titled upper right

During the Great Depression which followed the Great Crash of 1929 destitute men were offered the most basic accommodation ever devised – a rope to hang over for the night. There is mention of one in London in George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London; the phenomenon also existed in Glasgow and Dundee. Generally the charge was twopence – hence the phrase “a twopenny rope”. In Dundee the charge was less, hence the Dundonian phrase “a penny hing”. Michael thinks such accommodation was available in the Nethergate, the poverty-stricken Grassmarket/Cowgate area of Dundee.

There was always a supervisor.

J.G. Scott, 2016 90

Michael McVeigh (b.1957) [48] Pogues, A Pair of Browneyes transfer drawing and ink, 19.5 x 26 cm signed lower right 91

the j.g. scott collection

James Morrison, c.1980.

Photograph by Robert Mabon

James Morrison RSW, RSW (1932–2020) [49] Middleton Wood, c.1990 oil on gesso board, 36 x 30 cm Exhibited The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh 92

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Alberto Morrocco, c.1980.

Photograph by Robert Mabon

Alberto Morrocco RSA, RSW (1917–1998) [50] Melon Seller and Bather, 1996 oil on canvas, 45 x 60 cm signed and dated lower right Exhibited Alberto Morrocco, New Paintings, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1996, cat. 35; Alberto Morrocco: Centenary Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2017, cat. 28 94

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Leon Morrocco.

Photograph by Dan Weill

Leon Morrocco RSA, RGI (b.1942) [51] Selling Fish, Marina Beach, Chennai, 2009 oil on panel, 25.4 x 25.4 cm signed and dated upper left Exhibited John Martin Gallery, London; Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh, 2010 96

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Robert Powell (b.1985) Robert Powell since graduating from Edinburgh College of Art, has earned a reputation for his highly detailed and scholarly paintings, prints, installations and sculpture. Powell’s vision is darkly satirical, revealing humanity in all its perplexing intricacy, grandeur and folly. Drawing on the socially critical works of Hogarth, Bosch, Ensor, Goya and Japanese Ukiyo-e artists of the Edo period, Powell’s wit, surgical eye and grasp of the human condition defines his practice.

I’ve done all sorts of different printmaking but really the core of my practice is etching (my first love) and lithography. There’s a lot of narrative in my work and I think that makes it quite flexible to whatever I’m thinking about at the moment. I’m excited by encyclopaedic structures and their fallibility, pieces that try to show the whole world and fail. I suck up stuff from all sorts of places.

I’m quite greedy. Actually, I do try to reflect as many sources as I can. Often nuggets of story found in books are a springboard, but it feels important to interact with the world of things as well – people, politics, nature – those things.

Robert Powell (extract from Edinburgh Printmakers interview, February 2020)

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Robert Powell (b.1985) [52] Ruinewart or the Architect of Ruins, 2013 etching and watercolour, 30 x 29 cm, variable edition signed lower right, editioned lower left Exhibited The Print Show, The Fine Art Society, Edinburgh, 2019 100

Robert Powell (b.1985) [53] Bound for other Isolations, c.2019 etching and watercolour, 11 x 21.5 cm, variable edition signed lower right, editioned lower left Provenance Kilmorack Gallery, Beauly 101

the j.g. scott collection

Robert Powell (b.1985) [54] The Annunciation, 2019 screenprint and watercolour, 28 x 38 cm, variable edition signed lower right, editioned lower left Exhibited The Print Show, The Fine Art Society, Edinburgh, 2019 102

Robert Powell (b.1985) [55] Winter Knight, 2019 acrylic, 22.5 x 16.5 cm Provenance Kilmorack Gallery, Beauly 103

the j.g. scott collection

Geoffrey Roper (b.1942) [56] East Sands, North Berwick, 2018 oil on card, 14 x 20 cm Exhibited Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh, 2018 104

Geoffrey Roper (b.1942) [57] The Bridge oil on canvas, 24 x 19 cm signed on label verso Exhibited Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh 105

the j.g. scott collection

Geoff Uglow in The Scottish Gallery, February 2017

Geoff Uglow (b.1978) [58] 19.11.10 acrylic on paper, 14.5 x 18.5 cm Exhibited Geoff Uglow, Letters from Barra, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2011 106

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Joseph Urie (b.1947) Born in Glasgow in 1947 Joseph Urie trained at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee from 1977–81. After working in sculpture, he attended the Royal Academy Schools from 1981–84, concentrating on painting. He is an expressionist painter and printmaker, creating haunting narrative works in rich dark colour. His work was included in the influential The Vigorous Imagination exhibition at Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in 1987, along with rising stars Peter Howson, Ken Currie, Philip Braham, Stephen Conroy and Ian Hughes. He has won a number of awards including the Chalmers Jervis Prize and the British Institute Prize in 1980, the Farquhar Reid Travelling Scholarship in 1981, and the J Van Beuren Wittman Prize in 1984. His work is included in the city collections of Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee.

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Joseph Urie (b.1947) [59] Figure and Dog, 1985 pen drawing, 16.5 x 15 cm signed and dated lower left 110

Joseph Urie (b.1947) [60] Conflict, 1987 oil on paper, 30 x 26 cm Provenance Art in Business, Edinburgh, c.1987 111

the j.g. scott collection

Joseph Urie (b.1947) [61] Floating Figure, 1991 oil on board, 45 x 55 cm 112

Joseph Urie (b.1947) [62] Spanish Incidents, 2016 woodblock print, 54 x 48 cm, Artist Proof signed and dated lower right 113

the j.g. scott collection

Joseph Urie (b.1947) [63] Girl on a Bed, 1984 acrylic on paper, 45 x 55 cm signed and dated lower left Exhibited The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, c.1989 114

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Prints

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John Bellany, CBE, RA, HRSA (1942–2013) [64] Ominous Presence I, 1971 etching, 16 x 11 cm, Artist Proof signed lower right, inscribed lower left Provenance Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh 118

John Bellany, CBE, RA, HRSA (1942–2013) [65] Woman with Tambourine, c.1994 etching, 33 x 24 cm, Artist Proof signed lower right, inscribed lower left 119

the j.g. scott collection

David Byers Brown (b.1960) [66] Raising of Lazarus, c.1978 etching, 26 x 29 cm signed with monogram in plate 120

John Clerk of Eldin (1728–1812) [67] Stirling from Kinneil, 1776 etching and drypoint, 8 x 20 cm inscribed lower centre Illustrated The Etchings of John Clerk of Eldin by Geoffrey Bertram, Enterprise Editions, 2012, p.164 121

the j.g. scott collection

John Clerk of Eldin (1728–1812) [68] Dunbarton Castle from the West etching and drypoint, 12 x 28 cm, only state Exhibited The Print Show, The Fine Art Society, Edinburgh, 2019 Provenance Private collection, Paris Illustrated The Etchings of John Clerk of Eldin by Geoffrey Bertram, Enterprise Editions, 2012, p.139 122

John Clerk of Eldin (1728–1812) [69] Dunfermline, 1773 etching, 10 x 15 cm, only state signed and dated lower right, titled lower left Exhibited The Print Show, The Fine Art Society, Edinburgh, 2019 Provenance Private collection, Paris Illustrated The Etchings of John Clerk of Eldin by Geoffrey Bertram, Enterprise Editions, 2012, p.152 123

the j.g. scott collection

John Clerk of Eldin (1728–1812) [70] Cambuskenneth Abbey and Stirling, 1773 etching, 8 x 14.5 cm, only state Exhibited The Print Show, The Fine Art Society, Edinburgh, 2019 Provenance Private collection, Paris Illustrated The Etchings of John Clerk of Eldin by Geoffrey Bertram, Enterprise Editions, 2012, p.145 124

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Robert Colquhoun with Robert MacBryde, c.1950s

Robert Colquhoun (1914–1962) [71] Woman and Crab (London Barmaid), 1946 lithograph, 42 x 28 cm signed and editioned lower right Exhibited The Golden Years, The Sottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2014, cat. 4 Provenance Private collection, Dumfries & Galloway Illustrated The Last Bohemians by Roger Bristow, Sansom & Co, 2010, p.208

“Although there is no hard evidence to back it up, this is generally accepted to be Colquhoun’s first lithograph for Miller’s Press (he had previously produced the lithographic illustrations for Poems of Sleep and Dream).

The catalogue for the retrospective exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery lists No. 252, Man with Cat, lithograph in three colours, as being from 1944.

This is highly unlikely, and is probably an error.”

Davy Brown 126

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Stephen Conroy (b.1963) [72] Megaphone Man, 1987 drypoint etching, 29 x 22 cm signed and dated lower right, editioned lower left Exhibited Edinburg­­h Festival Exhibition, Printmakers Workshop, Edinburgh, 1987 128

William Daniell RA (1769–1837) [73] Greenock on the Clyde coloured print, 23 x 29 cm published by Longman & Co, London, 1817 129

the j.g. scott collection

William Daniell RA (1769–1837) [74] Near View of Shiant Isles coloured print, 23 x 29 cm published by Longman & Co, London, 1817 130

William Daniell RA (1769–1837) [75] Pier at Tanera, Loch Broom colour print, 23 x 29 cm published by Longman & Co, London, 1817 131

the j.g. scott collection

William Daniell RA (1769–1837) [76] Steam Boat on the Clyde near Dunbarton coloured print, 23 x 29 cm published by Longman & Co, London, 1817 132

Ian Fleming RSA, RSW (1906–1994) [77] Gilshochill, c.1935-38 etching, 20.5 x 32 cm signed lower right, titled and editioned lower left 133

the j.g. scott collection

Peter Howson OBE (b.1958) [78] Last Prayer, 1987 etching, 32 x 24 cm signed and dated lower right, editioned lower left 134

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) [79] Untitled, Composition I, c.1990–2000 lithograph, 33 x 50 cm signed lower right, editioned lower left 135

the j.g. scott collection

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) [80] Untitled, Composition II, c.1990–2000 lithograph, 42 x 49.5 cm signed lower left 136

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) [81] Mirada (A Glance), 1995 lithograph, 33 x 50 cm signed lower right, editioned lower left 137

the j.g. scott collection

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) [82] Untitled, c.1990–2000 lithograph, 42 x 23 cm signed lower right, editioned lower left 138

Frederik de Wit (1629–1706) [83] The Parliament House in Edinburgh, after J. Gordon, c.1649 colour print, 22 x 28 cm 139

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Published by The Scottish Gallery to coincide with the exhibition The J.G. Scott Collection 30 July – 28 August 2021 Exhibition can be viewed online at www.scottish-gallery.co.uk/jgscott The Scottish Gallery would like to thank the family of J.G. Scott and Christopher Rush for their help with the exhibition.

ISBN: 978 1 912900 39 8 Designed by Kenneth Gray Photography John McKenzie Printed by PurePrint 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: Sir William Gillies, Pool in the Meldons, 1960 (detail) (cat. 20), watercolour and pencil, 23 x 36 cm 140