12 minute read
True Colours
SCOTTISH WOMEN ARTISTS
The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation’s new publication places women artists at the heart of the story of Scottish art. Author Charlotte Rostek reflects on the discoveries and challenges she encountered when compiling the book and why, when women artists are well established on the contemporary Scottish art scene and recognised internationally, this publication and the Foundation’s touring exhibition, Scottish Women Artists: Transforming Tradition, remain necessary
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Today women are a big part of our nation’s artistic identity. Names easily spring to mind, like Katie Paterson, Alberta Whittle and Christine Borland; leading Scottish women artists internationally recognised in the world of contemporary visual arts. Others from the recent past have become almost household names, such as Joan Eardley or Anne Redpath. But, further back, names like Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh and the Glasgow Girls have only been popularised by a determined effort since the 1980s. My book – Scottish Women Artists – continues what we could call a retrospective corrective to the traditional, male-dominated story of Scotland’s art. This is not to inadvertently perpetuate prejudice through considering women separately, but to help make visible those often obscured, overlooked and forgotten through maledominated writing, a male dominated art market, legislation and educational disadvantages. Women have won the future; this is about winning the past. It’s exhilarating to see the growing popular interest as well as thriving scholarship in this field. Collaborative networks such as the Scottish Women and the Arts Research Network (SWARN), exhibitions and publications such as Glasgow Girls: Women in Art and Design 1880–1920, curated by Jude Burkhauser at Kelvingrove in 1990 and Modern Scottish Women: Painters and Sculptors 1885–1965, curated by Alice Strang in 2016 for the National Galleries of Scotland, are all superb examples of how a re-focus can bring a very fresh and much more complete perspective to our understanding of Scottish art. I also see a dynamic symmetry between the ascendancy of contemporary Scottish women artists from the 1980s onwards and the steadily growing interest in historic female artists. They each feed off each other in a way that highlights the need for legacy and context to bring broader awareness to women’s artistic identity and their place in the artistic fabric of the nation. Writing this book has been a process of discovery. The analogy of looking up to a clear night sky came to mind – the longer you look the more stars you see and things aren’t at all as obvious as you might have thought at first glance. While maledomineered critical writing and history has ‘foregrounded’ men for the longest time, and a largely male-made educational system and society have relegated women to the shadows, there is much evidence that women in their time, and often against the odds, were incredibly active and exhibited with artworks sold at home and abroad. It was interesting to see that the process was so gradual: a good marker is that although Dorothy Carleton Smyth was appointed the first female director of Glasgow School of Art (GSA) in 1933, her unexpected death just before she could take up office meant that it was 1999 before a first woman was to occupy this important role. Yet it is worth spelling out that there have been very positive male characters operating within the context of systemic inequality. I found it reassuring to see leading male characters who have been pivotal in supporting and promoting female artists, not because they were women but because they were good artists. A few make an appearance in the book including Peter ‘Abbe’ Grant who helped Katharine Read to obtain commissions from the Italian nobility; Francis Newbery, who alongside his wife Jessie, revolutionised GSA into one of the most progressive coeducational institutions; right up to the Fleming Collection itself which collected Scottish work by women from the 1960s onwards.
Selecting which artists to include in the book presented the greatest challenge. The brief was that 60% of the Scottish women artists should be represented in the Fleming Collection. Identifying the other 40% was dictated by the book’s overall purpose: to provide a broad overview for readers who do not necessarily know anything about Scottish women artists. There were many artists who I would have liked to include or expand on; in some cases they were at least given a name check, in others they will have to await a future project. I approached the project quite methodically, dividing my time into phases for research, writing, revision and editing. I created thematic folders and files for nearly 80 artists and pulled together the research in tables of data listing exhibitions, key works and artistic partnerships. My laptop was creaking under the weight of the material! The book was not meant to be a catalogue, but a story with a flow. Choosing to do this chronologically made me realise quickly that not all the artists could be packed into a straight line: there are cross-cutting connections which ignore the neat categories of style, geography, schools and, for example, artists with very long lives who continue to develop artistically reaching into our own time. Where do you place them? Another challenge was to switch off and move on. I had to be ruthlessly concise. If I were to revisit the book in, say, 20 years’ time, the acknowledged canon of female Scottish artists will have grown, and it might have changed too. As research in this field is ever more vigorous, we will be able to choose from an even greater pool. Art history is a story of survival; of those who have made it into the books, catalogues, private and public collections, public space and the internet. Through claiming the stage exclusively for Scottish women artists in the shape of books and exhibitions, and weaving a thread across the centuries, we are able to acknowledge a tradition, create context, and confirm their existence and enduring legacy.
Charlotte Rostek is an art and heritage curator, lecturer and writer, currently working as project consultant at Dalkeith Palace, Midlothian
Scottish Women Artists was published by the Fleming-Wyfold Foundation in April 2022 and can be purchased online at scottish-gallery.co.uk/publications
Scottish Women Artists: Transforming Tradition
Until 3 July The Sainsbury Centre, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7T T: (0)1603 593199 | sainsburycentre.ac.uk Open: Tuesday to Friday 10am–6pm, Saturday and Sunday 10am–5pm
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1 Sainsbury Centre install. Images courtesy the Sainsbury Centre / Andy Crouch
2 Scottish Women Artists book cover, featuring Beatrice Huntington, The Cellist, c.1925
3 Anne Forbes, Countess Margaret, Wife of the 6th Earl of Dumfries (17261803). Courtesy Dumfries House – part of The Prince’s Foundation
4 Christine Borland, To the Power of Twelve, 2018. Courtesy the artist and Patricia Fleming Gallery, Glasgow. Photo Keith Hunter
5 Rachel Maclean, Spite Your Face, 2017. Commissioned by Alchemy Film & Arts for Scotland + Venice at the 57th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia 2017
JOHN MORRISON
INTO THE WILD
JOHN MORRISON
Arctic Mural, an epic work by the late Scottish landscape artist James Morrison (1932–2020), has been donated by his family to the Fleming Collection. His son, the art historian John Morrison, explains the genesis of the work and its importance to his father
In 1990, James Morrison travelled to Ellesmere Island to paint. At a latitude of 81° north, Ellesmere in the Canadian territory of Nunavut is the tenth largest island in the world yet contains only three settlements and has a permanent population of under 200 people. James camped and painted at Lake Hazen in the summer of 1990 and returned to the High Arctic on a further three occasions over the next six years. The first visit was almost exploratory and the paintings from 1990 are small in scale. There are concerns expressed in his painting diary that the light is so different from anything he had encountered before that it was difficult to get at the ‘general values quickly enough to paint freely’. The early works there were, he felt, ‘all edges and storytelling’. It was, nevertheless, a hugely important experience for him and he was back in Ellesmere two years later, this time staying at Otto Fiord on the western coast. He knew more what to expect in 1992. He was able to bring larger 1.5m boards to paint on and produced less graphic, bolder paintings.
Back in Scotland, he hung all the work on the studio walls and embarked on a suite of very large paintings based on his Arctic experience and on the works completed in situ. The enormous scale, often 4m wide, was a response to the hugely powerful nature of the experience. Scale, colour range, light and above all the perceived implications for a human centred view of existence, were all radically different from anything he had done before. James’ paintings in Angus on the east coast of Scotland became increasingly concerned with environmental issues. He was painting a man-made landscape and it often gave strong evidence of destruction. In his words, ‘I became slowly interested in this but the whole thing was given real sharpness when I went to the Arctic. The Arctic brought it all together and I now look at landscape painting completely differently from the way I did in the past. I see it now invariably in environmental terms. I don't mean it makes me paint it in an obviously different way, because painting is painting, and social and political concerns are to my mind not directly related to landscape. But if you're the kind of person that does have these concerns, they will affect how you paint without you having to force the issue to make the heavy political point. So this concern goes beyond just environmental considerations; it goes right to the root of what we're doing with the planet and I don't have an optimistic view of it. I think we are hell bent on destroying the planet. I simply do not see homo sapiens making the decisions, the self sacrificing decisions, to save the planet. I don't think that will happen. I think the planet will be run on to oblivion.’ Beyond the environment, the paintings prompted reflections too on the human condition. There were, he felt, other wholly unexpected elements about the Arctic. In an interview in 1997, he observed ‘if you go to the High Arctic that's really, really far north and you're into a landscape where there are no settlements, no people and there will be perhaps camps of only 10 people in complete isolation in a primeval landscape which has no signs of humanity in it. No paths, no roads, no huts, nothing. Humanity is completely irrelevant to the landscape. It doesn't care about humanity. You hear people say they're going to the Arctic for a holiday or whatever. They're going on a cruise ship up to Alaska and they're going to get off in wee rubber boats and look at polar bears. This is different. In the High Arctic, the landscape is transcendental. There's no question about it. I'm not religious in any way but there is a sense of some kind of spiritual thing. I don't know what it is in that landscape but everybody feels it.’
In August 1994, James again visited Ellesmere, choosing this time to stay first at the northernmost civilian settlement in Canada, Grise Fiord in the Arctic Cordillera mountain range, and then in north-west Greenland. As with the preceding visit, there are paintings from the month-long stay and images created back in the studio. This time, however, he was working towards an exhibition of his Arctic work to be mounted at the Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh University. It was for that exhibition that he painted a vast mural more than 6m wide and almost 3m high.
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The shape of the painting and the subject were evolved in advance through working drawings and then a preliminary sketch. The mural was then painted in situ on the walls of the Talbot Rice Gallery over a two-week period in the run-up to the opening of the exhibition in April 1995. The gallery was open while the painting was underway for people to watch the work progressing. As was usual for the artist, the oil paint is applied heavily mixed with turpentine. It is very thin and runs freely down the surface unless controlled and moved around with brushes and rags. Large house painter’s brushes are extensively used in conjunction with smaller ‘flat hogs’. Still, gradually throughout the day, liquid paint would pool towards the bottom of the boards. A photograph shows James cleaning off the bottom of the painting with the assistance of his daughter Judith and her son Jamie in preparation for starting again the following morning. Following the run of the exhibition, the mural was exhibited once more, in 1996, at the Meffan Gallery in Angus. The painting was an important one to the artist. It was the culmination of his first three visits to the High Arctic and formed the centrepiece to the largest and most prestigious show of his Arctic paintings. The painter’s family wished to see the painting find a home in an appropriate collection. James had a long association with the Fleming Collection which owns many other works by him (a major retrospective exhibition of his work was held in the Collection’s galleries in 2015). It is with great delight that the family of the artist donate this mural to the Fleming Collection.
Dr John Morrison is an author and art historian. His new book, James Morrison: Land and Landscape, was published in May by Sansom and Co, sansomandcompany.co.uk
James Morrison: A Celebration 1932–2020
6–25 June The Scottish Gallery, 16 Dundas Street, Edinburgh, EH3 6HZ T: (0)131 558 1200 | scottish-gallery.co.uk Open: Tuesday to Friday 11am–6pm, Saturday 11am–3pm (also Monday 6 June 11am–6pm, and until 8pm Thursday 9 June)
