Scottish Art News Issue 26

A Scottish Treasure

SCOTTISH A RT N EWS

DUMFRIES HOUSE

Chippendale Best Bed (c.1759), © Dumfries House

HOUSE TOURS | GRAND TOURS | ART TOURS

Take a tour of Ayrshire’s Dumfries House, designed by Robert and John Adam, and discover one of the most complete collections of furniture from Thomas Chippendale’s early Director period and the finest collection of Scottish rococo furniture in existence.

Dumfries House, which is run by the Great Steward of Scotland’s Dumfries House Trust, is also proud to display a group of paintings by Scottish masters on loan from the Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation.

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Dumfries House, Cumnock, Ayrshire KA18 2NJ www.dumfries-house.org.uk Tel. 01290 425 959

ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2016 £3

THE MAN WHO INVENTED SCOTTISH PAINTING George Jamesone enters the Fleming Collection

PLUS John Samson Solveig Settemsdal David Michie Joan Eardley John Byrne Alchemy Film Festival

SCOTTISH ART NEWS

DIRECTOR’S NOTE

REGULARS

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Art Market

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Recent Acquisitions

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Private View William Paton Michael Clarke

James Knox

NEWS 5 News

FEATURES 10

The man who invented Scottish painting Duncan Thomson

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Who was John Samson?

Paul Pieroni

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Paisley Patterns Neil Cooper

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Q&A with Richard Ashrowan

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From Townhead to Catterline Susan Mansfield

30 David Michie RSA 1928–2015

Laura Campbell 36

The Drawing That Moved Kathryn Lloyd

REVIEWS

EDITORIAL

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Katy Dove Neil Cooper

Director James Knox

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Alphonse Mucha: In Quest of Beauty Laura Campbell

Editorial assistance Paul McLean

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Drawing Attention: Rare Works on Paper 1400–1900 David Pollock

Print co-ordinated by fgrahampublishing consultancy

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Karla Black and Kishio Suga: A New Order Susan Mansfield

SUBSCRIPTIONS

54 Larry Herman: Clydeside 1974–76

Susan Mansfield

Editor Rachael Cloughton

Design Lizzie Cameron www.lizziecameron.co.uk

Print Elle Media Group

One-year subscription UK £9 | Europe £14 | International £20 Two-year subscription UK £18 | Europe £28 International £40

ADVERTISING Director James Knox T: (0)207 0425730 E: james.knox@flemingcollection.com

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Cover Image George Jamesone, Robert the Bruce, 1633. ©The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation

Scottish Art News The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation, 15 Suffolk Street, London W1J 8DU United Kingdom T: (0)207 042 5730 E: scottishartnews@flemingcollection.com Scottish Art News is published biannually by the Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation, London. Publication dates: June and November.

Scottish Art News Diary Perrine Davari

© Scottish Art News 2016. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher. Scottish Art News accepts no responsibility for loss or damage of unsolicited material submitted for publication. Scottish Art News is published by the Fleming-Wyfold Foundation but is not the voice of the Fleming Collection or the Foundation. All images copyright of the artist or artist’s estate unless otherwise stated.

ISSUE 26 / AUTUMN/WINTER 2016 DIRECTOR’S NOTE

The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation (FWAF) has been going places over the past few months – both literally and metaphorically – signalling the launch of its museum without walls strategy of cultural diplomacy to promote Scottish art outside Scotland. Appropriately, our first advance has been in the British Embassy in Dublin with the hanging of nine paintings from the Fleming Collection including works by Anne Redpath, Stephen Conroy, Will Maclean and Alberto Morrocco.

Discussions with Karen Watt, director of Culture, Tourism and External Affairs in the Scottish Government, led to the idea of lending paintings to the first ever Scottish Government Innovation and Investment Hub in the Dublin embassy. Initially our plan focused on the suite of Scottish offices, until I met the then ambassador who was so impressed by the Scottish art on offer that he requested works for the public reception space too. As a result, when you walk into the embassy, the first painting you encounter is a ravishing still life by Anne Redpath (fig.2) – drenched in French taste but with a twist of Scotland, inspired by her tweed-designer father. ‘I do with a spot of red or yellow in harmony with grey, what my father did in his tweed,’ she wrote.

Using art as a diplomatic tool can unlock the personality of a nation, conveying in a way that words can never do a peoples imagination, colour, wit, history, skill, inventiveness and cultures, high and low. Introducing the unveiling of the paintings in September, the ambassador Robin Barnett CMG, newly arrived from Warsaw, spoke of the close cultural ties between Scotland and Ireland; he also commended the Irish ‘for their love of parties, which was equalled only by that of the Poles making me feel very at home at my first cultural event en poste.’

‘Using art as a diplomatic tool can unlock the personality of a nation, conveying in a way that words can never do a peoples imagination, colour, wit, history, skill, inventiveness and cultures, high and low’ 2 | ART

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Diplomatic receptions – or in this case a raffish gathering of Irish bohemia including top artists, museum directors and curators, critics, dealers and collectors – are an expression of ‘soft power’. To make the point, I brought to the party a painting by John Lavery – the artist who personifies the union between the cultures of Scotland and Ireland as both nations rightly claim him as their own. His dazzling work, The Blue Hungarians, is one of a series recording the 1888 Glasgow International Exhibition, which landed Lavery his breakthrough portrait commission of Queen Victoria’s state visit.

Herein lies its significance to Ireland as this led, in turn, to his meteoric rise as a portrait painter: a talent deployed to devastating effect in his depiction of the Irish independence fighters and the rival negotiators in the founding of the Irish Free State which are on display in Dublin’s Hugh Lane Gallery.

However, Lavery’s commitment to the Irish Free State came with one proviso: that the portraits of political opponents should be hung side by side and it is this neutrality – a guarantee of artistic integrity – which pulls the punches when artists flex their political muscles. Other instances of artists from the Fleming Collection making political points are illustrated on p12–13.

My ability to bring the Lavery to the event at the embassy highlights the flexibility of a private foundation over the great museums and institutions. Our first show is already planned and will draw on our outstanding holding of Scottish Colourists, which allows us to track their lifetime development as artists. Scottish Colourists from the Fleming Collection will run from May to October 2017 at the Granary Gallery in Berwick-onTweed – just over the border from Scotland as my remit has to be the promotion of Scottish art outside Scotland. Other venues are in the pipeline so watch this space.

Cultural diplomacy is one of the Foundation’s charitable goals. Another is the care and enhancement of the Fleming Collection, which numbers over 600 works from the 17th century to the emerging artists of today. The collection dates back to the 1960s when Flemings private investment bank, in recognition of its Scottish origins, began to acquire Scottish art to hang in its HQ in London and overseas branches. The bank’s roots stretch back to the late 19th century when the founder of the Fleming dynasty, Robert Fleming – who cut his teeth in the Jute trade in Dundee – established what would come to be known as the first American investment trust by encouraging the Dundee big hitters of the day to invest in the US railways. Fast forward to 2000 when the family bank was sold to Chase Manhattan and the Fleming-Wydold Art Foundation was formed by trustees headed by members of the Fleming family.

The collection is particularly strong in the later 19th and the 20th centuries, but there are gaps especially from the 17th century dawn of modern Scottish painting. One artist in particular was missing: George Jamesone (1589/90–1644) who was the first native-born painter to emerge from the wreckage of the Reformation. Although others preceded him, his body of work, much of which is displayed in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery (SNPG), coupled with the success and status achieved in his lifetime, qualifies him as the inventor of modern Scottish painting.

In June 2016, the opportunity arose for the Trustees to acquire one of his most historic and important paintings, the swaggering portrait of Robert the Bruce (front cover) which was commissioned by the City of Edinburgh in 1633 as part of the celebrations to welcome Charles I on his state visit to Edinburgh for his Scottish coronation. The painting was hung with other portraits of Charles’ regal Scottish ancestors on a triumphal arch in the Royal Mile – a suitable and adroit tribute by the burgesses of Edinburgh to the art-loving and historically aware Stuart king who only the year before had appointed van Dyck as principal painter to his court.

Once again politics played its part in art history and the full story of both Jamesone and the portrait is told on p10 by Dr Duncan Thomson, who as director of the SNPG, rediscovered the work of Jamesone and also owned this painting.

The acquisition coincides with the establishment of a purchase fund intended to fill other gaps in the collection right up to today’s emerging artists. This painting has been acquired through donations from members of the Fleming family and others, including a legacy and a gift from David Benson, the former chairman of the Foundation. ‘Further purchases,’ says chairman, Rory Fleming, ‘will continue to make this a living collection and something of which the family can remain very proud.’

Yet another sign that the Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation is once again on the move.

James Knox

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1 Director James Knox at the Scottish Government Innovation and Investment Hub in the Dublin embassy with Ambassador Robin Barnett (left) 2 Anne Redpath, The Pink Table © The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation

Scottish Art News | DIRECTOR’S NOTE | 3

NEWS Art doesn’t always get the respect it deserves

Our experienced Senior Underwriter, James McDowell is based in Scotland. As an Art Historian, he has a strong understanding of the Scottish art market.

For more information on AXA ART, please contact: james.mcdowell@axa-art.co.uk / 01506 882266

Art Moves

Art Builds

Tessa Giblin appointed director of the University of Edinburgh’s Talbot Rice Gallery In November 2016, New Zealandborn Tessa Giblin will move from Project Arts Centre in Dublin, where she has been curator of visual arts for a decade, to take over from the Talbot Rice Gallery’s current director, Pat Fisher.

‘I am absolutely delighted to have been appointed to lead the Talbot Rice Gallery and to begin working with so many wonderful colleagues from Edinburgh College of Art and the wider university,’ said Giblin. ‘This rich academic and artistic environment will define the character of our exhibitions programme, continuing Talbot Rice Gallery’s long history of working with contemporary art and collections.’

One of Giblin’s first major projects will be to lead the Talbot Rice’s part in the Venice Biennale next year. The gallery will co-deliver Scotland + Venice 2017 in a dynamic partnership with Alchemy Film and Arts, Creative Scotland, British Council Scotland and the National Galleries of Scotland, presenting the work of Edinburgh College of Art graduate Rachel Maclean (read more p24–25).

Giblin is also commissioner of the Pavilion of Ireland at the Venice Biennale, where she and Project Arts Centre will continue to work together to present Jesse Jones in 2017.

An additional slice of funding has been agreed in order to allow £3.1m plans for a major art gallery in Kirkcudbright to proceed. Kirkcudbright Common Good Fund agreed to support the project with a total of £130,000.

Nuno Sacramento joins Peacock Visual Arts as director Nuno Sacramento, formerly director of the Scottish Sculpture Workshop in Lumsden, has joined Aberdeen’s contemporary art space Peacock Visual Arts as director.

‘Peacock Visual Arts is an internationally known, artist-led organisation with a long history. I am honoured to have been chosen to take on its directorship,’ said Sacramento. ‘I see this as an opportunity to investigate alternative futures, in terms of economy, energy, housing, food, and culture in a wider sense, something we will do by bringing together artists and the people of Aberdeen.’

Big Lottery Scotland has approved Dunoon Burgh Hall’s application for £656,825 of funding over the next five years. This will support Dunoon Burgh Hall Trust to establish a sustainable business that meets the needs of the community and a crucial injection of capital funding to support the fit out of the building with furniture and equipment, ready for re-opening early in 2017.

The Scottish National Gallery has been given the greenlight for £17m revamp by Edinburgh Council. A selection of works from the late Allan Murray’s significant collection of Scottish art will be sold at Patrick Bourne & Co in November, with all money raised going towards the SNG’s new Scottish Rooms.

Work begins on the Collective Gallery’s new City Observatory at the start of November. This dynamic new gallery space, on the top of Calton Hill, will provide a meeting place for research, science, heritage and contemporary art.

1 1 Collective Gallery’s new City Observatory. Image courtesy of Collective Gallery

The Burrell collection has now closed until 2020 for a major £66m redevelopment.

The ambitious plans will provide greater access to the 9000-strong art works in the collection, including the remodelling of the basement stores which will give visitors behind-the-scenes access for the first time.

Scottish Art News | NEWS | 5

Art Awards George Ridgway, winner of the 2016 Fleming-Wyfold Bursary, selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries exhibition Fleming-Wyfold Bursary winner George Ridgway has been selected for the Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2016 by a panel comprising Anya Gallaccio, Alan Kane and Haroon Mirza. A selection of Ridgway’s recent paintings will be shown at the ICA, London, from the 22 November.

On being chosen for this prestigious group show, Ridgway said: ‘I feel it’s a fantastic opportunity and privilege to be selected.

I’m also really excited by the premise of the show and the thematic behind its curation this year. It’s clear there is a shared collective interest that resonates strongly with contemporary social, cultural and ecological concerns and I’m really pleased I’ve been able to be included within this enquiry.’

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Commissions

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Saltire Society’s 2016 Art in Public Places Awards New public artworks in the Hebrides, Helensburgh and John O’Groats have emerged as winners of the Saltire Society’s prestigious 2016 Art in Public Places Awards. The three winning projects each receive a share of a total prize fund of £4000, part-funded by Creative Scotland.

The winner of the new temporary art category of the awards is ‘Are you LOCATIONALIZED?’ – an ATLAS Arts commission created by former Glasgow School of Art graduates Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan spanning the two Hebridean islands of Skye and North Uist. The project included outdoor structures on both islands, a series of photo-works exhibited at Taigh Chearsabhagh Art Centre on North Uist and a dedicated information desk about the project at the ATLAS Arts Office in Portree on Skye.

Joint winners of the permanent award category were ‘The Outdoor Museum’, an outdoor display of treasured objects brought forward by local residents and organisations in the Argyll town of Helensburgh, and the ‘Nomadic Boulders of John O’Groats’, a group of three sculptures inspired by the force of the Pentland Firth created by Dundee-based artists Matthew Dalziel and Louise Scullion.

‘A selection of Ridgway’s recent paintings will be shown at the ICA, London from the 22nd November’

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David Michie In November, the Royal Scottish Academy will show ‘The Artist Traveller’ alongside their ‘The David Michie Gift’ exhibition (read more p30–36). These shows are paired deliberately, designed to highlight Michie’s love of travel and its influence on artists. ‘The Artist Traveller’ will showcase some of the projects which the RSA has helped fund in recent years. In celebration of this, and in partnership with David’s family, the RSA aim to launch a new travel fund, the David Michie Travel Award, during November.

Inaugural Freelands Art Award goes to Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery and Jacqueline Donachie Established to enable regional arts organisations to present an exhibition by a mid-career female artist who has not yet received the acclaim or public recognition that her work deserves, the inaugural Freelands Award has gone to the Fruitmarket Gallery, who will exhibit the work of Scottish artist Jacqueline Donachie.

Elisabeth Murdoch, founder of Freelands Foundation and chair of the section panel for the award, said the Fruitmarket’s proposal ‘showed a deep sensitivity to the intention behind the Freelands Award . . . Jacqueline is a noted member of the so called “Glasgow Miracle” – and yet, after 25 years, she has never had an exhibition that brings together new and existing work to allow an appraisal of her diverse practice as a whole.’

The value of the award is £100,000, of which £25,000 is paid directly to Jacqueline Donachie.

2 George Ridgway, Common Land, 2016. Image courtesy of the artist

5 Artist Mary Bourne. Image courtesy of the Scottish Historic Buildings Trust

3 George Ridgway, Untitled, 2016. Image courtesy of the artist

6 David Shirgley in front of the Fourth Plinth. Image courtesy of London Gov

4 Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan, Are you LOCATIONALIZED?, 2014.

Image courtesy of ATLAS Arts and the Saltire Society

Thumbs Up for David Shrigley’s Fourth Plinth Glasgow School of Art alumni David Shrigley is the latest artist to be commissioned to produce a work for London’s Fourth Plinth. Located in Trafalgar Square, the Fourth Plinth was built in 1841 and originally designed to hold a statue of William IV but, due to insufficient funds, remained empty for over 150 years. Since 1998, it has played host to a succession of new large-scale works from contemporary artists such as Mark Wallinger, Rachel Whiteread and Antony Gormley.

David Shrigley’s offering, Really Good (2016) is a bronze sculpture of a giant human hand in a thumbs-up gesture, with a disproportionately long thumb. Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan said of the work: ‘What this represents is so important: optimism, positivity, the best of us. Particularly postBrexit, the three most important words I say are “London is open.”’ Since being unveiled, however, the work has split opinion: cynical or positive, rueful or mocking, optimistic or fatalistic?

Speaking about the inspiration for his commission, Shrigley said: ‘I didn’t imagine at that time that I would actually be commissioned to [make the work], so the proposal that I made was basically saying that the work would make the world a better place through some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. So, in a way, it was a satirical proposal. But, upon reflection, I realised that you have to think your work will make the world a better place, otherwise, why would you do it? So, in a way the work is both sincere and ironic at the same time.’

Scottish Historic Buildings Trust (SHBT) awarded Creative Scotland grant for Geddes-inspired paving installation at Riddle’s Court in Edinburgh Following a successful funding bid to Creative Scotland, SHBT will work in partnership with Moray-based sculptor Mary Bourne, Ballater Primary School and Historic Environment Scotland to create a Patrick Geddes-inspired paving installation of botanical motifs. The carved paving stones will echo the Scottish botanist’s motto ‘By Leaves We Live’ and will act as a new, urban trail for the curious visitor to follow. The path will lead into Riddle’s Court in Edinburgh’s Old Town, formerly owned

by Geddes and which SHBT are currently restoring to open as the Patrick Geddes Centre for Learning in autumn 2017.

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Take Me Somewhere festival to launch in 2017, building on the legacy of famous Glasgow arts venue the Arches Creative Scotland has awarded almost £100,000 towards the creation of Take Me Somewhere, an experimental performance festival that will be staged in venues across Glasgow in 2017.

This new, major arts festival is launched to build on the legacy of the former Glasgow venue the Arches, which was controversially forced to close down in 2015. It will be led by the Arches’ former artistic director Jackie Wylie.

Fleming Collection Loans The Fleming-Wyfold Foundation has loaned The Fair, Ayr Racecourse by Sir Muirhead Bone to Rozelle House Museum and Galleries in Ayr, to feature in their ‘Inspiring Lanscapes’ exhibition. The exhibition will explore the life and times of WWI official artist, Sir Muirhead Bone, and recognise the role Ayrshire played as Bone developed his craft, revealing a story of international and local significance.

Inspiring Landscapes 29 October 2016– 22 January 2017 Rozelle House Museum and Galleries, Ayr David Michie’s painting of Pink Garden (early 1980s) gifted to the Fleming Collection in Michie’s will, will be loaned to Dover House in Whitehall, the UK Government’s Office for Scotland

Call for Papers Scottish Society for Art History’s (SSAH) study day event for 2017 will be on the theme of printmaking in Scotland. The event will be a two-day symposium hosted in partnership with the Edinburgh Printmakers, National Galleries of Scotland and the University of St Andrews on 3 and 4 February.

SSAH aim to attract a range of multi-disciplinary papers from a variety of different speakers and welcome proposals for 20-minute presentations for the study day on 4 February. Proposals should be in the form of 300–500 word abstracts. The deadline for proposals is 30 November 2016. st-andrews.ac.uk/MUSA

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Scottish Art News | NEWS | 7

The Goldfinch takes a flying visit to the Scottish National Gallery

Creative Scotland published its Arts Strategy in August. One of the core aims of the strategy is to promote and support artists’ work. This comes after alarming figures revealed that approximately 80% of artists in Scotland earn less than £10,000 per annum through their artistic output, with two thirds earning less than £5,000. Just 2% earn over £20,000.

The Arts Strategy pledged a commitment to ‘ensuring that all organisations and projects that receive public funding are demonstrating best practice with regard to fair pay and understand the impact on the wider sector of not doing’.

The full strategy can be accessed at creativescotland.com

The Goldfinch will travel to the Scottish National Gallery from its home in the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, in The Hague.

The painting has never before been shown in Scotland, and has only been exhibited in the UK on a handful of occasions.

Carel Fabritius (1622–1654) is often seen as the link between two giants of Dutch painting: Rembrandt van Rijn (1609–69), in whose workshop he was a star pupil, and Johannes Vermeer (1632–75), on whose work he had a considerable influence. An artist of remarkable skill, Fabritius was tragically killed at the age of 32, when a gunpowder store exploded, destroying large parts of the city of Delft and killing hundreds of its residents. It is presumed that much of Fabritius’ work was lost in the explosion, and only around a dozen of his paintings survive.

Among these, The Goldfinch, which was painted in the year he died, is considered by many to be his masterpiece.

4 November–18 December Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Is it or isn’t it? The Haddo House Raphael

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7 Carel Fabritius, The Goldfinch, 1654. Image couresty of Mauritshuis, The Hague 8 The Haddo House Madonna, image courtesy of the National Trust Scotland

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The National Trust for Scotland has recently discovered a painting that art historians believe is likely to be a work by the Italian renaissance artist Raphael. The revelation came on BBC4’s Britain’s Lost Masterpieces, which aired on 5 October.

The painting of the Virgin Mary was acquired by former Haddo House owner George Hamilton-Gordon, the 4th Earl of Aberdeen and British Prime Minister in the mid 19th century. At point of purchase, Hamilton-Gordon was convinced it was a genuine Raphael, but after his death in 1860 it was attributed to minor Renaissance

18th - 20th November | Edinburgh Corn Exchange | EH14 1RJ

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painter Innocenzo di Pietro Francucci da Imola, as a copy of the great artist’s work, and in 1899 was valued at just £20.

As part of Britain’s Lost Masterpieces, the artwork was professionally cleaned and conserved by Edinburgh-based Owen Davidson, enabling it to undergo detailed investigation by art experts Dr Bendor Grosvenor and Jacky Klein. The conservation of the painting, which shows a Madonna with clasped hands, revealed, among other signs, a ‘pentimento’, or alteration, in the right hand, which usually indicates an original work rather than a copy.

During the course of their investigations, Dr Grosvenor also discovered the painting had previously been purchased as a Raphael in the early 19th century, and was displayed in London along with additional works by the artist in 1841.

Another crucial clue came in the form of a related drawing by the artist, which may have served as a preparatory study for the painting. After research in Italy and the UK, the experts now believe the work to have been painted by Raphael between 1505 and 1510 while the artist was in Florence.

Now dubbed the ‘Haddo Madonna’, the painting was shown to former National Gallery director Sir Nicholas Penny. Using his own attribution system of ‘perhaps’, ‘probably’ or ‘by’ an artist, Sir Nicholas rated the work as between ‘probably’ and ‘by’ Raphael. This new attribution would be Scotland’s only publicly owned Raphael. Of the discovery, Dr Grosvenor said: ‘Finding a possible Raphael is about as exciting as it gets. This is a beautiful picture that deserves to be seen by as many people as possible.

I hope “the Haddo Madonna” brings many people to this part of Aberdeenshire.’

www.artedinburgh.com

80% of artists in Scotland earning less than £10,000 per annum

Scottish Art News | NEWS | 9

THE MAN WHO INVENTED SCOTTISH PAINTING

George Jamesone was born in 1589/90 in Aberdeen.

He was the fourth child of a master mason. In 1612 he was apprenticed to the principal decorative painter in Edinburgh, John Anderson – of whose work little survives.

Jamesone is known as the ‘first Scottish painter’ as he was the first native-born artist of note to emerge from the wreckage of the Reformation.

His earliest portraits were the burgesses and aristocracy of the North East, but his practice soon extended across Scotland. From 1633 he became active in Edinburgh and by 1635 had lodgings on the north side of the High Street near Netherbow Gate.

Duncan Thomson

By 1633, Jamesone had made his name in Auld Reekie and was the principal artist commissioned by the city council to be involved in the celebrations for Charles I’s state visit and coronation in Edinburgh that year. The city records note his ‘extraordiner paynes’ in producing a series of Scottish monarchs to decorate a triumphal arch at the Tolbooth, of which the Robert the Bruce painting acquired by the Fleming Collection is the finest.

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Duncan Thomson recalls the moment he discovered George Jamesone’s painting of Robert the Bruce at Newbattle Abbey It was a chance remark made many decades ago by my tutor at the University of Edinburgh, the late Giles Robertson, that started my quest for the work and life story of the 17th-century Scottish painter George Jamesone. Although Giles, fondly remembered, was a historian of the Italian Renaissance, in some now forgotten context he happened to make the remark that Jamesone was something of a mysterious figure who required looking into. The thought lodged somewhere in my mind for a number of years, before, with the encouragement of both Giles and David Talbot Rice (a Byzantinist!), I took up the challenge of researching a figure who was the earliest substantial presence in the history of Scottish painting. In due course in 1974, with the support of Sir Ellis Waterhouse (the great historian of British art), my research was published by Oxford University Press.

The work had been a slog over a number of years and had to be combined with a day job. My quest took me far and wide over Scotland. There were the delights of the hospitality of the owners of Jamesone’s paintings who wanted them to be better known – tea, for example, with the elderly Lord Southesk beside Jamesone’s masterpiece, his portrait of the young Montrose. There were also the days of near hypothermia in the freezing archives of the Aberdeen Sheriff Court. Sometimes paintings were in perilous 10 | ART

places or unlit attics, and it was in one such dusty, murky attic in Newbattle Abbey that I first came across the remains of a series of early Scottish monarchs that Jamesone had painted for the city of Edinburgh in 1633. I spent many days in that attic, making notes in the beam of a powerful torch, and discovering Jamesone’s tiny signature – something quite rare – on the portrait of Robert the Bruce. The painting was in much better condition than the others and my conclusion was that the signature was testimony that it was entirely from Jamesone’s hand.

At some date prior to 1720 when they first appear in an inventory, these paintings had been acquired for Newbattle, almostly certainly by Robert Kerr, 1st Marquess of Lothian, whose interests were part of a fashion for collecting groups of ‘uoumini famosi’, a tradition dating from the early Renaissance.

The commission by the city of Edinburgh had been part of that same tradition. In this case, the portraits were to play a significant role in the celebrations to welcome Charles I, monarch of the two united kingdoms since 1625, who had come north for his delayed coronation as King of Scots at the Palace of Holyroodhouse.

He made a ‘triumphal entry’, receiving the keys of the city in a colourful theatrical performance at the West Port, and passed through decorated streets and painted triumphal arches. Here he

1 George Jamesone, Robert the Bruce, 1633. ©The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation

encountered his 109 royal predecessors, visual reminders of how he was rooted in the life of the nation. Jamesone, by this time himself a famous man, played a major role in these events and was made a freeman of the city.

Even as suspicions of the King’s religious policies were causing some to question his wisdom, these portraits were an assertion of the loyalty of the Scots and the King’s right to rule, based on a lineage that stretched back to what we know was a mythic past. For the likenesses of the most recent monarchs, Jamesone had precedents to follow, but how he envisioned the earliest ones is difficult to say. It seems likely that some were refashioned from imagery found on early coins, prints from the Continent, and even ceramics. In the case of Robert the Bruce, he is likely to have sought out images in illustrated manuscripts like those, to quote one example, in the Forman Armorial of 1562. This contains a colourful depiction of Bruce and his queen, Isobel, where the king’s head is similar to that in Jamesone’s portrait, although he wears a crown rather than a martial helmet.

As this kind of imagery lost its political relevance, its importance as a historical trace came to be disregarded, and its artistic interest overlooked. This, and the relinquishing by the Kerrs of Newbattle Abbey as a family seat in the mid-20th century, led to

The Tolbooth Arch was the climax of Charles I’s procession up the Royal Mile which was stage managed by the Laureate of Scotland, William Drummond of Hawthorden.

Jamesone died in Edinburgh in 1644 and was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard in the centre of the city.

the dispersal of the paintings that had graced the house, and all of the 25 kings that had survived were sold by auction in 1971. It was there that I was able to acquire the painting – although just by the skin of my teeth, for when I came to pay for it at the end of the sale someone else thought they had made the winning bid!

The painting then began to have another life. Jamesone was now firmly established as the founder of the modern Scottish school of painting and in due course the painting was placed on loan to the National Galleries of Scotland. It also became something of a popular icon, figuring in an ever-increasing range of contexts (sometimes illicitly) – whisky bottles, book covers (for example, Nigel Tranter’s The Bruce Trilogy) and newspaper and magazine articles. Now this ‘standard’ image of the king, and one of the most intriguing surviving works of ‘the father of Scottish painting’, has entered the Fleming-Wyfold collection. As the earliest Scottish painting there, it enables that collection to tell more completely the story of Scottish art.

Dr Duncan Thomson was director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery from 1982 to 1997

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George Jamesone’s portrait of Robert the Bruce joins a number of other works capturing significant moments in Scotland’s history, held within The Fleming Collection

Eric Robertson Robert the Bruce and De Bohun, (early 20th century) Henry De Bohun was killed by Robert the Bruce on the first day of the Battle of Bannockburn. Eric Robertson’s (1887–1941) painting captures the grisly moments before Robert the Bruce’s axe strikes the English knight, splitting his helmet and head in two.

The influence of the Pre-Raphaelites and symbolist artist John Duncan (1866–1945) on Eric Robertson are evident in this painting. Though the subject matter is macabre, there is also something beautiful, even mystical in the artist’s retelling of what has become a popular story in Scottish history.

Thomas Faed The Last of the Clan, 1865 In 1855, Thomas Faed (1826-1900) moved to London where he made his name with a number of great storytelling paintings that pricked the consciences of his Victorian audience. One of the most famed, Home and Homeless, which is in the Scottish National Gallery, was commissioned by the radical millionaire and social reformer, Angela Burdett Coutts. The caption accompanying it currently reads: ‘[His pictures] greatly appealed to Victorian audiences . . . who preferred Faed’s interpretation of poverty to its more painful reality.’ However, it’s unlikely Angela Burdett Coutts felt this way – and there is no hint of sentimentality in this painting, the Last of the Clan, which from the day it was painted became one of the most potent images of the Highland Clearances.

As if to make the point, the catalogue entry for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 1865 sets the scene as spoken by one of those gathered round the old man: ‘When the steamer had slowly backed out . . . we began to feel that our once powerful clan was now represented by a feeble old man and his granddaughter; who together with some outlying kith and kin, myself among the number, owned not a singe blade of grass in the glen that was once our own.’ Victorian painters knew how to pull their political punches just as the likes of Jeremy Deller, Grayson Perry and Glasgow boy Ken Currie do today.

David Young Cameron Stirling Castle, (early 20th century)

John Watson Nicol Lochaber No More, 1883

There have been at least eight sieges of Stirling Castle, with the majority taking place during the Wars of Scottish Independence, where the site was crucial – both territorially and symbolically – for the warring Scots and English. The Battle of Bannockburn was fought in its shadow, and following this battle, when King Robert took it from the English, he ordered it to be slighted to prevent further re-occupation.

In 1899, following a successful career in London as associate of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers, Glasgow-born artist Sir David Young Cameron (1865–1945), moved to Kippen in the Highlands. From Kippen, Cameron could see over to Stirling Castle, and this historic site, sat majestically on top of a crag surrounded by cliffs, became an important source of inspiration for numerous works by the artist.

Very little is known of Edinburgh born John Watson Nicol (1856–1926), and his reputation rests on this single painting. Lochaber No More was painted 18 years after Thomas Faed’s The Last of the Clan, signaling that the subject still had political currency – indeed, it was reaching crisis point. It was painted a year after the riots in Skye and coincided with the publication of an influential report on the Highland Clearances and the appointment of a Crofter’s Commission. ‘Lochaber No More’ was both the title of a Pibroch Lament, favoured by departing Scots emigrants – two of whom Nicol captures in this arresting work, and the opening line of a song by the Scots poet and literary antiquary, Allan Ramsay, father of the portrait painter.

James Gunn The Eve of the Battle of the Somme, 1916

John Bellany The Ettrick Shepherd, 1967

Born in Glasgow, James Gunn’s (1893–1964) two brothers were killed in France during WW1 and the artist himself was gassed serving the Artists’ Rifles. The unmistakable Christian references in The Eve of the Battle of the Somme, whether intentional or not, are the pictorial equivalent of the poetry of Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon.

John Bellany (1942–2013) visited East Germany on a traveling scholarship in 1967 where he saw the work of Otto Dix and Max Beckmann – artists that became major influences on subsequent works. Bellany also visited Buchenwald Concentration Camp; an overwhelming experience that inspired The Ettrick Shepherd. The horror of the camp marked the end of Bellany’s innocence. The title and subject is based on James Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner and a strict Calvinist theology.

All images © The FlemingWyfold Art Foundation

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WHO WAS JOHN SAMSON? Paul Pieroni

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Paul Pieroni, curator at the Gallery of Modern Art, writes about one of Scotland’s most enigmatic filmmakers Who was John Samson (1946–2004), the almost unknown, yet entirely extraordinary Scottish filmmaker we’re currently exhibiting at GoMA? There’s a biographical answer to this question, as well as an artistic one. What I think is so interesting about Samson, is how the two answers intertwine: Samson’s biography informed his art as much as his art guided his life.

Born in Ayrshire, as a teenager Samson moved to Paisley where he remained for the formative years of his life.

Resistant to the constraints of formal education, at 16 Samson left school and took on an apprenticeship in the Clyde shipyards learning precision toolmaking in an engineering firm. Samson quickly became involved as a spokesperson in the 1959 Glasgow apprentices’ strike, helping organise visits by Glasgow apprentices to other shipyards in England in order to demonstrate solidarity across Britain.

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Around this time, Samson began to engage with the anarchist movement, joining the ‘Committee of 100’ and participating in a number of nuclear disarmament protests, including at Holy Loch in 1961, where he was arrested with 350 others for demonstrating against the presence of a US nuclear submarine. In 1963, upon meeting his wife Linda, who was studying painting at Glasgow School of Art at the time, Samson gave up his apprenticeship and fell in with a bohemian circle that included artists, writers and musicians. He taught himself guitar, took up stills photography and, by the mid-70s, began the cycle of films featured in our exhibition at GoMA. 2

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Samson’s working class roots, his passionate interest in radical politics, art and bohemia, compelled him towards individuals and groups operating at the margins of society. Covering topics such as tattooing, amateur railway enthusiasm, clothing fetishism, professional darts and the sex lives of disabled people, Samson’s films are concerned with cultural outsiders. Despite courting controversy, he was always compassionate in his curiosity. Samson’s work is about allowing unusual people to speak for themselves; carefully observing – but not judging – their conspicuous lives.

Paul Pieroni is a curator at the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow John Samson: 1975–1983 Until 17th April 2017 Gallery of Modern Art Royal Exchange Square, Glasgow, G1 3AH T: (0)141 287 3005 | glasgowlife.org.uk/museums/GoMA Open: Monday to Wednesday & Saturday 10am–5pm, Thursday 10am–8pm, Sunday 11am–5pm

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‘Despite courting controversy, he was always compassionate in his curiosity. Samson’s work is about allowing unusual people to speak for themselves; carefully observing – but not judging – their conspicuous lives’ 16 | ART

5 1-5 John Samson, various film stills. Images courtesy of Glasgow Life

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PAISLEY PATTERNS Neil Cooper

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John Byrne, Alexander Stoddart, Kenneth Clark and why Paisley has always been a city of culture ‘I was brought up in Ferguslie Park,’ remembers painter and playwright John Byrne (b.1940) of his Paisley boyhood growing up in the rough and tumble of one of the Renfrewshire town’s estates, ‘and I remember thanking God when we moved there, because I knew then that I had all the things I needed for whatever it was that I wanted to do.’

What Byrne proceeded to do was translate his experiences as a working-class kid steeped in 1950s pop culture and with ideas above his station into one of the most celebrated plays of the late 20th century. The Slab Boys spent a day in the life of Phil McCann and Spanky Farrell, a couple of likely lads with dreams of being an artist and a pop star, but who were stuck mixing paint in the slab room of a carpet factory, based on Stoddart’s actual premises where Byrne himself had worked.

Over two acts of matinee-idol patter mixed in with colourful local slang, Phil and Spanky became rebels without a cause, other than the possibility of a lumber with local glamourpuss Lucille Bentley and, for Phil, a place at Glasgow School of Art. Unlike Phil, Byrne was accepted by GSA, whereupon he began a career that saw him design book and record covers, create stage sets including Billy Connolly’s big banana boots from The Great Northern Welly Boot Show and the pop-up book for 7:84’s original production of The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil, and become a painter and playwright of international renown.

It was The Slab Boys in 1978 and its two follow-up plays, Cuttin’ A Rug and Still Life, that mythologised Paisley 18 | ART

with a technicolour largesse rooted in a classicist past that is too often swept under the carpet. Of its artistic elder states-people, Edinburgh-born but Elderslie-raised sculptor Alexander Stoddart (b. 1959) keeps the flame alive for ancient traditions that continue to fire his imagination.

‘This is the town where I first experienced culture,’ says Stoddart, who lives and works in Paisley, where his statue of church minister, philosopher and signatory of the American Declaration of Independence, John Witherspoon, sits in the grounds of the University of the West of Scotland. ‘It’s the place where I first heard Schubert. I will advocate Paisley till my dying day.’

While it would be fanciful – and unfair to both men – to dub them with such a glib sobriquet such as the ‘Paisley Boys’, a shared dedication to traditional forms combined with a healthy and at times withering disdain for contemporary conceptualism marks them out as wilfully singular auteurs.

As Paisley bids to become UK City of Culture 2021, the sense of place that drove Byrne and Stoddart looks set to fall under civic and artistic scrutiny in close-up as it ramps up its past as much as its present, and any future that results from the bid. Perhaps some of the key influences in the work of Byrne and Stoddart can be rooted in the classical grandiloquence of Paisley’s architecture. Much of this owed a considerable debt to the family of Kenneth Clark (1903–1983), the iconic art historian, collector, museum director and creator of Civilisation, the 13-part BBC TV documentary series that put art, music and literature at the centre of human history.

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‘ While it would be fanciful – and unfair to both men – to dub them with such a glib sobriquet such as the “Paisley Boys”, a shared dedication to traditional forms combined with a healthy and at times withering disdain for contemporary conceptualism marks them out as wilfully singular auteurs’ Scottish Art News | FEATURES | 19

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‘I believe in high culture,’. ‘It’s not entertainment. It’s a veil of tears. It’s a struggle for existence. All this airpunching, life affirmation and kids’ groups, these are entertainments. For me, culture is to do with Homer and Virgil and the Berlin Philharmonic. It is a prayer to the dead and the metaphysical companions who are yet to be born’ James Stourton’s newly published biography, Kenneth Clark – Life, Art and Civilisation, may only feature two pages on Clark’s relationship with Paisley, but it demonstrates how much Clark’s family left their mark. The Clarks made their fortune after Kenneth Clark’s great-great grandfather James invented the cotton spool, thus allowing a small family to open the factory that would help make Paisley a world leader in manufacturing cotton thread.

As competition grew between the Clarks and their industry rivals the Coats family, a series of vainglorious public buildings grew in its wake. With the Clarks bankrolling Paisley Town Hall, the Coats commissioned Glasgow architect John Honeyman (1831–1914) to build what was then Paisley Museum.

Both buildings were rendered in a neo-classical style, with what is now Paisley Museum and Art Galleries going on to house one of the largest municipal art collections in Scotland. It’s not hard to see how such a towering presence could wield such an influence on impressionable youth.

‘My mother used to take me there,’ says Byrne. ‘I remember vividly there was a tiger going through the jungle, and there was a wee elephant there.’

While such images may have influenced Clark’s forays into the art world when he returned there with his father, other aspects of Paisley life were seeping into Byrne’s consciousness.

‘It was a very stylish place,’ he says. ‘On a Sunday you’d get people dressed to the nines promenading down the Glasgow Road. There was a great American influence as well. Paisley had its own ice hockey team, the Paisley Pirates. There was one guy, very dapper guy, who had lodgings down our street. It’s an extraordinary place, Paisley, very different from Glasgow.

Glaswegians were stand-up comics. In Paisley, there were oddballs. I preferred the oddballs.’

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1 John Byrne, High Life, 2016 2 John Byrne, Subway Rider, 2016 3 A. Stoddart, Eros, 2014 4 John Byrne, Mother Love, 2016 5 Alexander Stoddart, The Wisdom of Silenus, 2014 6 John Byrne, Dangerous Corner, 2016 7 John Byrne, Twixt The Devil & The Deep Blue Sea, 2016 All images courtesy of the Fine Art Society Edinburgh

As Stoddart points out, however, Paisley is not a city, but is the biggest town in Scotland, ‘built by people who thought listening to Beethoven was a human right. I’ve given my life to this town, but if we’re going to be a city of culture, we have to sit down and talk about it. The question of culture is contentious, difficult and upsetting.’

While Byrne seems nonchalant about Paisley’s 2021 bid, Stoddart remains questioning of its aesthetic.

‘I believe in high culture,’ he says. ‘It’s not entertainment.

It’s a veil of tears. It’s a struggle for existence. All this air-punching, life affirmation and kids’ groups, these are entertainments. For me, culture is to do with Homer and Virgil and the Berlin Philharmonic. It is a prayer to the dead and the metaphysical companions who are yet to be born.

‘The City of Culture bid is about events and actions, but I’m an advocate of stillness. The City of Culture will last for a year, and then what? What happens in 2022, 2030 and 2035? I’ve stood up for culture all of my life, as I have done for Paisley, and as I will to my dying day. Whether this bid is successful or not, Paisley will always be a city of culture, as it always has been a city of culture.’

8 Kenneth Clark, courtesy of Harper Collins Publishers

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Neil Cooper is an arts writer based in Edinburgh John Byrne will be exhibiting work in Moonshine 18 November–23 December 2016 The Fine Art Society Edinburgh 6 Dundas Street, Edinburgh, EH3 6HZ T: (0)131 557 4050 | thefineartsociety.com Open: Monday to Friday 10am–6pm, Saturday 11am–2pm Kenneth Clark – Life, Art and Civilisation by James Stourton is published by William Collins, £30.

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Q&A WITH RICHARD ASHROWAN Richard Ashrowan, creative director of Alchemy Film & Moving Image Festival

2 1 Richard Ashrowan, Photo by Patrick Rafferty.

Courtesy Alchemy Film & Arts

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2 Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival 2016, 14-17 April 2016.

Photo by Csilla Tornallyay.

Courtesy Alchemy Film & Arts

Alchemy Film & Moving Image Festival in Hawick is a celebration of experimental film and artists’ moving image, held annually in the Scottish Borders over four days every spring. Approaching its seventh edition, the festival is now widely acknowledged as being one of the most important festivals for experimental and artists’ film in the UK and Europe. This year Alchemy Film & Arts will curate Rachel Maclean’s new commission for Scotland + Venice at the Venice Biennale 24 | ART

Can you us about Alchemy Film Festival?

Why did it start, what’s its relationship to other Scottish film festivals and how did you get involved?

I started the festival in 2010, in part as a provocation. I wanted to challenge the perception that major cities are the only place one can see challenging contemporary art and film of an international calibre. At this time there was little happening in the Scottish gallery scene in terms of artists’ film, and no other specialised film festivals of this kind, while there were several notable festivals across Europe and the USA. There are excellent experimental strands within Edinburgh International Film Festival’s Black Box and Glasgow Film Festival’s Crossing the Line. We wanted Alchemy to offer a more dedicated environment and deeper discursive experience for filmmakers and artists to come together.

The festival takes place every year in Hawick, why did you decide to hold the festival there and what is it like as a venue?

Hawick is at first sight an unlikely location for such a festival. It is a small but beautiful town of 14,000 people, once a prosperous woollen mill town, it has been in serious economic decline for decades, and is situated in a predominantly rural region with little contemporary arts provision. We were very fortunate that a former mill building in the centre of the town – Tower Mill – had recently been redeveloped to offer a state of the art cinema, part of Heart of Hawick, a major award-winning cultural regeneration project. We also take over many of the disused spaces within the town – empty shops, mill buildings and offices – for our moving image installations, while using the town hall and other municipal spaces for a range of live cinema events.

When people come to the festival, they usually stay for the whole time, attending screenings from early morning to late at night. Everyone eats in the same

places, all the B&B’s and hotels are full of festival visitors and filmmakers, and there are few other cultural distractions. This generates a real intensity of experience, a lively conversation between filmmakers and audiences that grows and extends over several days.

You are curating Rachel Maclean’s exhibition at Scotland + Venice. How did this come about?

I have long thought that Rachel Maclean’s work deserved a much wider international exposure, so when the opportunity came up to put her work forward to the selection panel for Scotland + Venice, I immediately knew it was the right partnership for us. I would not have proposed any other artist. We had worked with Rachel before, with an Alchemy screening and Q&A of Over The Rainbow in 2012, and a special screening of Feed Me, with a green-screen workshop at Traquair House (the location at which Rachel previously made The Lion and the Unicorn).

What excites you most about Rachel Maclean’s work?

Rachel’s work stands out in a way few filmmakers do – it is strikingly original, both visually and conceptually.

Her films seem to come from another place entirely, a different frame of reference, and her visual language is quite distinct from many of the tropes I currently see in artists’ films. Her films take us into a sometimes dystopian kind of hyper-reality, using a visual and conceptual language she has made all her own.

Why did you select the Chiesa di Santa Caterina as the site of the Scotland + Venice exhibition?

We spent several days in Venice and actually looked at 26 potential venues before deciding on Chiesa di Santa Caterina, a deconsecrated church completed in the 15th century and which is attached to the Marco Foscarini School.

I think this is one of the advantages of being a collateral event within the Biennale, rather than having a fixed country pavilion: we have the freedom to choose a space that works specifically for each artist.

As the centrepiece of the show will be a new film, we were looking for a space that could offer a real sense of scale and drama, while allowing both the film and the audience a space to breathe.

Are there any similarities between Venice and Hawick?

John Ruskin (1819–1900), the great British art critic, when writing about Venice and its crumbling architecture, became captivated by a small, insignificant plant that grew between the cracks in Venice’s crumbling masonry. This small plant came to signify a great deal for him, for its humble and overlooked classical beauty, and he drew it growing from the capitals of St Mark’s. He called it the Erba Della Madonna (Madonna Herb), and it is known to us today as the Ivy Leaved Toadflax. This same plant also grows from the cracks in the crumbling walls of the mills and warehouses of Hawick. Whenever I see it here, I am transported to Venice, or, when in Venice, I am transported to Hawick.

Ruskin might have appreciated this, for he believed in the ability of art to uplift the lives of everyone, regardless of their education and privilege, which is something we also try to echo here.

Alchemy Film & Moving Image Festival 2–5 March 2017, Hawick alchemyfilmfestival.org.uk A screening and discussion with Rachel Maclean will take place on March 4 at the next Alchemy festival.

Rachel Maclean at Scotland + Venice 13 May–26 November 2017 Chiesa di Santa Caterina, Fondamenta Santa Caterina, 30121, Cannaregio, Venice scotlandandvenice.com

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FROM TOWNHEAD TO CATTERLINE Susan Mansfield

The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art’s new exhibition, ‘Joan Eardley: A Sense of Place’ promises to be a treasure trove of largely unseen material, including rarely exhibited paintings, drawings and photographs, made in the two locations that inspired Eardley the most In the National Galleries of Scotland store, where members of the public can apply to see works of art which are not on display, one artist is requested more than any other. The person who tops the charts is not Claude Monet, or Vincent Van Gogh, but a 20thcentury woman artist whose all-too-short career spanned less than 20 years: Joan Eardley (1921–1963).

A major new Eardley show, like the one programmed for Modern Two this winter, won’t be short of visitors, but ‘Joan Eardley: A Sense of Place’ aims to do much more than please the fans. Drawing on a treasure trove of largely unseen material, and bringing in paintings rarely exhibited before, curators hope to shed fresh light on Eardley’s artistic practice.

‘Part of the point is to be looking over her shoulder,’ says Patrick Elliott, senior curator at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. He describes the business of sifting through drawings and photographs gifted by Eardley’s family, poring over her letters and tracking down people who remembered her as the art historical equivalent of ‘sleuthing’. ‘We’re snooping after her, building up a picture of what she did and how.’

The show concentrates on the two main ‘places’ of Eardley’s work, Townhead in Glasgow, where she painted children in the slums, and the fishing village of Catterline in North East Scotland. Throughout her working life, she moved between the two, and how she drew on both places is crucial to any understanding of work.

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‘There’s no way of knowing exactly how she divided her time,’ says Elliott. ‘But you get the strong impression, and it’s backed up by everyone you speak to, that in the early days she’s living in Glasgow and taking trips to Catterline, and at the end it’s the other way round. In a letter to a friend (the artist Margot Sandeman) she says that an artist needs an escape route, you need to get away from what’s familiar. I think Catterline was a safety valve from Glasgow and vice versa.’

Eardley began painting in Townhead shortly after finishing post-diploma studies at Glasgow School of Art in 1948.

In the material from her studio gifted to the Scottish National Galleries by her family, it is possible to see the extent to which she used photography in her work, capturing images of children and the city environment. ‘She was a very good photographer, her pictures are quite informal, very candid,’ says Elliott. ‘It’s interesting how she uses them in her work, she’s not copying them in a slavish way, there’s always a twist.’

In 1950, when Eardley travelled north to exhibit work at the Gaumont Cinema in Aberdeen, she discovered Catterline.

‘On the face of it, the Glasgow works look utterly different,’ says Elliott. ‘It’s a noisy place, dark and smelly, overcrowded. Catterline was half-empty, many people had left to work on deep-sea trawlers in Stonehaven or Aberdeen. But both are close-knit communities under pressure, which I think she sees so clearly.’

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‘ The show concentrates on the two main “places” of Eardley’s work, Townhead in Glasgow, where she painted children in the slums, and the North-East fishing village of Catterline’

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1 Joan Eardley, Young girl skipping, larger, 1955–1960 2 Joan Eardley, Girl Skipping, c.1956–60 3 Joan Eardley, Winter Day, Catterline, c.1957–60 4 Joan Eardley, Three Children at a Tenement Window, c.1955–60 5 Joan Eardley, Three Children at a Tenement Window, c.1961 6 Joan Eardley, Children and Graffitied Wall, c.1955–60 7 Joan Eardley, Winter Sea V, 1958 All image © Estate of Joan Eardley. Courtesy of Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

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Eardley shunned home comforts in both places: her Townhead studio had no electricity, neither did her favourite cottage at No.1 Catterline, though she joked in her letters that she hung a curtain for extra privacy in the outside toilet. She had other priorities, the primary one of which was to paint. ‘It’s extraordinary that almost all the work we have was produced in 15 years,’ says Elliott. ‘She was absolutely fired up, going hell for leather. At the end, she knew her time wasn’t unlimited, but in a way she always worked like that.’

Her modus operandi varied between her two locations.

In Townhead, where her child subjects were unlikely to sit still for long, she used photography and detailed sketches, including evocative gouache and pastel studies. In Catterline, she sketched too, but more ‘as an exercise, almost in the way that dancers or actors get limbered up’. Here, she would work on a dozen paintings at once, waiting for the right light and weather conditions to finish each one.

Unlike Townhead, which was demolished shortly after Eardley’s death, Catterline remains much as it was and it is possible to map – as the curators have done for this show – the exact locations where many major works were painted. ‘They were rarely more than 500m from where she lived,’ says Elliott. ‘A lot of them are literally painted from her doorstep.’

A little ‘sleuthing’ also uncovered the surprising fact that, in her first five years in Catterline, Eardley never painted the 28 | ART

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ocean. ‘She’s almost continuing something she began in Glasgow which is to paint the buildings, although the sea is just over her shoulder. It was rather amazing and striking that the sea wasn’t something she felt comfortable about, until about 1956 when she starts painting it.’

From then on, however, Eardley didn’t looked back, going on to produce some of her finest works, seascapes which hover on the border of abstraction, and which – she would happily tell admirers - were influenced more by American abstractionist Jackson Pollock than the British traditions of JMW Turner or William McTaggart. These works of experimentation and confidence cemented her reputation among the top British artists of the 20th century, a position she still holds today.

Susan Mansfield is an arts journalist based in Scotland Joan Eardley: A Sense of Place 3 December–21 May 2017 Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern Two) 75 Belford Road, Edinburgh, EH4 3DRT T:(0)131 624 6200 | nationalgalleries.org Open: Daily 10am–5pm

JOAN EARDLEY RsA Restless Talent 1 — 25 February 2017 scottish-gallery.co.uk/joaneardley

16 Dundas Street, Edinburgh, EH3 6HZ | +44 (0)131 558 1200 mail@scottish-gallery.co.uk | scottish-gallery.co.uk Image: Girl with Shopping Bag, c.1959, pen and ink, 47 x 35.5 cms (detail)

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DAVID MICHIE RSA 1928–2015 Laura Campbell

David Michie RSA: the generous, funny and sympathetic artist remembered in light of the Royal Scottish Academy’s series of exhibitions curated in his honour Often it’s better not to learn too much about the artist behind a favourite work of art: such knowledge can undo a work’s mystique and put a barrier between viewer and object. Not so in the case of David Michie (1928–2015), whose warm and life-loving character was reputedly harmonious with his gentle, seemingly whimsical paintings.

‘Funny, generous, sympathetic’ are words former student and colleague Michael Docherty immediately reaches for when describing the late academician. ‘Even standing in front of his own work, he’d be far more likely to ask you how you were getting on with your own paintings.’

Michie’s modestly sized canvases are a flurry of intuitive but precise brushmarks with dapples and pools of colour that tantalise and tease the senses. His paintings feel light and airy, but Michie’s observations are razor-sharp while depicting humourous and/or quotidian subject matter.

There is a painting in the RSA’s current exhibition ‘The David Michie Gift’ that easily sums up the artist’s ability to evoke the most ephemeral of observations: a picture of plum and fleshy hues shows a couple of nude bathers cavorting at the fore of a moody beach landscape, perhaps at sundown. Immediately, before even spending a few seconds in front of the painting, the word ‘frolic’ dances in the mind’s eye, conjuring personal recollections and half-forgotten memories. And, of course, the painting is 30 | ART

simply titled Frolic, and we can imagine Michie giving the work its title in the knowledge that we too would latch onto this peculiar word that so succinctly summarises the scene.

Like his talented and much-celebrated mother Anne Redpath (1895–1965), travel was of utmost importance to the development of his work. Famously, Michie was a vocal advocate both in his teaching years and during his tenure at the RSA, of awards and schemes set up to encourage artists to travel.

But as Docherty remembers, this passion of his ‘was never at a distance’, rather, he was always curious as to how his students got on afterwards. ‘As soon as you were back, he wanted to know all about it. It’s difficult to explain the impact that travelling can have on your work, but that’s something David understood.’

Michie’s artistic vision was undeniably singular, but comparisons will be drawn with Redpath. Indeed, it says something of the sincerity of his vision that during the 50s, when many male artists including close peers were making grander, more sombre expressionist works, he stayed true to his roots.

Many artists would have taken the opportunity to distinguish themselves from a famous predecessor, but Michie continued to do what he loved and believed in, and so flashes of Redpath are perceptible in his paintings. The French connection they share – Michie was born in Southern France – and the impressionist influence puts their work on the same page.

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All this isn’t to say he was a modest artist: ‘he knew who he was and what he was about,’ Docherty says, ‘but David had this outlook that art was this astonishing thing; that it was a privilege to be involved with, and if you can share that with someone else that was even better.’ Redpath and Michie’s preoccupation with the everyday allows others to find a connection with their work, making their paintings not just sophisticated in their execution, but pleasingly accessible too.

Michie’s artistic heritage wasn’t confined to his own family: he was part of an enigmatic set of artists who together helped steer the RSA in a fresh direction. His daughter Lindsey Michie, chair of the RSA’s board, recalls frequent visits to the house of her father’s close friends Elizabeth Blackadder (b.1931) and John Houston (1930–2008) where Michie would occasionally draw and paint. In a painting recently gifted to the Fleming Collection, Pink Garden (early 1980s), he depicts the walled garden of Blackadder and Houston’s house in the Grange area of Edinburgh. While Michie painted other gardens in his prolific career, his daughter imagines it was the unusual plants and flowers combined with the specificity of the light that would have drawn her father to the scene that informed Pink Garden.

Those who studied under Michie will remember him being ‘something like a father figure,’ according to Docherty.

Kirkland Main, who went on to lead drawing and painting at Edinburgh College of Art, recalls him being a tutor who was especially supportive of students finding their own way. ‘He didn’t 32 | ART

just encourage students to do what the tutors were doing, he encouraged them to be themselves, to do something different.’

Asked what Michie’s legacy might be, Docherty shared an anecdote that features another great Scottish painter, the late John Bellany: ‘I can remember having a silly conversation years ago and John saying “people hammer exhibitions, are critical of the way people work. But when you think about it, there aren’t that many of us, the art community isn’t that big. We should all be together.” And David felt that; it underpinned what he believed in.’

George Donaldson, a former colleague at ECA, paid tribute to his dear friend: ‘His humour; always gentle and pawky; his experience, so often sought; his generosity, especially to younger artists, warm and much appreciated throughout the generations who worked with him . . . [they] carry with them today warm memories of a great and wise educator, and a very talented, lyrical painter.’

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Laura Campbell is an arts writer based in Glasgow The David Michie Gift Until 13 January 2017 Royal Scottish Academy The Mound, Edinburgh, EH2 2EL T: (0)131 225 6671 | royalscottishacademy.org Open: Monday to Saturday 10am–5pm, Sunday noon–5pm

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‘His humour; always gentle and pawky; his experience, so often sought; his generosity, especially to younger artists, warm and much appreciated throughout the generations who worked with him . . . [they] carry with them today warm memories of a great and wise educator, and a very talented, lyrical painter’ 1 David Michie, Summer Garden, 1990. Courtesy of the Royal Scottish Academy 2 David Michie, Springtime Landscape, 1984. Courtesy of the Royal Scottish Academy 3 David Michie, Pink Man Passing, c. 1968. Courtesy of the Royal Scottish Academy 4 David Michie, Sunflowers and Mistral, 2002 Courtesy of the Royal Scottish Academy.

5 David Michie, Frolic, early 1990s.

Courtesy of the Royal Scottish Academy 6 David Michie, Pink Garden, early 1980s. The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation

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THE DRAWING THAT MOVED

1-3 Jerwood Drawing Prize 2016, supported

by Jerwood Charitable Foundation. Photos by Hydar Dewachi

Kathryn Lloyd 1

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The Jerwood Drawing Prize stretches our definition of the medium, as the award goes to a video work by Glasgow School of Art graduate Solveig Settemsdal When announcing the winners of the 2016 Jerwood Drawing Prize, judge Glenn Brown warned it was a ‘contentious’ decision.

Founded in 1994, the open submission drawing prize sets out to reposition the discipline, celebrating its intimacy and immediacy, in place of its historical categorisation as a ‘lesser medium’.

In doing so, the prize has often relied upon an expansive understanding of what constitutes drawing, incorporating textiles, objects, sculpture and tapestry. This is the first year, however, the first prize has been awarded to a video work: Glasgow School of Art graduate Solveig Settemsdal’s film Singularity (2016).

Singularity shows the accumulation of an amorphous white entity, seemingly suspended in a black void. Constantly fluctuating, the white substance is never still, as elements pull against each other, expand and disappear. Viscous and animated, it never sets, at points resembling an egg and others a swan burrowing into its feathers. Lines bisect, and movement surfaces like animals burrowing from inside out. The void is in fact a cube of gelatin, and the white form is a mineral ink, which Settemsdal injects into it. Creating an increasing tension between space and density, the inevitable culmination is a black hole, as the ink is drawn back out and into its starting place in the syringe.

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‘The singularity’ is the hypothesis that the invention of artificial super intelligence will abruptly trigger runaway technological growth, resulting in the surpassing of human intelligence. Although Settemdsal employs organic materials, their autonomy parallels the potential technological eclipse of human beings. Exploring the elements through process, Settemsdal facilitates and harnesses their natural momentum, but she does not control them. As the ink coalesces and coagulates, there is the sense of the uncanny at watching something independent of human influence.

Although dramatically different in materials, Settemsdal’s video work follows the traditional patterns of drawing. She uses the syringe like a pen, to project ink onto/into a surface, in order to record its mark-making. In its perpetual iterations and transformations, Singularity manifests as a sculptural variation of drawing. As a medium which is constantly in flux and open to re-interpretation, Settemsdal capitalises on drawing’s inherent volatility. The inky organism grows like an embryo, extending and shrinking; physically it is both substantial and insubstantial, as it explores its anatomy through its own birth.

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Drawing is always on the precipice: of being erased and re-drawn, of preceding and informing another medium, of seeing and recording. It is fluid and gravitational; it roots the most abstract of things in simple line, but it can be equated with thought. Settemsdal doesn’t want to create things that last.

The white ink creature she orchestrates will inevitably cease and disappear into itself, as the gelatin rejects the substance.

Although limited by its own makeup, the possibilities of form seem endless; it is pure investigation. Using the tools of videomaking and the unpredictability of her chosen materials, Settemsdal is wholly indebted to the transient nature of drawing.

For a drawing prize, how can that be contentious?

‘Although dramatically different in materials, Settemsdal’s video work follows the traditional patterns of drawing. She uses the syringe like a pen, to project ink onto/ into a surface, in order to record its mark-making ’

Kathryn Lloyd is an artist and writer based in London. She is currently the Jerwood’s writer in residence.

The Jerwood Drawing Prize is touring across the UK in venues in Bath, Leigh and Bournemouth from November 2016 to April 2017. For more information, go to jerwoodvisualarts.org

Scottish Art News | FEATURES | 37

ART MARKET

The highlights at Frieze, Sotheby’s ‘Made in Britain’ sale and the Scottish painter that broke records at Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary evening auction After making its way to Scotland for the first time last year, the Turner Prize has returned to Tate Britain, and unusually, there are no artists with a Scottish connection among the nominees (perhaps the panel decided to take a break from the so-called Glasgow aesthetic that has held sway since 2005). Regardless, the Scottish scene continues to make its presence felt in the capital, most notably at Frieze London and its sister fair, Frieze Masters, and at the autumn auction sales.

In the Frieze tent were Scottish galleries the Modern Institute, Ingleby Gallery, Mary Mary and, under the guise of a new name, Astner Koppe (previously Kendall Koppe). But it wasn’t just galleries representing Scotland at Frieze this year: Rachel Maclean was a headliner with her premiere at Frieze Film, part of the fair’s ever-expanding non-profit programme.

At the heart of the fair and sitting back-toback with White Cube, the Modern Institute’s position recognised Toby Webster’s commitment to Frieze where he has exhibited since its first edition in 2003.

Their knockout stand which was designed by Turner prize winner and GSA star, Martin Boyce, combined conceptual rigour with an arte povera sensibility.

The stand itself was constructed from corrugated sheeting recycled from Boyce’s Glasgow International Tramway exhibition design and also featured a

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modernist inspired concrete desk – another Boyce classic. Director Toby Webster commented that Boyce intended it to ‘reflect the way that artists might show their own work – down to the more natural lighting which has been salvaged from the Tramway show.’

Collectors were quick off the mark snapping up works by other eminent Scottish artists such as Cathy Wilkes (b.1966) and Toby Paterson (b.1974).

The fair is a big day in the calendar for the Modern Institute as Toby Webster acknowledged: ‘Obviously fashion changes from year to year, but today [at the VIP opening] there’s a quality crowd. It reflects the investment by major galleries in London. We’re always meeting new people, which is why Frieze is such an important fair for us.’

Strategically placed adjacent to the Glasgow gallery, Edinburgh’s Ingleby Gallery has both established and emerging artists on its roster. Kevin Harman (b.1982) is among the latter, and has in the past created a stir with controversial performance works. The gallery sold out of Harman’s abstract oils, created within double glazing units, which fetched between £12,000–15,000. Charles Avery (b.1973), a figurative artist lauded by a younger generation of artists, also did well with drawings fetching £8000– 12,000. But the most exciting sale for Ingleby was Jonathon Owen’s (b.1973), life-size marble monument

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commissioned earlier in the year by Edinburgh Art Festival and displayed in the Burns Monument on Calton Hill, which went to a major Australian museum.

Among the 19 major international artists exhibited at this year’s Frieze Sculpture Park, Eduardo Paolozzi’s (1924–2005) anthropomorphic Trishula (1966) – hewn from a six-sided, lozenge-shaped prefabricated unit – will grace Regents Park until January 2017. Concurrent with the sculpture park’s opening, Jonathan Clark Fine Art had a dedicated show for the Scottish sculptor’s bronzes and plasters from his estate at Frieze Masters and had also sold two bronze busts within hours of the VIP opening, plus a boxed collection of plaster maquettes.

Smaller Paolozzi pieces sold well at the patriotically titled ‘Made In Britain’ at Sotheby’s, with sketchbook studies featuring the artist’s anthropomorphic machine-like forms rendered in ballpoint pen, felt tip, pencil and crayon reaching estimate at just over £1000. A more substantial study piece, Mondrian Head (c.1990s) – an 18-inch maquette made from plaster and wood – sold for double the top estimate at £3000.

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‘Inlet sold for £68000, with curator Jilly Dobson describing the exhibition and subsequent sales as one of the best they’ve had since opening in 1982’

‘Made In Britain’ saw good sales of works by multidisciplinary Scottish artists including Craigie Aitchison (1926–2009), Peter Doig (b.1959), and William Scott (1913–1989). Ceramic works by Jennifer Lee (b.1956) reached over five times their lower estimate of £1000. Sotheby’s explained that Lee’s practice goes some way to bridging the gap between fine art and design: ‘Lee’s technique is slow; her output is only around eighteen or so a year.’ It’s an output that aligns the maker with other ceramicists who have made the leap into the art world, though interestingly, Lee’s objects are still decidedly domestic in nature. Undoubtedly she remains a name to watch.

The other auction houses also demonstrated a patriotic flare with a multitude of sales designed to coincide with the influx of dealers from around the world.

Two Peter Doig sketches came in slightly over the lower estimate during Christie’s Frieze week auctions, but it was the sale of Doig’s iconic painting Grasshopper (1999) at Christie’s that was the most remarkable, doubling its low estimate and fetching £5,861,000. Equally, the estimate for Glasgow-born artist Lucy McKenzie’s (b.1977) Olga Korbut (1998) painting was easily surpassed at the Post-War and Contemporary evening auction at Christie’s London.

Christie’s commented: ‘The evening opened with Lucy McKenzie’s groundbreaking Olga Korbut which set the room alight, also achieving a world record at auction with a figure of £317,000 / $402,590 / €359,161, more than ten times its high estimate of £30,000.’

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Away from the bustle of Frieze week, sales in Scottish galleries have been buoyant with Open Eye Gallery reporting excellent sales of Barbara Rae’s (b.1943) prints and paintings in light of the pre-eminent artist’s major exhibition as part of Edinburgh Art Festival. Inlet (1999) sold for £68,000, with curator Jilly Dobson describing the exhibition and subsequent sales as one of the best they’ve had since opening in 1982. The Royal Scottish Academy sold a self-portrait of John Byrne (b.1940) for £22,000 – a reportedly significant sale for the academy. After establishing itself only two years ago, Arusha Gallery continues to enjoy success promoting its young and emerging artists. Recent GSA post-graduate Blair McLaughlin (b.1992) has been a popular seller for the gallery, with a diptych by the artist called Rave (2015) going for £6500 during a fair in Manchester and A Landscape of Events (2016) selling recently for £4995. According to the gallery’s director, Agnieszka Prendota, the latter sold while it was still wet: ‘We got it out of the studio and into the gallery and someone loved it so much they just went for it.’

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1 Jonathan Owen, ‘Untitled’, 2016.

Courtesy of Ingleby Gallery 2 Eduardo Paolozzi, Trishula (1966). © Frieze 3 Mondrian Head, 1990.

Courtesy of Sotheby’s 4 Lucy McKenzie, Olga Korbut, 1998 5 Jennifer Lee, Ceramics.

Courtesy of Sotheby’s 6 Blair McLaughlin, A Landscape of Events, 2016. Courtesy of Arusha Gallery 7 Barbara Rae, Inlet, 1999. Courtesy of Open Eye Gallery 7

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RECENT ACQUISITIONS 42 | ART

Scottish Art News Scottish Art News highlights some of the latest acquisitions to permanent collections across Scotland

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Without a doubt, one of the most exciting documentary photographs, and the saw and strapping 1 young artists to emerge in Scotland over the last used during the performance, boxed and presented as few years is Rachel Maclean. The Scottish National relics of the event in sculptural form.

Gallery of Modern Art (SNGMA) recently acquired 3 her critically acclaimed film Feed Me (2015) – one of Glasgow Life has significantly expanded its the major hits of British Art Show 8. Feed Me is Rachel collection over the past year, purchasing landmark Maclean’s most ambitious work to date and the first international works, such as Hito Steyerl’s Abstract, work by the artist to enter the SNGMA collection. The (2012), a double-screen two-channel HD video that work explores the commercialisation of childhood explores the complexities of the arms trade and warfare and a corresponding tendency to infantilism in adult through research on the debris of the battlefield, society, and brings to life the ‘little monsters’ created by alongside important new acquisitions related to the consumerist desire. The idea of pretence pervades the city. One highlight is Elsa Stansfield (1945–2004) and film – from the role-play undertaken by Maclean herself, Madelon Hooykaas’ (b.1942) seminal work What’s It to the blurring of the relationship between imaginary and real worlds, all in the grotesque, nightmarish style that Maclean has made her own.

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The acquisition by Dundee’s McManus Gallery of Enjoy the Mellow (2013) by Jonny Lyons is another significant endorsement for a young Scottish artist. Lyons trained at the city’s Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design and the work was originally made for Lyons’ degree show. Much celebrated upon its initial presentation, Enjoy the Mellow went on to earn him a place in the Royal Scottish Academy’s ‘New Contemporaries’ exhibition and multiple awards, including the RSA’s Adam Bruce Thomson Award and John Kinross scholarship. In a somewhat absurd performance, Lyons sits astride a wooden beam overhanging a body of water and saws through it until he plunges into the water below. Presented as a mixed-media artwork, the McManus has acquired three

To You? (1975). As one of the earliest video works to be made in the city, it is largely credited as putting Glasgow in communication with other counterculture movements across the globe. During its original showing, the work combined recorded and live film with photography and text. What’s It To You? is exhibited at the Gallery of Modern Art’s ‘Please Turn Us On’ group exhibition until 22 January 2017.

Glasgow Life also expanded its collection of portraits of influential figures from 18th-century Glasgow, supported by grant aid from Friends of Glasgow Museums. Portraits include Robert Harvie’s portrait of Scottish tobacco lord John Glassford of Dougalston (1715–1783) painted in 1752 and portraits of the tobacconist Thomas Hopkirk (1716–1781), 1744–81 and his wife Elizabeth Smellie (c.1684–1796), 1744–81 painted by an unknown artist.

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The Hunterian also acquired an image of a man central to Glasgow’s history – the diplomatist and collector of antiquities, Sir William Hamilton, in caricature form by James Gillray. The work had a particular appeal to the museum because Sir William was himself an important collector as well as a friend and colleague of the museum’s founder Dr Hunter. Hunter bought, and received as gifts from Hamilton, numerous important works, especially coins, medals, and a collection of anatomical drawings by Pietro da Cortona.

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Though not a portrait of the man himself, Fife Cultural Trust has purchased the only existing seal matrix belonging to William de Lamberton, Bishop of St Andrews (died 1328). Lamberton played an influential role during the Scottish Wars of Independence and was a key campaigner under William Wallace and later Robert the Bruce. The seal is a distinctive example of medieval craftmanship and design, featuring a saltire with a scallop shell, a metaphor for St Andrews as a site of pilgrimage.

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In Edinburgh, the City Archives (ECA) have significantly expanded their collection of Howie watercolour sketches depicting Edinburgh’s 19thcentury street traders. When 93 illustrations recently became available, ECA were determined to purchase them to add to the 311 other such illustrations by John and George Howie; preserved in 1890 by Sir John Boyd, Lord Provost for the city. With the support of the National Fund for Acquisitions (NFA) and funding from the City of Edinburgh Council matching this amount, this important collection of historical works was secured.

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The Scottish Maritime Museum in Irvine miles from where this work now hangs), including has been rapidly building a collection of Scottish Sandy Inglis pictured in Rabbit Catches. The elderly artworks over the last few years as part of their project, farmer lived in the town with his sister and is ‘SMMart: Enriching the imagery of Scotland,’ funded represented in another 13 of Faed’s works. through the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Collecting Cultures programme. The museum aims to acquire a 10 Stirling’s Smith Art Gallery and Museum nationally significant collection of Scottish maritime has wanted to build its collection of works by artwork by 2018. The recent acquisition of Francis CB John Munnoch (1879–1915) for a long time. Born in Cadell’s (1883–1937) painting The Pier at Cove (c.1934) Stirling, Munnoch was one of the most significant – the first work by a Scottish Colourist to enter the Scottish artists who contributed to the Arts and collection – represents a significant step towards Crafts movement. Until The Great Church at Veere, this goal.

Netherlands, (1914) and The Yellow Sail (1914) became available, the gallery believed it had reached the In order to build upon their existing collection limit of its search capacity, owing to a lack of family 8 of works at Broughton House by the esteemed Glasgow contacts and the artist’s early death in action at Boy Edward Hornel (1864–1933), the National Trust for Gallipoli in 1915. These two significant acquistions Scotland purchased Harvesting, Kirkcudbright (1885). will join existing works in the collection, including The vast majority of Hornel’s works were produced Munnoch’s Chinese Coat, a portrait of the artist’s in his studio at Broughton House, in Kirkcudbright ‘sweetheart’ Jessie McGregor (who is also painted in and this significant acquisition is part of the National the Chinese Coat) and a small oil sketch On the River Trust’s strategy to collect material that enhances and Forth. A retrospective exhibition of the work of the expands the image and reputation of the life and artist in the pipeline. work of Hornel. The Broughton House collection is composed mainly of Hornel’s later works, so the Another significant acquisition for the 11 acquisition of a work of this period considerably Smith Art Gallery and Museum are the Drymen enhances visitors’ understanding of the artist’s career. cups by émigré silversmith Johan Gottleiff Bilsinds.

Very few examples of Bilsinds work survive, and the 9 Another new artwork acquired for the town of Drymen cups are his largest extant pieces. The cups Kirkcudbright, though in this instance for the Stewarty were ordered by the Kirk of Drymen after presbytery Museum, is the painting Rabbit Catches (1866) by one investigations in 1668, 1688, 1705 and 1712 complained of Dumfries and Galloway’s most acclaimed artists, of the lack of communion ware of any kind.

John Faed. Something of a child ingénue, Faed left school and set himself up as a painter of miniatures at 12 While many galleries were selecting works the age of 12. As his career developed, so did the scope by individual artists that would extend their range of his work – moving into portrait and genre painting. of work in their collections, the SNGMA was gifted Faed found some of his favourite models for his genre one. 1932 (profile: Venetian red) by Ben Nicholson paintings in his hometown of Gatehouse (only a few (1894–1982) was given to the gallery through the

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Acceptance In Lieu of Tax scheme. The work represents a turning point in Nicholson’s life, both personally and professionally. The woman in the painting is the celebrated sculptor Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) and the work was made in the first year of their relationship when they both shared a tiny studio flat in Hampstead. The painting, a still-life, contains a semi-veiled likeness of Hepworth, a subtle rendering of her distinctive profile, drawn in pencil over a rectangular area of thinly applied white paint, as if it were a bust or sculptural element in the carefully arranged composition. By the end of 1933, and without a doubt due to his exposure to work by Hepworth and the likes of Henry Moore, Nicholson had entirely abandoned his faux-naïve style of the 1920s and become an abstract artist.

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Another gift for the National Galleries of Scotland, and what has to be one of the most exciting acquisitions over the last year, is Allan Ramsay’s (1713–1784) portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie. The portrait is thought to have been created at Holyrood in Edinburgh during Bonnie Prince Charlie’s short time in the city at the height of the Rising. Charles is depicted in half-length format, turning to confront the viewer directly. He wears a powdered wig, has a velvet robe fringed with ermine, and the blue riband and star of the Order of the Garter. The portrait was used as a prototype for painted and engraved versions, which were employed to promote the Jacobite cause.

Christopher Baker, director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, commented: ‘This meticulous and dashing portrait is a work of great historical resonance, which in a real sense has now come home, as it will be celebrated as a key work in the nation’s Jacobite collection and as such become widely accessible.’

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13 1 Rachel Maclean, Feed Me (detail of film still), 2015. HD video, 60 minutes approx © Rachel Maclean 2015. Courtesy of the artist and Film and Video Umbrella

9 John Faed. Medium, Rabbit Catches: Oil on canvas. Dimensions: 68.6 × 47cm. Acquired by the Stewartry Museum, Kirkcudbright. Images courtesy of the Art Fund

2 Jonny Lyons, Enjoy the Mellow, 2013, purchased earlier this year by Leisure & Culture Dundee with support from the National Fund for Acquisitions

10a John Munnoch, The Great Church at Veere, Netherlands, 1914, and oil on linen laid on board

3 Madelon Hooykaas, What’s It To You? (1975), purchased through Glasgow Museums Contemporary Art Fund 4 James Gillray (1765–1815), A Cognocenti examining ye Beauties of ye Antique, 1801.

Image courtesy of The Hunterian 5 Seal matrix, Fife Cultural Trust. Medium: Copper alloy Dimensions: 4.6 × 2.6cm. Image courtesy of the Art Fund 6 John Howie, Ballad Singer, c. 19th century.

Courtesy of Edinburgh City Archives 7 Francis CB Cadell, The Pier at Cove – Loch Long, 1934, by FCB Cadell. Acquired by the Scottish Maritime Museum with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund, The Art Fund and the National Fund for Acquisitions 8 Edward Atkinson Hornel, Harvesting, Kirkcudbright, 1885, purchased by the National Trust for Scotland (supported by the Art Fund)

10b John Munnoch, The Yellow Sail, 1914.

Images courtesy of Smith Art Gallery and Museum 11 Johan Gotlieff Bilsinds, two ‘Communion Cups of the Kirk of Drymen’, 1732. Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum, purchase made possible by grants from the National Fund for Acquisitions, the Friends of the Smith and the Art Fund 12 Ben Nicholson (1894–1982) 1932 (profile: Venetian red), 1932. Oil on canvas: 116.00 x 88cm Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art © Angela Verren Taunt 2016.

Photo: Antonia Reeve 13 Allan Ramsay (1713–84), Prince Charles Edward Stuart (1720–88), 1745.

Accepted in lieu of Inheritance Tax by HM Government from the Trustees of the Wemyss Heirlooms Trust and allocated to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 2016

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Michael Clarke

PRIVATE VIEW 46 | ART

Former director of the Scottish National Gallery, Michael Clarke, on Waller Hugh Paton, one of the most unjustly overlooked figures of Scottish art The Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh houses the pre-eminent collection of historic Scottish paintings in the world, with outstanding examples by such major figures as Henry Raeburn (1756–1823), Allan Ramsay (1713–1784), and David Wilkie (1785–1841). This is as it should be and reflects the founding aims of the gallery, which first opened to the public in 1859.

Over the course of the 32 years I worked at the gallery, my admiration for Scottish art increased enormously, to the extent that I, and many others, felt we were not doing justice to the national school, surely one of the most distinctive and accomplished of all such schools. We presented our case for a greatly expanded display space for Scottish art to our board of trustees and they agreed to the major building project ‘Celebrating Scotland’s Art’, due for completion in early 2019. This will triple the space allocated to Scottish art and will be housed in an elegant extension designed by Hoskins Architects and affording scenic views out over Princes Street Gardens.

The great pictures will all be there, including Raeburn’s The Skating Minister (1784) and Wilkie’s Pitlessie Fair (1804) and Joseph Noel Paton’s fairy pictures illustrating Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. However, I am often drawn to the less well-known and often unjustly overlooked figures in the history of art. One such was Paton’s younger brother, the landscape painter Waller Hugh Paton (1828–1895). He was highly successful in his day and large sums were paid for his work in his lifetime. He was equally skilled in watercolour and oil painting and his subject matter included mountains, lochs and trees, with meticulously detailed rocks and plants. He was particularly admired for his moonlit scenes and dramatically lit sunsets. However, his highly keyed Pre-Raphaelite style of painting fell out of favour and, whereas the major figures of that movement

regained public popularity from the 1960s onwards, his reputation has languished somewhat and he is ill represented in public collections.

It was, therefore, a great cause of satisfaction when we were able to acquire for the Gallery in 2011 his impressive Entrance to the Quiraing, Skye, painted in 1872 and exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy the following year. Based on a pencil sketch made on a tour of Skye in 1866, it depicts the Quiraing on the Trotternish peninsula of Skye. Tiny kilted figures toil up the boulder-strewn slopes, completely dwarfed by an apocalyptic panorama of the northern Skye hills.

Paton recalled it as an ‘awful place’, by which he meant one capable of inspiring awe and wonder. Its capacity to invoke the sublime was similar to that attained in the dramatic landscapes of two of the greatest landscape artists of the 19th century, the Englishman JMW Turner (1775–1851) and the American Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900). It is one of my favourite pictures in the whole collection and I trust future visitors to the Scottish National Gallery will experience a similar thrill when they see the Waller Hugh Paton on display in the new Scottish rooms in 2019.

Waller Hugh Paton, Entrance to the Quiraing, Skye, 1872. Courtesy of the National Galleries of Scotland

Michael Clarke joined the Scottish National Gallery in 1984 as assistant keeper, paintings. He became keeper of the gallery in 1987 and was appointed its director in 2000. From 1999 to 2004, he also directed the Playfair Project, a £30 million scheme which saw the complete renovation of the Royal Scottish Academy building and the creation of the Weston Link between it and the National Gallery building, to a design by John Miller Architects. The current building project ‘Celebrating Scotland’s Art’ is due for completion in early 2019.

Michael Clarke retired from the gallery this autumn and is now an honorary professor at Edinburgh College of Art. Scottish Art News | PRIVATE VIEW | 47

Katy Dove REVIEWS

Neil Cooper

1/2 Katy Dove, Meaning in Action, 2013, installation view photographed by Ruth Clark.

Courtesy the artist’s estate 3 Katy Dove, Gondla, 2005, installation view photographed by Ruth Clark.

Courtesy the artist’s estate

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Dundee Contemporary Arts Until 20 November What is initially most striking about this retrospective overview of the late Katy Dove’s (1970–2015) paintings and animations, arriving at the DCA 18 months after her passing, is just how much life bursts from everything on show. From the images of children dancing alongside strips of material that hang outside the main galleries like stills from the drama workshop montage in swinging 60s Britflick Georgy Girl, to the kaleidoscopic shadows of her own hands and legs in what turned out to be her final film, Meaning in Action (2013), there is little stillness anywhere in Dove’s work.

Pastel-coloured shapes and patterns culled from the unconscious in a series of automatic paintings are gradually given form and definition, enough to create a world in constant motion en route to an idyll. This is especially evident in Melodia (2002), a four and a half minute film in which Dove takes a watercolour landscape by her grandfather and breathes swirling life into its skies, seas and other wide-open spaces.

Disembodied numbers and letters occasionally form words as they hang at 48 | ART

angles beside, beneath or above each other.

There’s a musicality at play too throughout the work that is complemented by Dove’s use of sound in her films, whether it’s environmental ambience, the primitive guttural rhythms of Muscles of Joy, the all-woman musical collective Dove was an integral part of on Welcome (2008), or, at its purest, her own breath.

All of which complements a rhythmic pulse that seems to leap out of each image into little abstract dances, so Dove becomes as much a choreographer as a painter and filmmaker. What is initially instinctive is crafted into something with substance and depth with a symmetry that suggests an inherent performativity which, had Dove lived beyond her 44 years, might well have developed into actual flesh and blood steps.

In her seemingly simple fusion of fractured language, colour and movement, one is reminded at times of the similarly restless animations that would appear in children’s TV show, Sesame Street. Where those had an educational intent, Dove’s work seems to take pleasure in the crafting

of such multi-faceted material for its own sake.

Such sheer delight can be traced right back to Fantasy Freedom (1999), a 90-second stop-motion animation made for Dove’s degree show while studying at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee. Seen next to everything else, the film is akin to Dove taking baby steps before colouring in the bright and beautiful world that followed in everything she created afterwards.

Neil Cooper is an arts writer based in Edinburgh Dundee Contemporary Arts 152 Nethergate, Dundee, DD1 4DY T: (0)1382 909 900 | dca.org.uk Open: Daily 10am–6pm The show will then tour to Inverness Museum & Art Gallery, January 7– February 25 2017 and Thurso Art Gallery & St Fergus Gallery, Wick, March 4– April 15 2017.

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‘ All of which complements a rhythmic pulse that seems to leap out of each image into little abstract dances, so Dove becomes as much a choreographer as a painter and filmmaker ’

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Alphonse Mucha: In Quest of Beauty

Drawing Attention: Rare Works on Paper 1400–1900

Laura Campbell

David Pollock

1 Alphonse Mucha, Sarah Bernhardt La Plum 2 Alphonso Mucha, Primrose 3 Alphonso Mucha, Zodiac

1 Attributed to Girolamo Mirola, Apollo and the Muses, c. 1555–1570

2 Francis Towne, Edinburgh Castle and the Calton Hill, 1811.

Collection: Scottish National Gallery, bequest of Keith Andrews 1991. Courtesy of the National Galleries of Scotland

Collection: Scottish National Gallery, purchased 1992

All images courtesy of Glasgow Life

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Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow Until 19 February 2017 A gem of this exhibition is undoubtedly the charismatic and dashing self-portrait of Alphonse Mucha (1860–1939). Rendered in blue and white crayon, the Czech artist and designer presents himself as an exuberant character: delicately tussled hair, sharp deep-set eyes and a perfectly coiffed moustache mantling a wry smile.

At fortysomething, Mucha was in his prime and he evidently felt so too.

This self-portrait is our main clue to Mucha’s personality, aside from a handful of interesting black and white photographs that depict his studio antics in Paris (among them a photograph of an underdressed Paul Gaugin sitting at a piano). Which is a pity, since while his work has influenced everything from the 1960s psychedelic movement to comic book design, he himself remains an elusive character. We can only guess at his eccentric lifestyle through a timeline displaying key dates from his life: in his younger years he was a singer and in 1898 he was initiated into the Masonic Lodge of Paris.

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nouveau movement, Mucha was a fine craftsman and moved easily between art and design. Eight years his junior, Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s (1868–1928) posters share a startling resemblance to Mucha’s narrow elegant compositions. Displayed side-by-side it is easy to see that a strong dialogue existed between artists working across Europe at the time. While Mucha’s work was gentle, dreamlike and sensual, Mackintosh’s posters were harder and seemed to better anticipate the succeeding art deco movement.

While stylistically similar to the Scottish art nouveau artists, Mucha’s work shares a closer sensibility to the Pre-Raphaelites. In particular, a painting specially selected to complement the exhibition, The Coming of Bride (1917) by Scottish artist John Duncan (1866–1945) has the soft pastel palette, the exaggerated flowing locks of hair and the lush foliage that came to be hallmarks of Mucha’s most recognisable work. Furthermore, the Scottish Pre-Raphaelites were linked with the Celtic revival movement, thus drawing another parallel with Mucha whose later

Photo: Antonia Reeve. Courtesy of the National Galleries of Scotland

Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh Until 3 January 2017 works showed a similar involvement with the issue of nationhood and mythology.

Hanging next to The Coming of Bride, Mucha’s Song of Bohemia (1918) was painted a year after Duncan’s painting and shows a young woman sitting atop a hillside overlooking an idyllically green Bohemia wearing an expression of ecstasy. Following the WWI, the artist would live to see his home country gain independence, and afterwards, having left his commercially successful period behind in favour of more meaningful work, Mucha was assigned the task of designing the nation’s stamps, banknotes and other governmental documents.

Laura Campbell is an arts writer based in Glasgow Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery Argyle Street, Glasgow, G3 8AG T: (0)141 276 9599 | glasgowlife.org.uk/ museums/kelvingrove Open: Monday to Thursday & Saturday 10am–5pm, Friday & Sunday 11am–5pm

With major and extensive redevelopment work at the Scottish National Gallery underway, the building’s Print Room and Library has been closed until 2017, when it will be relocated to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art 2 on Belford Road.

To mitigate somewhat for the loss, the National Gallery’s curators have instead chosen a selection of what they believe to be many of the finest drawn works on paper for this modest but densely packed autumn and winter show, which is sourced from throughout the Scottish National Galleries’ 20,000 sheet-strong collection of drawn works.

There’s no thematic link tying all of the many pieces here together, just the honest appraisal of their quality, which has brought them out into the light, many on public display for the first time. The earliest is by the Italian international gothic artist Gentile da Fabriano and dates from around 1415–1420; a study of Christ and Saint Peter greeting one another, still perfectly preserved on paper and rich in the characterful detail of the figures. Many of these earliest examples are Italian, and

possess an evocative lightness of touch both in the detail of the pieces, and in the perfectly realised anatomical work; a landscape piece featuring Apollo and the Muses by Girolamo Mirola from the mid16th century, for example, or Giorgio Vasari’s study of a man’s head, arm and hands.

There are also stunning architectural pieces, like the interior of Amsterdam’s grand, vaulting Oude Kirk amid a funeral, attributed to Dominicus Ambrosius Rosemale in the late 17th century, or an evocative colour piece by Elisha Trapaud showing Tanjore’s Great Pagoda in such finely shadowed detail that we can almost smell the sand and trees. Hugh Primrose Dean shows us the Colosseum in 1776 and Francis Towne looks out over Edinburgh Castle and Calton Hill in 1811, giving us images of the time wrought in near photorealistic detail.

In monochrome and colour, made literally across generations, the range of pieces shown here lends us an appreciation of the sights of these times, and even engineer, artist and astronomer James Nasmyth’s 1840s interpretation of

what moon craters would look like. It’s a selection which should at once appeal to anyone who appreciates or is studying the craft of creating art, and also an audience with a taste for historical detail and resonances.

David Pollock is an arts journalist based in Edinburgh Scottish National Gallery The Mound, Edinburgh, EH2 2EL T: (0)131 624 6200 | nationalgalleries.org Open: Daily 10am–5pm

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Karla Black and Kishio Suga: A New Order Susan Mansfield

‘ There is obvious common ground. Suga is an artist of “Mono-ha”, the “School of Things”, a group of artists whose work is characterised by using ordinary materials: rocks, wood, metal. Black is an artist of “things” too, in her case, cellophane, paper, ribbon, and, here, in large quantities, cotton wool’

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Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern One) Until 19 February 2017 The major exhibition at Modern One for the winter is a hymn to a kind of minimalism. Gallery spaces which were, until recently, packed with surrealist masterpieces, are now occupied by single works by two artists who were completely unaware of one another until this show.

Nevertheless, it is an intelligent pairing. Karla Black’s star has been rising steadily in the Glasgow art scene for more than a decade – the Venice Biennale, a Turner Prize nomination – so a show in a major space like this one is not unexpected. But curator Julie-Ann Delaney has done something rather more interesting than a mid-career survey by putting her work next to that of a Japanese sculptor and performance artist in his seventies.

There is obvious common ground. Suga is an artist of ‘Mono-ha’, the ‘School of Things’, a group of artists whose work is characterised by using ordinary materials: rocks, wood, metal.

Black is an artist of ‘things’ too, in her case, cellophane, paper, ribbon, and, here, in large quantities, cotton wool.

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For both artists, the ‘thing’ is their primary form of engagement with the world. Neither goes in much for words.

Black certainly doesn’t, declining all opportunity to talk about her work, and giving her pieces titles such as wouldn’t want, couldn’t know and can’t regard. There are obvious contrasts, too: robust-fragile, exterior-interior, hard-soft. If it wasn’t for the risk of gender stereotyping, one might add masculine-feminine.

Suga’s arrangement of rocks on a metal sheet has echoes of Richard Long, and it is in the context of artists such as Long, Francis Alys, even Richard Serra, that he might be best understood. The best of his works explore not only materials but space and tension. Left-behind situation, a room of bisecting wires, which carry fragments of stone, wood and metal at the intersections, is a poised reflection on weight and space. Interconnected spaces places a 480kg rock at the centre of the room, as if it were suspended on taut lengths of rope attached to the four walls.

Not only does the space itself become an element in the sculpture, it is also full of

suggestion: will the weight of it, in time, pull the walls in on us?

Black’s relationship with space is very different. She doesn’t slice it up, she seeks a cohabitation. The stronger works manage to use materials which are painfully ephemeral – a bale of cotton wool, some lengths of kitchen towel – on a near-monumental scale. The weaker ones look apologetic, like Actually mark, a little balsa wood plinth, topped with a bloom of cotton wool, which gets an entire room to itself. It’s hardly surprising that it seems to give the impression of trying to sidle out of the door, unseen.

In direct comparison with Suga’s, Black’s work seems not only to evade interpretation, it shuts the viewer out.

Too much about home is a pool of cotton wool which fills a room – and also blocks the doorway. Recognises feels like the aftermath of a performance – paint is running down the walls, pooling on the floor – but no one was allowed to witness it. The work itself is hanging at eye level so, unless you happen to be six foot six, it resists being seen. Evasiveness and

ambiguity can be good qualities in a work of art, as are irony and subversion. But they can also be masks worn by a work which is not strong enough to stand up for itself.

Susan Mansfield is an arts journalist based in Scotland Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern One) 75 Belford Road, Edinburgh, EH4 3DR T: (0)131 624 6200 | nationalgalleries.org Open: Daily 10am–5pm

1 Kishio Suga, Edges of Gathered Realms, 1993.

Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles/ New York/Tokyo 2 Karla Black, Prospects, 2015.

Courtesy of Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne. Photo: Denis Mortell

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Scottish Art News | REVIEWS | 53

Perrine Davari

Susan Mansfield

1 Larry Herman, John Hendry, 1974-76. Image courtesy of Street Level Photoworks

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Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow Until 27 November In 1972, New York-born photographer Larry Herman (b.1942) was sent to Glasgow to photograph the distinguished Scottish poet Edwin Morgan (1920–2010).

Thus began a fascination with the city, then throbbing with the pulse of heavy industry. He spent much of the 1970s creating a portrait of Clydeside which was exhibited at the Third Eye Centre at the time, and returns to Street Level Photoworks in a new set of silver gelatin prints made by Herman himself.

These photographs speak of a vanished Glasgow: of shipyards on the Clyde, steel at Ravenscraig, cars being made in Linwood, sewing machines in Clydebank. Herman’s broad geographical remit extended beyond the city as far as Elvanfoot, Stepps and even Campbeltown to include collieries and fish markets, all now changed irrevocably.

As with other projects such as his recent ‘Waged London’, in which he photographed those who sell their labour by the hour, his focus is the working population. He picks out workers dwarfed by the scale of the objects they are 54 | ART

constructing: vast pistons and crankshafts for ships’ engines, human-scale scaffolding miniaturised next to an immense rudder.

His subjects are either unaware of him, or look up momentarily from their work to find themselves captured by his lens.

The pictures which don’t show people at work – the women in the Red Road flats, the lad with his dog caught in a shaft of light in a tenement stair – all seem to be serving the main goal, the portrait of a working city. Captured moments – the residents of Gartloch Mental Hospital watching a Christmas play, an old man on a stretcher at Firhill hit by a thrown bottle – feel like ancillary dramas to this larger story.

Some of the most insightful pictures capture workers not working: the tea-break in the blacksmith’s workshop, the showers in Cardowan Colliery where miners, ignoring the camera, wash off the grime of the day. Workers who have come off a 12-hour shift at the short-lived offshore construction yard at Ardyne Point collapse into sleep on the ferry home.

Herman’s work is not about the

SCOTTISH ART NEWS DIARY

Larry Herman: Clydeside 1974–76

glorification of labour: these were difficult, dirty, draining jobs, yet many of the same workers fought to keep the shipyards and factories open, a battle which was in full swing when Herman was taking his pictures. The subtext of his work is about a working population seeing what power and self-determination it had being taken away by the government.

Today, his pictures remind us how much has changed in 40 years. The sense is one of loss, of a working city which, in a few short years, lost its reason to be, a gap which has remained largely unfilled ever since.

Susan Mansfield is an arts journalist based in Scotland Street Level Photoworks 103 Trongate, Glasgow, G1 5HD T: (0)141 552 2151 | streetlevelphotoworks.org Open: Tuesday to Saturday 10am–5pm, Sunday noon–5pm

Glasgow Alphonse Mucha: In Quest of Beauty Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum Until Sun 19 Feb 2017 W: glasgowlife.org.uk/ museums/kelvingrove One of the forerunners of the art nouveau style, Alphonse Mucha, made his name in Paris at the turn of the 20th century. His illustrative posters executed in his distinguishable decorative style are displayed alongside other similar objects from Scotland at the Kelvingrove.

Burrell at Kelvingrove: Joseph Crawhall Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum Until July 2017 W: glasgowlife.org.uk/ museums/kelvingrove A rare opportunity to see 23 of the finest works by one of the country’s most accomplished yet lesser known artists, Joseph Crawhall (1861–1913). The exhibition is the first time in more than 25 years that many of the works on display have been seen together in Scotland, and offers visitors a unique opportunity to trace Crawhall’s development and range as an artist.

Larry Herman: Clydeside 1974-76 Street Level Photoworks Until Thu 27 Nov 2016 W: streetlevelphotoworks.org This collection of photographs by pioneering documentary photographer Larry Herman cover a vast geographical area from Elvanfoot to Stepps, Paisley to Greenock, as well as many rural districts where people worked in farming, forestry, fishing and tourism.

These photos have not been exhibited since their first show in 1976 at the Third Eye Centre.

Geneva Sills: Cones & Eggs CCA Sat 26 Nov–Sun 18 Dec W: cca-glasgow.com The first solo exhibition of Sills’ work, Cones & Eggs is a showcase of photographic history and technique. Large still lifes, presented as mural silver gelatin prints, will act as sexually charged stand-ins, amplified further by smaller accompanying colour prints.

Edinburgh Drawing Attention: Rare Works on Paper 1400-1900 Scottish National Gallery Fri 24 Sep 2016 – Tues 3 Jan 2017 W: nationalgalleries.org Spanning five centuries of superb draughtsmanship, this exhibition puts the spotlight on some exceptional but less well-known treasures from the National Galleries of Scotland’s drawings collection.

Karla Black and Kishio Suga: A New Order Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Until Sun 19 Feb 2017 W: nationalgalleries.org Although Karla Black (b.1972) and Kishio Suga (b.1944) work on opposite sides of the world and were unaware of each other’s art until their new exhibition at Modern One was conceived, they are united by their use of everyday materials to create sculptural works of sublime beauty, complexity and originality, which they make in response to specific spaces.

Joan Eardley RSA (1921–1963): Restless Talent The Scottish Gallery Wed 1–Sat 25 Feb 2017 W: scottish-gallery.co.uk Restless Talent will focus on 20 works by Joan Eardley including unseen work from Townhead. This exhibition is part of the Scottish Gallery’s 175 Years of Art celebrations.

Joan Eardley: A Sense of Place Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art 3 December 2016–21 May 2017 W: nationalgalleries.org During her career, Joan Eardley was driven to paint by two subjects, which are the focus of this show at the Modern: the extraordinarily candid paintings of children in the Townhead area of Glasgow; and paintings of the fishing village of Catterline, with its leaden skies and wild sea.

Scottish Art News | DIARY | 55

Elsewhere in Scotland Don McCullin: Artist Rooms on Tour 2017 Gracefield Arts Centre, Dumfries Fri 26 Aug–Sat 19 Nov 2017 W: dumgal.gov.uk/gracefield The work of famed British war photographer Don McCullin will be exhibited as part of Tate’s Artist Rooms on Tour.

NEoN Digital Arts Festival Various venues, Dundee Wed 9–Sun 13 Nov W: northeastofnorth.com Scotland’s only digital arts festival returns for its seventh year across the city of Dundee, compromising of a varied hybrid mix of exhibitions, installations, audio and performance.

Katy Dove Dundee Contemporary Arts Until Sun 20 Nov W: .dca.org.uk/whats-on/event/ katy-dove1 An exhibition of prints, drawings, collages, animations and paintings on show in memory of the late artist Katy Dove, who worked for the DCA when it first opened.

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Of Other Spaces: Where Does Gesture Become Event?

Cooper Gallery, Dundee Until Sat 4 Mar 2017 W: dundee.ac.uk/djcad/ exhibitions Artists, writers and thinkers gather to situate feminist thinking as a provocative and cogent mode of creative and critical inquiry, presenting artworks by significant artists from different generations, with live performances, screenings and collective readings.

Inspiring Landscapes – Sir Muirhead Bone, of Glasgow and Ayr Rozelle House Museum & Galleries, Ayr 29th October 2016 – 22nd January 2017 ‘Inspiring Landscapes’ exploring the work of WWI official artist, Sir Muirhead Bone. This project has involved local people researching the life and times of the artist, and creating fine art prints inspired by the South Ayrshire landscape.

Johan Grimonprez: Artist Rooms on Tour Caithness Horizons Museum, Thurso Fri 10 Mar–Sun 4 June 2017 W: caithnesshorizons.co.uk As part of the Artist Rooms on Tour 2017 programme, the work of the Belgian multimedia artist and filmmaker Johan Grimonprez will find itself in the very north of Scotland, showcasing his video productions exploring identity and doubling, fear and anxiety.

Scotland Elsewhere Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: A Scottish Artist in St Ives Penlee House, Cornwall Until Sat 19 Nov W: penleehouse.org.uk/ whats-on/exhibitions One of the foremost British abstract artists of her generation, this new exhibition in Cornwall gathers and examines work from every period of her varied career, from her starting point in Scotland, through to her time spent in St Ives and her association with Penwith Society of Arts.

BNC 2016 ICA, London Wed 23 Nov 2016– Sun 22 Jan 2017 W: newcontemporaries.org.uk/ exhibitions-and-events Travelling from the Liverpool Biennale, Bloomberg New Contemporaries returns to the ICA, showcasing new and recent fine art graduates.

Among those exhibited is George Ridgeway, winner of the Fleming-Wyfold Foundation’s major bursary at the RSA New Contemporaries.

Towards Night Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne Until Sun 22 Jan 2017 W: peacockvisualarts.com Towards Night features 60 exhibiting artists, their work all centred on the nocturnal. Off the back of his residency at Peacock Visual Arts in Aberdeen, the show is curated by Tom Hammick, and he exhibits his work alongside the likes of Peter Doig and William Blake.

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JAN VAN HUYSUM (1682–1749) Flower Still Life with Bird’s Nest, c. 1718 oil on copper 31 ½ x 24 in. (80.1 x 61.4 cm.)

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