A Collector's Eye | William Johnstone

A COLLECTOR’S EYE WILLIAM JOHNSTONE JULY 2023

The Eildon Hills from Scott’s View, c.1960s

A COLLECTOR’S EYE | WILLIAM JOHNSTONE (1897-1981)

Dr Moira Simmons

The Gallery presents a collection of paintings and works on paper by William Johnstone (1897-1981), one of Scotland’s first abstract painters and outstanding art educator of the post-war era. Included is a core collection of paintings and works on paper which belonged to Dr Moira Simmons MA, PhD, FSAScot (1928-2022) who was a collector of contemporary Scottish artists from the late 1970s-1990s, around the time she co-founded the Ancrum Gallery near Jedburgh in the Scottish Borders, which specialised in exhibiting and promoting artists from the region. Originally from Edinburgh, she studied at Edinburgh University, completing her PhD in Vernacular Architecture and always felt a strong connection with the Borders, which grew as her gallery at Ancrum was established and flourished.

Although Dr Simmons collected widely and admired many painters, perhaps there was none she held in higher regard than William Johnstone, an artist she revered as one of the greats . Her interest in the artist resulted in Dr Simmons frequently exhibiting and acquiring a collection of some of Johnstone’s finest works throughout his career. The artist and critic Edward Gage, wrote in the Scotsman in 1988, about one such exhibition:

twentieth century Scottish Art. Johnstone showed conclusively how statements may be condensed to brief works on paper without any loss of power or energy. A pilgrimage is recommended to the Ancrum Gallery because it will also take one through the artist’s home territory, within sight of the Eildon Hills, latterly a recurring theme. This show, furthermore, is distinguished by sensitive and thoughtful presentation and contains work from the collection of the artist’s daughter, Sarah.

Seven years after William Johnstone’s death, it becomes clearer that his unique combination of Borders magic and cosmopolitan spirit, Oriental contemplation and spontaneous combustions makes him a key figure in The Scottish Gallery

A Collector’s Eye includes an introductory essay and chronology of the remarkable career of William Johnstone.

Dr Moira Simmons, 2014

WILLIAM JOHNSTONE | A POINT IN TIME

by Christina Jansen

Johnstone’s background was in the Borders. ‘Mine was the world of farmers and the land; the world of Rembrandt and Vincent van Gogh,’ he wrote in his autobiography ‘Points in Time’. He was reflecting on his youth and, at that point in his narrative, also on the break he made to become an artist, a break with his father and with his upbringing on a Border farm.

Duncan Macmillan, 1997

William Johnstone was born in Denholm in the Scottish Borders in 1897. His father was a farmer and expected his son to follow the same path but his introduction to the artist Tom Scott (1854-1927) in his teenage years, and the consequences of the Great War, made him resolutely determined to become a painter.

He went on to study at Edinburgh College of Art, then in Paris in 1925 under André Lhôte. He travelled to Spain, Italy and North Africa and lived for a short time in California, but the financial crash forced him back to Scotland. The opportunity of a teaching position took him to London where he settled from 1931-1960. Although he exhibited throughout his life, much of his energy during his London years was directed towards art education, becoming Principal at Camberwell College of Art from 1938-1946 and then Principal at Central School of Arts and Crafts from 1947-1960. He was a visionary art educator and developed the Basic Design course which stemmed from the Bauhaus and his instinct to defy convention and his eye for

talented staff made Central a tour de force. Alan Davie, Anton Ehrenzweig, Patrick Heron, Earl Haig, John Minton, Eduardo Paolozzi, Victor Pasmore, Gordon Baldwin, William Turnbull, Dora Batty, Naum Slutzky, Marianne Straub, Dora Billington all worked for him – which made for an explosive, creative mix of artistic personalities during a post-war explosion in the arts. He wrote two books, the first in 1936, Creative Art in England and in 1941 Child Art to Man Art which offered a new perspective and insight into art education and techniques.

William Johnstone married twice, firstly to the American artist Flora MacDonald in Paris, 1927. He then married his former student and embroiderer Mary Bonning in 1944. He had two daughters, Elizabeth, born in 1931 and Sarah in 1945. In 1948-50, Johnstone spent time in America, firstly conducting a survey for the London County Council and then as a lecturer in Colorado. In 1954, he was

Greenhead Farm, Selkirk, 1912. Young Johnstone second from right

awarded an OBE for his contribution to art education. He returned home to the Borders with his family in 1960 to concentrate on painting and return to farming.

If to become a painter he left the land, being a painter brought him back to it. In the end the two were not in opposition. They were simply different perspectives on the same fundamental thing, our relationship with the land we come from. It is perhaps this that Johnstone reflected when he said he was always a landscape painter. It was not a matter of choice. It was not that perhaps he could have been some other kind of painter if he had been so inclined. He meant that even when it had long since ceased to

reflect it in any representational way, his painting was still as rooted in the landscape as he was himself. ‘St Boswells has more to do with the business of being an artist than either Dusseldorf, Basle or Venice,’ he wrote, a characteristically defiant assertion of the importance of his roots . Duncan Macmillan, 1997

When Johnstone returned home to Scotland in 1960, he became friends with Douglas Hall who was a fellow Borderer and first Director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. He recognised the mystic in Johnstone and regarded him as a pioneer of modernism and encouraged Johnstone to date his pictures, to make recordings of his life and was

William Johnstone with Flora MacDonald, his mother, father, daughter Elizabeth and housemaid, c.1935

instrumental in pushing his work into the public arena and acquired several paintings for the national collection

In 1969, he met Mrs Hope Montague Douglas Scott, a widowed aristocrat who had amassed a picture collection of avant-garde work. Her effortless joie de vivre and unusual eye had a profound effect on Johnstone. She became a major collector and patron and encouraged him to exhibit. She

donated the significant Point in Time ( c.1929-1935), to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and so delighted was she with Edinburgh University for honouring her friend with a doctorate, she donated the majority of her art collection to the Talbot Rice Gallery before setting up the Hope Scott Trust.

The 1970s were incredibly productive; exhibitions of large and small scale

William Johnstone, Central School of Arts and Crafts, c.1948

works, ‘automatic’ or Zen paintings derived from tachisme , an intuitive style of painting, with spontaneous brushstroke gesture using oil and turps or black ink on white paper emerged from the studio. For Johnstone, working in the moment was the only thing that mattered. Painting was meditation; a concentration of the mind which brought all his experience into one point in time. During this period, he also completed a series using plaster on board and employed the same Zen technique to push the boundary of material. A film was made to capture the scenes.

‘How long did it take you to do that?’

‘Only ten minutes, I suppose, but it’s taken me seventy years of looking.’

William Johnstone

Johnstone’s work from this period is abstract in the true sense of the word, painted with reference to reality but drawing out characteristics from it, exploring within it, and going beyond immediate appearance. To paint the

detail was, for Johnstone, to conceal the essence, but in order to convey this essence a lifetime of looking was needed. Many of his late brush drawings are simply entitled ‘Abstract’. In each a reality is explored which is direct and impressive: the clutter of verisimilitude is cut away. Murdo MacDonald, 1991

A collaboration with Hugh MacDiarmid combining lithographs and poems was published in 1977 and a similar project with Edwin Muir’s poetry was published a few years later. Two films were also produced including A Point in Time.

In 1980, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Edinburgh for artistic achievement and two publications were released; Monograph by Douglas Hall (Edinburgh University Press) and his autobiography Points in Time (Barrie & Jenkins). Shortly before he died in 1981, The Hayward Gallery, London, held a major retrospective which included over 200 works.

William and Mary Jonstone working on 20 lithographs to poems by Hugh MacDiarmid, 1977

William Johnstone in his studio, 1955

In 1981, the same year that Johnstone died, 431 gold ingots were retrieved from HMS Edinburgh, the light cruiser that had been sunk off the former Soviet coast at the Kola Inlet during WWII. One of the men behind this project became an obsessive William Johnstone collector. He wasn’t the only one; many private collectors and dealers, prospectors of a different kind, believed passionately that Johnstone was an artist whose work was of international importance.

However, it should be noted that William Johnstone’s impressive curriculum vitae cannot conceal a chequered artistic career in Scotland. In 1934, George Proudfoot of The Scottish Gallery arranged for his solo exhibition to tour starting with the Wertheim Gallery, London then to the gallery in Edinburgh. When the exhibition came to Edinburgh in October 1935 it was poorly received which was in part due to the Great Depression - our daybooks of the period reflect that these were difficult times in the Scottish art world. Johnstone waited a lifetime for artistic recognition and his journey was hard won, particularly as his practice was steeped in an intellectual and uncompromising abstraction. His ambivalence towards the art world didn’t always serve him well, he resisted being managed by any one gallery and he would never paint on demand. The Gallery held a William Johnstone exhibition in 1992, some 67 years after his first. In 2012, The Gallery curated and produced Marchlands , the most ambitious William Johnstone exhibition since the Hayward Gallery Retrospective. Several works were

acquired for public collections including the National Galleries of Scotland, The Fleming Collection and the Hope Scott Trust. Our exhibition also unveiled for the first time rare images of the artist throughout his career alongside family images. The photographs were tracked down in a lawyer’s office in the Borders, and this valuable archive is now held in the National Galleries of Scotland.

William Johnstone is regarded as one of the most enigmatic and mysterious of 20th century painters, whose pioneering art always commands attention and defies any easy categorisation. At heart, he was a celtic mystic whose work draws on his deep emotional and physical connection with the rolling landscape of the Borders.

When the art of 20th century Scotland is assessed from a distance the work and life of William Johnstone will be its touchstone. He created works of integrity, beauty and significance from the 1920s until his death. In all of his works he strives to make art in which the local, the international and the cosmic are related by the experience of being human . Murdo MacDonald, 1991

Dark Borders Landscape belongs to a series of intensely moody landscape paintings which were a personal response to the post-war period and evocative of the artist’s beloved Border hills. The landscape is partly visible and partly obscured under a dark veil which acts to heighten the tension between the subject and the viewer.

1. Dark Borders Landscape, 1925 oil on canvas, 63.5 x 76 cm signed and dated verso

2. Border Hills, c.1950 ink on paper, 17.5 x 27 cm

The Scottish Borders is steeped in cultural heritage. A walk in the Cheviots, the Eildon Hills, Tweed Valley or high above in the Lammermuirs brings you into direct contact with Neolithic and Bronze Age burials, Iron Age farms and forts, medieval churches and castles, Reiver towers, fateful battlefields, woollen mills that supplied an empire and towns, hamlets and farms which still retain their own unique identity. All of this history, so deeply connected to the land was drawn upon by the artist and distilled into his own language of landscape painting.

3. Eildons Composition, 1952

oil on canvas, 35.5 x 56 cm signed and dated verso

4. Autumn Harvest, 1953

oil on canvas, 45.5 x 55.5 cm signed and dated verso

What sets William Johnstone apart from other abstract expressionist painters is his background in farming and his working relationship with the land, the changing seasons and the brutality and beauty of extreme weather conditions.

In 1968, the artist lived at Potburn Farm which is near Selkirk, on the way up to the Ettrick Valley. It is an isolated, rural spot of outstanding beauty with expansive, rolling, uninterrupted views as far as the eye can see. Johnstone understood the harshness of the wild environment and fast changing climate which could bury a flock of sheep in a snow drift in November or May. In Rain, Ettrick he invites the viewer to experience this landscape through his eyes.

5. Rain, Ettrick, 1968

oil on canvas, 51 x 76 cm

signed, titled and dated verso

oil on canvas, 25.5 x 35.5 cm signed, inscribed and dated verso

6. Autumn Garden, 1971

When Johnstone painted Autumn Garden (cat. 6) and The Pond he was settled at his final home in Crailing, near Jedburgh. This was a period of intense studio practice as he enjoyed his new, more domestic environment after giving up farming. The last ten years of his career saw an astonishing output of new paintings and experimental works on paper.

7. The Pond, 1971

oil on canvas, 60 x 70 cm signed, titled and dated verso

In his autobiography ‘Points in Time’, Johnstone records a birthday gift of an architect’s table. This practical gift was, he says, the starting point for these radically simplified calligraphic drawings. They do not represent a big shift from what went before, just a refinement, a significant increase in scale and a sharpening of focus. His drawing had been brilliantly freehand for a long time, but these calligraphic drawings are sometimes little more than a single stroke of a loaded brush. Sometimes by some minimal modulation, they become landscapes. Like the drawings of a Zen master, the movement of the hand is completely at one with the mind. It is not an agent, but the mind’s extension outwards, as the unconscious is its extension inwards. Figure and ground are one. Pure intuition achieves singleness and externalises it, endowed with the authority of the experience of a lifetime.

Duncan Macmillan, 1997

8. Composition 1, c.1975

ink on paper, 77.5 x 57 cm signed lower right

9. Composition 2, c.1975 ink on paper, 77.5 x 57 cm signed lower right

10. Composition 3, c.1975 ink on paper, 77.5 x 57 cm signed lower right

11. Composition 4, c.1975 ink on paper, 77.5 x 57 cm signed lower right

12. Composition 5, c.1975

ink on paper, 77.5 x 57 cm signed lower right

ink on paper, 77.5 x 57 cm

signed and dated lower right

13. Composition 6, c.1975

14. Composition 7, c.1975 ink on paper, 78 x 59 cm signed lower right

15. Composition 8, c.1975

ink on paper, 77.5 x 57 cm signed lower right

Between 1972-3 Johnstone began a series of thick plaster reliefs with George Turnbull as assistant. An exhibition William Johnstone: Genesis, New Works in Plaster was held at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. They acquired Embryonic for their permanent collection. This series was also filmed by Sidhartha Films.

The [plaster reliefs] grew from an interest in the properties of plaster, which Johnstone had previously experimented with in paintings during the 1920s, its rough texture forming a contrast to a smooth, painted surface. Using a trowel to set the plaster in place, he had only a short amount of time to work with the plaster before it set, letting chance play a role on the formation of each work. He explained, ‘I knew that in myself I must produce a condition, relaxed and free from thought or deliberation; that which would be produced through my hands would then be from my inner self and completely unconscious.’ National Galleries of Scotland

16. Metamorphosis, c.1973

plaster relief, 126 x 96 m

EXHIBITED

William Johnstone: Genesis, New Works in Plaster, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 1973

17. Landscape, Brown and Red, c.1968 ink on paper, 34.5 x 24 cm signed lower right

18. Movement in Black I, 1967 ink on paper, 34 x 24 cm signed and dated lower right

19. Eildon Movement, 1970 ink on paper, 24 x 34 cm signed and dated lower right

20. Composition 9, c.1975

ink on paper, 76 x 56 cm signed lower right

ink on paper, 76 x 56 cm signed lower right

21. Composition 10, c.1975

ink on paper, 24 x 16.5 cm

signed and dated lower right

22. Landscape Torso, 1971

23. Eildons (Black and White Study), c.1972 ink on paper, 24 x 34 cm signed lower right

24. Border Landscape I, c.1975 ink on paper, 56 x 76 cm signed lower right

25. Border Landscape II, c.1975 ink on paper, 56 x 76 cm signed lower right

26. Autonomous Self Portrait, 1975 ink on paper, 77 x 57 cm signed lower right

27. Farmhouse Cats, c.1975 ink on paper, 76 x 56 cm signed lower right

28. Black and Red I, 1975 ink on paper, 78.5 x 59 cm signed lower right

29. Volcanic Landscape Form, c.1975 ink on paper, 16.5 x 24 cm signed lower right

30. Sun over Crailing, c.1975 ink on paper, 17 x 24.5 cm signed lower right

EXHIBITED

William Johnstone Exhibition, Arts Council of Great Britain, London, 1981, cat. 92

31. Standing Stone, 1976 oil on canvas, 96.5 x 86 cm signed and dated verso

Potburn Farm, Ettrick, c.1967

Dr William Johnstone OBE (1897-1981) CHRONOLOGY

1987 Born Denholm, Roxburghshire.

1902 Family moves to Greenhead Farm, Selkirk.

1902-10 Attends Selkirk School; farming responsibilities are demanding and take precedence over academic work.

1911 Enrols in Selkirk High School before leaving school to farm full-time.

1912-18 Meets Tom Scott, RSA (1854-1927) and informally studies painting with him. Scott imparts a deep respect for the painter’s vocation.

1918 Conscripted into the army; transferred to Labour Corps and, on November 11, posted to Greenhead Farm for agricultural service.

1919 Discharged from the army and in October he enters Edinburgh College of Art.

1921-22 At Tom Scott’s suggestion, Johnstone visits Holland to study Rembrandt and Frans Hals. Meets the composer Francis George Scott and also the poet Hugh MacDiarmid. Their shared dislike of the contemporary cultural poverty of Scotland unites them in a desire to create a ‘Scottish Renaissance’. Meets Alex McNeill Reid, of Reid and Lefèvre Gallery. Begins painting portraits.

1923 Receives DA, Edinburgh College of Art.

1923-25 Teaches evening classes at the College of Art and attends Life School at the Royal Scottish Academy.

1924 Awarded Stuart Prize for Pictorial Design, MacLaine Walters Medal and Keith Award by the RSA.

1925 Awarded Carnegie Travelling Scholarship by the RSA. Travels and settles in Paris.

1925-27 Attends drawing classes at the Grande Chaumiére and the Academie Colorrossi. Meets sculptor Julio Gonzalez. Studies with André Lhôte whose teaching is based on an analysis of the old masters in relation to the modern idiom of Cubism. Folies Bergères (1927) and the final version of Sanctuary (1923- 27) show the influence of Lhôte’s teaching; Johnstone is, however, simultaneously aware of the freer forms and approach of the surrealists.

1926 Travels in Spain, Italy and North Africa. Spends one month copying Velasquez’s Aesop in the Prado according to Lhôte’s principles of geometry.

William Johnstone on his graduation day, Edinburgh College of Art, 1923

1927 Marries Flora Macdonald, an American studying sculpture with Bourdelle in Paris. Meets Alberto Giacometti, Fernand Léger, Amédée Ozenfant, Germaine Richier, Leo and Gertrude Stein, among others. In the winter he returns home to the Borders with his wife Flora. Lectures for Workers Educational Association, Selkirk. Develops and teaches basic design course to day release students at South of Scotland Technical College. Influenced by AP Laurie’s The Painter’s Methods and Materials, experiments with painting using gold leaf, gesso, emulsion, sand and combinations of fresco and oil. Visits Cagnes-sur-Mer and meets Soutine.

1928 Due to difficulties in finding work, he and Flora sail for America and settle near Flora’s family, first in Los Gatos then San Francisco. Teaches life painting at the California School of Arts and Crafts for one term under Xavier Martinez. Sees work by artists of the Mexican School (Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente, Orozco, David Alfaro Siquieros).

1929 Due to financial hardship, moves to Carmel. With encouragement of Charles Roberts Aldrich, author of The Primitive Mind and Modern Civilisation, starts a painting school. With Flora, sculpts decorations for the Monterey County Trust and Savings Bank Building. Executes linocuts of Charles Lindbergh and DH Lawrence for the newspaper Carmelite. Impressed by Mathew Murphy’s collection of Indian sand paintings and rugs, realizes the possibilities inherent in Celtic heritage for his own art. In the August, he returns to Scotland. Teaches evening classes at Selkirk and Galashiels. Studies Celtic and Pictish work in Queen Street Museum.

1929-30 Illustrates Hazel Eadie’s book Lagooned in the Virgin Islands (George Routledge & Sons Ltd).

1931 With support from RR Tomlinson (Chief Art Inspector for the London County Council) he secures post as art teacher for Lyulph Stanley Central School for Boys and the Haverstock Hill Central School for Boys. Theories on art education, particularly concerning the importance of children’s art as basic for artistic development, begin to evolve. To supplement income, he lectures at literary institutes of Dalston, Holloway, Marylebone, the City and at Northwestern Polytechnic Union. Daughter Elizabeth born in Selkirk. Moves to house in Haverstock Hill from one in Portdown Road, Kilburn. Through A R Orage, editor of The New English Weekly, meets T S Elliot, Percy Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound, Dylan Thomas. Also meets Edwin Muir and Hugh Gordon Porteus, among others. Designs book jacket for MacDiarmid’s poem First Hymm to Lenin (Unicorn Press).

1932 Paints portrait of Richard Church and designs bookjacket for his novel, High Summer (London, JM Dent & Sons Ltd).

1932-35 Works part-time at Regent Street Polytechnic, teaching drawing in the Department of Architecture and Design and in the Craft School. Other part-time teaching at the Royal School of Needlework (until 1938) and life class and composition in the Borough Polytechnic Art Department.

1933 Designs book jacket for Edwin Muir’s Poor Tom (London, JM Dent & Sons Ltd). Poems to Paintings by William Johnstone written by MacDiarmid; lost until 1963 then published by Duval, Edinburgh.

1935 First one man exhibition, Wertheim Gallery, London and solo exhibition at The Scottish Gallery (Aitken Dott), Edinburgh. Creates frontispiece for MacDiarmid’s Second Hymm to Lenin (Sussex, Valda Trevlyn).

1936 Creative Art in England by William Johnstone is published by Stanley Nott (enlarged and reissued by Macmillan 1950, as Creative Art in Britain).

1936-38 Made Headmaster of Hackney School of Art.

1937 Moves to 32 Glenilla Road, NW3. Submits manuscript of Child Art to Man Art to Harold Macmillan; published 1941 (republished in Japan, Reimeishobo, 1955).

William Johnstone at home in London, c.1950s

1938 Designs cover of The Townsman; issue sponsored by Ezra Pound. Illustrations include A Point in Time, Composition, Becoming and Ode to the North Wind. Elected member of National Society of Painters, Potters and Engravers.

1938-46 Becomes Principal of Camberwell School of Art and Crafts. Develops innovative design curriculum, engages practising artist teachers, encourages artists to teach subjects outside their area of training. Staff includes Dora Batty, Norman P. Dawson, Toni del Renzio, Ronald Grierson, AE Halliwell, FE McWilliam, Victor Pasmore and RV Pitchforth.

1939 Group exhibitions include Living Art in England, London Gallery (January-February), organised by ELT Mesens; Abstract Paintings by Nine British Artists, Lefèvre Gallery, London (March); touring exhibition in Commonwealth countries organised by Empire Art Loan Collection. Camberwell School evacuated to Chipstead House, Chipstead at outbreak of war.

1940 His wife and daughter Flora and Elizabeth are evacuated to America.

1941-42 He becomes head of Junior Schools of Camberwell, the Central School and Hammersmith (temporarily merged at Northampton).

1943 Included in British Council exhibition touring South America. First marriage collapses.

1944 Marries Mary Bonning.

1945 Daughter Sarah is born.

1947-60 Becomes Principal of Central School of Arts and Crafts. Continues to promote interdisciplinary teaching approach spearheaded by artists including John Minton, Eduardo Paolozzi, Victor Pasmore and William Turnbull.

1947-55 Basic course and revival of interest in Poussin lead to paintings incorporating cubes, cones and cylinders; line becomes less curvilinear, more calligraphic and expressionistic; bony, gnarled shapes replace precious quasi-organic forms.

1948 Goes to America to conduct L Country C. survey on training students for Industrial design. Meets Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe, among others.

1949 Fulbright Lecturer, USA Director of Summer School, Colorado Springs Fine Art Center. Lectures at Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Taliesin.

1950 One-man exhibition, Gimpel Fils, London. Colorado Springs Fine Art Center. Hosts first retrospective 1925-1950. Buys Ancrum Mill, Roxburghshire.

1953 One-man exhibition, Lefèvre Gallery, London. Landscape (silence), 195152 purchased by Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto on recommendation of Sir Philip Hendy. Also exhibits at Lefèvre in January 1958. Lecture tour on Modern Painting in South Africa under auspices of Universities of South Africa and the British Council.

1954 Awarded OBE for his contribution to art education.

1955 Member of Council of Royal Society of Arts. Member of Council of Industrial Design (until 1957). Included in the 1955 Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh. Buys Satchells Farm, Lilliesleaf, Roxburghshire. December: One-man exhibition, The Bear Lane Gallery, Oxford. Awarded Leverhulme Fellowship.

1959 Visits Stockholm. Paintings are by now dominated by colour instead of by line or form; landscape motif persists. Tachiste work.

1960 Retires from Central School to become full time sheep farmer but continues to paint. Over the next twenty years, paints on an increasingly large scale. One-man exhibition, The Reid Gallery, London and 1964 (catalogue text A Point in Time by Hugh MacDiarmid)

1961 One-man exhibition, The Stone Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne; also exhibits there in August 1963.

1961/62 Invited to UNESCO to visit Israel and report on methods of art teaching and its potential role in the industrial development.

William Johnstone at Colorado Springs University, c.1949. Johnstone second from left

William Johnstone in his Crailing studio, c.1977

1964 Designs frontispiece for Hugh MacDiarmid and Scottish Renaissance by Duncan Glen (Chambers Ltd, Edinburgh).

1965 Buys Potburn, Ettrick, Selkirkshire. One man show at The Décor Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (catalogue with introduction by Hugh MacDiarmid). Retires from farming.

1970 Moves to Crailing, near Jedburgh. July 4 - August 8: Edinburgh, Scottish Arts Council Gallery, William Johnstone Retrospective Exhibition; exhibition travels to the Morley Gallery in London, Aberdeen Art Gallery and Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Glasgow (catalogue with introduction by Douglas Hall).

1972-73 Begins work on plaster reliefs with George Turnbull as assistant. Exihibits William Johnstone: Genesis, New Works in Plaster (catalogue with preface by Douglas Hall, Genesis by William Johnstone and William Johnstone by Hugh Gordon Porteus) at The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. A Point in Time made by Sidhartha Films; directed by Suzanne Neild; cameraman David Peat.

1974 One-man exhibition, MacRobert Centre Art Gallery, Stirling.

1975 Begins large scale brush and ink drawings.

1976 William Johnstone Recent Work at the Talbot Rice Art Centre, University of Edinburgh (catalogue with text by Douglas Hall).

1977 One-man exhibition of lithographs, Printmakers Workshop Gallery, Edinburgh; exhibition travels to Dundee Art Gallery and Third Eye Centre, Glasgow. Twenty poems by Hugh MacDiarmid with Twenty lithographs by William Johnstone, limited edition, published; lithographs printed by Ken Duffy, Printmakers Workshop, Edinburgh.

1980 Awarded Honorary Doctorate, University of Edinburgh. Monograph by Douglas Hall (Edinburgh University Press). Points in Time: An Autobiography published (Barrie and Jenkins). Twenty Poems by Edwin Muir with twenty lithographs by William Johnstone, limited edition, published; lithographs printed by Ken Duffy, Printmakers Workshop, Edinburgh. Full retrospective of William Johnstone, Hayward Gallery, London (Arts Council of Great Britain); exhibition travels to Eastbourne, Towner Art Gallery and Talbot Rice, Edinburgh.

1981 William Johnstone dies at home in Crailing aged 84.

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums

Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada

Bangor University

Dundee Art Galleries and Museums Collection, Dundee City Council

Glasgow Life Museums

Government Art Collection, London

Hope Scott Trust

Kirkcaldy Galleries

Lakeland Arts, Kendal

Museums & Galleries Edinburgh, City of Edinburgh Council

National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh

National Portrait Gallery, London

Pallant House Gallery, Chichester

Tate, London

The Fleming Collection, London

The Hunterian, University of Glasgow

Scottish Borders Council

South Ayrshire Council

University of Edinburgh

Published by The Scottish Gallery

to coincide with the exhibition

A Collector’s Eye

William Johnstone

29 June - 22 July 2023

Exhibition can be viewed online at: scottish-gallery.co.uk/william-johnstone

ISBN: 978-1-912900-67-1

Designed and Produced by The Scottish Gallery

Photography by John McKenzie

Archive photographs courtesy of National Galleries of Scotland

Maps reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

Front cover: William Johnstone, Composition 1, c.1975, ink on paper (cat.8)

All rights reserved. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced in any form by print, photocopy or by any other means, without the permission of the copyright holders and of the publishers.

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