James Morrison From Angus to the Arctic
THE
SCOTTISH
GALLERY
CONTEMPORARY ART SINCE 1842
James Morrison From Angus to the Arctic 4 January to 1 February 2020 16 Dundas Street·Edinburgh EH3 6HZ +44 (0) 131 558 1200 mail@scottish-gallery.co.uk scottish-gallery.co.uk
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James Morrison From Angus to the Arctic THE SCOTTISH GALLERY·2020
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Foreword
James Morrison has exhibited with The Scottish Gallery since the fifties and has been represented here exclusively since 1989. His previous show, Decades, which began our 175th anniversary year in 2017, showcased paintings from the seventy years of his painting life. In From Angus to the Arctic, his twenty-fifth show with us, we are delighted to include his most recent work, made around his studio south of Montrose. The show is also a retrospective of the subject of Angus. Morrison first came to Catterline in 1960, a move partly inspired by the presence of Joan Eardley and the beginning of a lifelong love of the varied landscape of The Mearns. A selection from his three Arctic expeditions, created between 1990 and 1996, is hung alongside as a counterpoint: one group reveals a changing, vulnerable landscape of ice and water; the other, something far more ancient, but carrying the history of man in its fields, hedgerows and hamlets. Morrison’s painting is beyond representation and remains relevant to whichever sky under which he has worked. The artist Phil Braham, who was a former student of James Morrison and is now Programme Director for Art & Philosophy at Duncan of Jordanstone, has written an insightful, personal essay giving a new appraisal of the artist and his work. We would also like to thank John Morrison and the rest of the family for their invaluable assistance. THE SCOTTISH GALLERY James Morrison painting, c.1995
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‘To see is to have at a distance’ Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 1961
Horizons past and present PHILIP BRAHAM
James Morrison painting at Otto Fiord, Canadian High Arctic, 1992
James Morrison’s gaze is fixed to the distant horizon, to that narrow zone where forms are diminished and obscured by the blue haze of our atmosphere. He reaches towards the transition point where sky meets earth in all its limitless variations, and makes sense of it anew by holding steady to his penetrating vision, translated by an articulate touch into paintings that transcend the observable in the here-and-now and incorporate an ineffable sense of the always-and-forever. Looking back over the distance that his distinguished career has traversed over the last sixty years or so, we see an admirable stoicism in Morrison, whose paintings have evolved gradually since the major breakthrough in the early 1970s that saw a return to realism. That arrival signalled an independence that freed him from the vagaries of artistic taste and fashion. He would never become a cultural icon, but that was never his goal. Instead, he turned to nature and paid attention to all her aspects: the scudding clouds, the swaying barley, the gnarled hedgerows, the glassy water and the distant hills; these would be his interlocutors in a discourse that nourished his entire career. From our vantage point we may speak now of an enduring love for the land that was intimately his, the Angus landscape with its gentle undulations and expansive skies, for the attributes of love are abundantly apparent throughout the diverse and multifaceted range of paintings that are the fruits of this soil. There is a sense of loyalty, respect, admiration, durability, kindness, generosity, tenderness, joy and sadness at times too, and these inflections leak out through way in which the paint is manipulated and the forms are transcribed. Above all, we sense that Morrison cares about these places and returns again and again to absorb their presence and significance, to draw-in their beauty and their earthiness as though it were as vital to his wellbeing
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as the air that he breathes. The Angus landscapes are the main focus of this, his twenty-fifth solo exhibition at The Scottish Gallery. I do not intend to write an historical or chronological account of the work on display, as I would have nothing new to add to the excellent texts already available to the reader. For those less familiar with James Morrison’s work I direct you to the wonderfully researched biography Land and Landscape: the painting of James Morrison by his son, the art historian Professor John Morrison, and to the many catalogues produced by The Scottish Gallery to date. Instead, I offer a subjective interpretation of this body of work as a fellow artist, landscape painter and former student of James Morrison. I am indebted to his teaching and to the integrity of his artistic practice together with his personal comportment. Like the great Scottish poets Sorley Maclean and Norman MacCaig, James Morrison recognised that the landscape, or at least our perception of it, could act as a mirror to reflect upon aspects of Being. There was no need for fiction or exaggeration if he opened up to what was constantly unfolding before him, both in the landscape and in the studio. The submission to nature was matched by a submission to the process of painting whereby both required the suppression of the ego to capture an event with absolute fidelity. Words are an embellishment that Morrison’s paintings can do without and I hesitate to impose my reading onto the viewer, but once an artwork leaves the studio and enters the world it comes to accrue all sorts of significance thereafter, with each of us bringing our own personal history to bear when we connect with the work. It is a privilege to be asked to offer my reflections, but as with all great artworks, these paintings eclipse all that can be said about them. A watercolour, Green Valley, 1972 [cat.5] is a good place to start because it encapsulates many of the qualities of his subsequent oils. Prior to that he had only rarely painted the Angus landscape which had been his home since 1965. He had been producing experimental paintings in ink, watercolour and casein, but the formality of the classical landscapes of Claude Lorrain began to temper these studies and it is at this point, in the early 1970s that his paintings began to take on a more illusionistic depth. Green Valley establishes compositional traits that regularly recur in later works: a low horizon and a planar recession that establishes a sense of space with a hasty rush
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James Morrison with William Jackson, Managing Director of The Scottish Gallery, 1989
James Morrison painting in Angus, c.1985
from the foreground towards a more fully described middle distance and onwards to the horizon. He would go on to develop an oil painting technique that utilised the absorbency of the gesso ground with the fluidity of a painting medium comprising sun-thickened or stand linseed oil with dammar varnish and turpentine, such that the support acted somewhat like paper and the medium somewhat like watercolour. The effect of this technique was that these paintings were flooded with an internal light provided by the luminosity of the polished gesso ground and tinted by the thin veils of pigment, just as in watercolour. We can clearly see the effect played out in paintings like Low Winter Sun, 2005 [cat.19] that depicts the turning of a road that borders a woodland filling the top-left quadrangle, with farmland rolling towards the distant hills and the layers of bright cloud that stretch across the top-right of the composition. The whole lower-half of the image seems bleached out, as though the intensity of the light had dissolved any detail to the extent that even the shadows are overwhelmed. Veracity of optical experience is realised through the luminosity of the medium. Redford, 2008 [cat.21] is masterfully worked. Like Green Valley, the horizon is low, with the land only accounting for about an eighth of the composition. Fluid clouds fill the sky above, their atmosphere pervading the distant hills and fields, but look closely at how the direction of each brushstroke carries the eye towards the horizon, simulating the furrows, dykes and hedgerows, and see how the nearest groups of trees are perfectly judged for their feathery outline and volume. This is the work of an artist absolutely immersed in the landscape before him, and one so gifted as to be able to render it seemingly effortlessly. Of course, these are anything but effortless paintings. The preparation of the gesso boards is laborious to begin with, and setting up to paint in the middle of a field where he has to contend with the wind and weather and yet somehow arrest the everchanging scene is no mean feat, but Morrison was adept at doing just that. Discomfort and difficulty were sacrifices worth enduring in order to capture the essence of the land that was his homeland. He did not exclusively paint the Scottish landscape however. There were painting trips to Cambridgeshire, France, Switzerland, Botswana and most significantly to the Canadian High Arctic in 1990, ’92 and ’94. Here, Morrison was confronted with nature in her purest aspect, untouched by human existence save for the occasional Inuit settlement, and he was astounded by
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the beauty and silent strangeness of the land. If painting outdoors in Scotland proved challenging, it was as nothing compared to this extreme. His diaries tell of endless days of snow and rain when it was impossible to venture outside his tent except to adjust the other tent that stored his precious paintings. Yet, remarkably, these trips provided images that he himself regards as the highlight of his career. Bergs, Otto Fiord I, 1992 [cat.37] and Clear and Cold, Otto Fiord II, 1992 [cat.38] painted five days later, share the same cold, crisp blue light and motionless icy sea. Bergs float in the middle distance but do not disturb the tranquillity of the scene. These are almost monochrome in their pale cobalt hue, modified a little by hints of violet in the clouds and emerald in the icebergs, but it is the dark mountains on the horizon that give value to the luminous skies and snow-covered ground. In general, Morrison preferred to paint outdoors, often completing the painting in the studio afterwards. But the visits to the High Arctic had such a profound impact on the artist that he sought to capture the otherworldliness of this landscape in vast paintings on his return. One of the most magnificent of these is the two-panelled painting Large Berg II, 1994 [cat.39]. Measuring nearly two and a half metres across, it is one of the most dramatic paintings he ever produced. Floating on a black sea, the berg at the left-edge towers over the viewer and cannot be contained within the frame of the composition. It is rendered in thick impasto, which is unusual in Morrison’s mature oeuvre, and there is a palpable sense of the weight and density of the ice that radiates a ghostly green light. We feel so very far removed from civilisation that this hinterland appears as a veil before an altogether other world: a departure-point in fact. Is it too fanciful to impose an eschatological interpretation onto this work? I sense that Morrison would recoil at the thought, but paintings are vessels that accumulate significance beyond the original intentions of the artist. Let us consider another unusual painting, Gentle River, 2000 [cat.15]. It is unusual because it is oppressively dark and claustrophobic, and very different to the light-filled, wide-angled vistas that we have come to expect. This painting depends on nuances of shadows, rendered in Umber and Paynes Grey, where a series of rocks diagonally navigates the picture plane to the bottom right corner. See how the surface of the river undulates and ripples, and how this subtle movement is deftly captured with a few quick and confident strokes, while the rocks beneath the surface are
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economically suggested by lifting the tone slightly and blending into the warmer stones on the near bank. The gloom is lifted by the white water pushing past the central rocks, and this humble scene is beautifully realised in a virtuoso performance of painterly skill. It would be enough to say no more, but the painting insists to me that there is more to it, that it reveals something of the man who painted it and for whom painting flowed like the very river depicted here, gently but emphatically. James Morrison is now in his 88th year and is unable to undertake the plein-air painting for which he is rightly renowned. His eyesight has deteriorated in the last few years, adding to his difficulties but still not arresting his work entirely. Among the paintings displayed, that stretch back as far as the mid-1960s, is a work of 2019 titled Dark Landscape [cat.35]. It would seem to be of a peat bog, like those in the flow country of the north, its overt blackness broken by light on water. Peat is formed by compressing organic matter over very long periods of time. In this extraordinary painting, Morrison seems to be reflecting on the years of his own practice, now compressed into another exhibition, but this painting is different because it lacks a principal motif altogether. The central bright cloud seems to dissolve away the landscape as though it were either dissipating or still in the process of coalescing. Either way, the solid ground on which he once stood seems less firm, less certain, and hauntingly less assured than it once was. There is a courageous honesty about the situation that James Morrison now faces, a horizon that grows nearer every day, and he has articulated that as he always does, through the practice of painting. Let us not end on a sad note however. This exhibition is a celebration of the life and work of one of the finest landscape painters Scotland has ever produced, and it gives us the opportunity to look back at the distance covered during his long and productive career. And what a remarkable journey it has been.
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1 Charleton, c.1965 mixed media on paper·29 x 50 cm
2 Denhead, 1965 oil on board·52 x 89.5 cm
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3 Saint Cyrus, 1970 pen, watercolour and gouache·30 x 31 cm
4 Angus Landscape, 1965 oil on canvas·63 x 77 cm
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5 Green Valley, 1972 watercolour·63.5 x 105 cm·detail left
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6 Farnell, 1973 pencil and watercolour·71 x 107 cm·detail left
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7  Raised Beach, St Cyrus, 1971 pen, ink and watercolour¡38 x 110 cm Illustrated in Land and Landscape: The Painting of James Morrison by John Morrison, Fleming Collection, 2013, pl.23
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8 Rolling Landscape, Towards Glenesk, 1973 oil on board, 49 x 91 cm·detail left
9 From the Studio Gate, 15.XI.1981 oil on board·29.5 x 44 cm
10 Rescobie, 1985 oil on gesso on board·25.5 x 40 cm
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11 Trees at Friockheim, 23.xi.1986 oil on board·87 x 150 cm
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12 Winter Balgove, 25.I.1986 oil on gesso on board·73 x 147 cm·detail shown on following pages
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James Morrison would never invent a snowy day. Neither is the day of a blizzard ever one to venture out with board, brush and paint, so there are but a few, glorious snowscapes in his oeuvre. There has been snow on distant Grampian peaks recorded many times but on a day after a heavy fall the need and desire to get out into the pristine wonderland has been particularly urgent. Around his house lie the rolling fields south of Montrose, encircled inland by the A92, the harsh coast to the east. The fertile fields are protected by dykes and hedgerows, the roads quickly impassable in
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drifts, but Morrison only need to trudge a few hundred yards into this, his deeply familiar landscape: Craig, Ferryden, Usan and Balgove. Jim loves the trees in winter, ‘without their clothes’, the light magnified by the radiant snow, or glowing pink in the gloaming. An utter stillness is captured, present also in Robert Frost’s poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening; the shape and character of the landscape is there but covered in a blanket; the skeletal trees casting shadows in the middle ground are clear and sharp, in contrast with the soft billows of snow. Guy Peploe
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13 Montrose Basin at Low Tide, 17.I.1990 oil on board·72 x 110 cm·detail left
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14 River Mark I, Glenesk, 21.VIII.1991 oil on board·30.5 x 78.5 cm
15 Gentle River, Glenesk, 25.V.2000 oil on board·75 x 90 cm
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16 High Tide, 26.VII.2003 oil on board·101.5 x 152.5 cm·detail left
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17 Low Tide, 3.VIII.2003 oil on board·101.5 x 152.5 cm·detail left
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18 Towards Montreathmont, 21.x.1985 oil on board, 15.5 x 23.5 cm
19 Low Winter Sun, From Bolshan, 9.I.2005 oil on board·101.5 x 152.5 cm
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20 Cloudy, vii.2006 oil on board·65 x 104 cm·detail left
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21 Redford, VIII.2008 oil on board·67 x 110 cm·detail left
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22 Low Water, 20.IV.2008 oil on board·88 x 153 cm·detail left
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23 Letham Grange, Winter, 15.II.2009 oil on board·102 x 152 cm·detail left
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24 From the Studio (The Loney III), 14.XI.2010 oil on board·42 x 44 cm
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25 From the Studio (The Loney I), 9.XI.2010 oil on board·35 x 108 cm·detail left
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26 Birch Tree, Montreathmont Forest, 12.x.2011 oil on board·76 x 44 cm·detail left
27 From the Studio (The Loney), 8.III.2012 oil on board·30 x 86 cm
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28 Meditation on Nether Dysart IV, 13.xi.2013 oil on board·10 x 147 cm
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29 Cononsyth, 27.III.2013 oil on board·52 x 76 cm
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30 Approaching Storm, 7.i.2011 oil on board·81 x 35 cm·detail left
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31 Meditation on Nether Dysart v, 12.ii.2014 oil on board·15 x 154 cm
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32 Looking Towards the Dun, 31.IV.2014 oil on board·80 x 110 cm
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33 Angus Landscape, 2017 oil on board·20 x 19.5 cm
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34 Farm on the Skyline, 31.III.2014 oil on board·22 x 65 cm
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35 Dark Landscape, 2019 oil on board· 59 x 91.5 cm
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James Morrison in the Arctic PROFESSOR JOHN MORRISON
James Morrison painting at Otto Fiord, c.1992. Image courtesy of The McManus: Dundee’s Art Gallery and Museum
In August 1994, James Morrison visited Ellesmere Island in the Arctic Archipelago, choosing to stay at the northernmost civilian settlement in Canada, Grise Fiord in the Cordillera mountain range. Though not seen in any of the images from the trip, the tiny population of Grise – fewer than 150 – were influential on the painter’s experience of the landscape, and on the character of the work he produced subsequently. He painted throughout his month-long stay, and continued to create images of the Arctic after returning to his studio in September and working through the winter of 1994–5. In multiple paintings ice sits scattered in a minimalist, often almost monochrome landscape. There is often a muffled stillness in the paintings. That quiet and apparent solitude is, on occasion, in distinct contrast to the circumstances of a given painting’s creation. One work looking out into Grise Fiord was carried out in the company of an elderly Inuit woman who sat outside in the snow with a rifle and shot seals as they surfaced, dispatching younger members of the community to bring back the bodies for dog food. None of this appears in the paintings, but neither is it merely anecdotal. There is an immediate disjunction between the pristine silence of the Arctic landscapes and their sometimes violent, bloody human context. It is not simply that the image ignores and even denies human agency, it wilfully imposes tranquillity on a reality marked by repeated bursts of turbulence and uproar. That contrast I think is central to these paintings. James Morrison found the High Arctic extraordinary. It was for him a defining moment as a landscape painter. But the experience was not confined to his existence as a painter. The visits to the region were extreme physical and emotional encounters for him. They were highly varied and often deeply contradictory, and all of that inconsistent whole had an impact on the paintings. The overt use of landscape as a vehicle for direct personal emotion is unusual in the artist’s work, and only occurs under extreme
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36 Inglefield Bay from Qaanaaq IV, 16.VIII.1992 oil on board·86.5 x 147.5 cm
circumstances. The work produced at Grise tends to concentrate directly on the overwhelming reality of being in an exceptional natural environment. However, the Inuit lifestyle encountered at Grise was as much a part of the experience as the land. Transported to Grise in the early 1950s by the Canadian government as part of an attempt to establish sovereignty over the region, life for those forcibly relocated was initially almost impossible. The original state-selected settlement site was poorly chosen and untenable. The Inuit moved location and made the extraordinarily difficult circumstances viable. For the painter the fortitude of the people, the injustice of the forced relocation programme, and their sheer skill in building a life in an extreme environment, were as much a part of being in the High Arctic as the physical properties of the land. These responses jarred, however, with the purely visual response to the sublimity and grandeur of the landscape. The ambiguity provoked a series of unexpected and sometimes disturbing paintings. The very large, often mural-size images produced in the autumn and winter of 1994–95 invite reading as an interior landscape of the mind, a visual Winterreise. Schubert’s ‘cycle of terrifying songs’ evokes the effect of a joyless, bleak landscape on the mind. Often read as the composer’s statement on the inherent loneliness of the human condition, the cycle is equally well understood as an individual’s descent into mental collapse. The painter has spoken of his disinterest in appropriating the Arctic landscape as a vehicle for personal reflection on the nature and quality of humanity and certainly the work produced in situ cannot help but respond directly to the sublimity of the world. However, it is plausible to read the repeatedly black, often reflective, hard edged surfaces seen in the work produced back in Angus, as visions of a personal despair. Adapted from Land and Landscape: The Painting of James Morrison by John Morrison, The Fleming Collection, London, 2013.
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37 Bergs, Otto Fiord I, 18.VII.1992 oil on board·86.5 x 147.5 cm·detail left
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James Morrison’s Arctic paintings capture the glacial landscape of Otto Fiord, Ellesmere Island, which lies within the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Living in a tented camp, in sight of caribou, Morrison described the High Arctic as a ‘paradise on earth.’ Working out of doors, he battled the weather, fluctuations in temperature and the danger posed by the occasional polar bear to produce landscapes of extreme beauty. Sinclair Aitken, Chair of Leisure & Culture Dundee said ‘During this year, when issues of global warming have never seemed so urgent, these artworks remind us of the importance of these remote landscapes to our very fabric of life.’ These spectacular paintings offer a visual record of the world’s diminishing ice caps and remind us all that we have a role to play in their survival. Excerpt from Among the Polar Ice The McManus: Dundee’s Art Gallery and Museum, 2019–2020
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38 Clear and Cold, Otto Fiord II, 23.VII.1992 oil on board·86.5 x 147.5 cm·detail left
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on previous pages
39 Large Berg II, 7.XI.1994 oil on board·diptych·overall 102 x 245 cm·detail right Illustrated in Land and Landscape: The Painting of James Morrison by John Morrison, Fleming Collection, 2013, pl.65
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40 Ice on the Shore, Grise Fiord, 5.VIII.1994 oil on board·86.5 x 147 cm·detail left
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41 Berg, Qaanaaq IV, 1994 oil on board·41 x 104 cm
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James Morrison RSA RSW D.Univ.
1932 Born in Glasgow
1979–87 Senior Lecturer at Duncan of Jordanstone
1950–54 Studied at Glasgow School of Art
1987 Resigned post at Dundee to paint full-time
1958 Won Torrance Memorial Prize, RGI
Extended painting trip to Canada
Founding Member of Glasgow Group
1988 Writer and presenter of STV series The Scottish Picture Show
1962–63 Visiting Artist at Hospitalfield House, Arbroath
1990 / 1992 / 1994 / 1996 Painting in the Canadian High Arctic
1965 Moved to Montrose
1997 Painting in Botswana
Joined staff at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee
1999 Painting in the Fens, Cambridgeshire
1968 Arts Council Travelling Scholarship to Greece
2003 Painting in Switzerland
1969–71 Presenter BBC Arts Programme Scope 1976 onwards Painting in various regions of France – Provence, Isere, Lot and Paris
James Morrison painting in Angus, c.1973
2007 Painting in Collioure, France
SOLO EXHIBITIONS 1956 / 1958 McClure Gallery, Glasgow 1959 / 1964 / 1967 / 1975 / 1978 / 1984 / 1988 / 1990 / 1991 / 1992 / 1994 / 1997 / 1999 / 2000 / 2002 / 2005 The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh 1962 The Reid Gallery London 1968 / 1970 Vaughan College, Leicester 1968 / 1969 Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh 1970 / 1977 Compass Gallery, Glasgow 1971 / 1972 Galleria Vaccarino, Florence 1973 Steiger Gallery, Moers, Germany 1974 Düsseldorf Kunstmesse
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1979 / 1981 / 1985 / 1995 / 1997 / 2000 Thackeray Gallery, London 1986 The Fine Art Society, Glasgow 1987 Waddington and Shiell Gallery, Toronto 1988 Perth Festival Exhibition, Perth Museum and Art Gallery
2012 A View from Here, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh 2013 Land and Landscape: The Painting of James Morrison, Fleming Collection, London 2015 Paintings of War, Montrose Museum, Montrose The North Wind, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh
1989 The Scottish Gallery, London
2017 Decades, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh
The Macaulay Gallery, Stenton
2020 Angus to the Arctic, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh
1990 The Glasgow Paintings, William Hardie Gallery, Glasgow 1991 / 1994 The Riverside Gallery, Stonehaven 1993 The Arlesford Gallery, Hampshire 1995 Talbot Rice Gallery (Arctic works), University of Edinburgh Art London, Art Fair, London with The Scottish Gallery
GROUP EXHIBITIONS 1956 The Arts and the Cafe Royal, an exhibition of contemporary painting, Edinburgh 1964 +/-30, an exhibition of contemporary Scottish Art, Scottish Arts Council
2007 New Paintings, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh
1966 10 West of Scotland Painters, Arts Council Gallery, Belfast
2009 The Edge of Allegory, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh
1967 First Edinburgh Open 100, Festival Exhibition, Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh
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1968 Three Centuries of Scottish Paintings, Canada Scottish Contemporary Painting, Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh 1969 Oireachtais Exhibition, Dublin Municipal Gallery 2 plus 3 Exhibition: Two Canadians and Three Scots (with Robert Downing, Jack Wise, Neil Dallas Brown and John Knox), Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh 1973 Galleria Acropoli, Venice 1976–85 Scottish Art, ESU Gallery, Edinburgh 1977 Seven Painters in Dundee, Scottish Arts Council Exhibition, The McManus: Dundee’s Art Gallery & Museum 1980 Scottish Painting in Holland Scottish Print Open 2, an exhibition of contemporary Scottish prints 1981 Art Fair, Basel Contemporary Scottish Painting, Arts Council Touring Exhibition Eleven Scottish Artists, Universities of Surrey and Nottingham Art in the City, MacLean Gallery, London
1981–82 Contemporary Art from Scotland, Touring Exhibition: Kendal, London, Sheffield, Cardiff, Middlesbrough 1982 Small is Beautiful, Dunkeld Gallery
Glasgow Group Jubilee, McLellan Galleries, Glasgow 1983 Noise and Smoky Breath, Visual Images of Glasgow, 1900–1983, Third Eye Centre, Glasgow
1984 Different Kinds of Good Weather, Arts Council Touring Exhibition A Festival of Scottish Drawing, Fine Arts Society, Glasgow 1985 Art for Africa, Contemporary Scottish Art, City Art Centre, Edinburgh 1985 Portraits on Paper, Scottish Arts Council The Parks in Glasgow, Compass Gallery, Glasgow 1986 Contemporary Scottish Painting, Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh 1988 A Festival of Gardens, Fine Arts Society, Glasgow 20th Anniversary, Thackeray Gallery, London Post 1945 and Contemporary Art, Ewan Mundy Fine Art, Glasgow 1989 A View from the North East, ESU Gallery, Edinburgh The Auld Alliance, Riverside Gallery, Stonehaven
James Morrison, c.1965
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1989 The Auld Alliance, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh
2001 Aspects of Scottish Drawings, 1900–2001, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh
London Sea and Shore, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh
2004 Art London with The Scottish Gallery
1990 Scottish Art, 1900–1990, The Scottish Gallery, London
2008 Alliance Francaise, (with Douglas Davies), Glasgow Exhibition
Paintings from the Clydesdale Bank Collection, Glasgow
2015 10th Anniversary Exhibition, Kinblethmont, Angus
21 Years of Contemporary Art, Tramway Gallery, Glasgow A Patron of Art, The Royal Bank Collection, Edinburgh 1991 Scottish Art in the 20th Century, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol 1992 150th Anniversary Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh Colleagues at Duncan of Jordanstone, Dundee celebrating the end of term at Alberto Morrocco’s home Binrock House, c.1975. From left David McClure, Ian Eadie, Denis Buchan, James Morrison (left standing), Jack Knox (seated centre), Ian Fearn (centre standing), Alistair Ross (right standing), Connie Meldrum (with umbrella), Alberto Morrocco (third from right), Grant Clifford (second from right) and Gordon Cameron (far right)
1993 The Twelve Days of Christmas, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh
2018 From the Sublime to the Concrete, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh Reflections, Kinblethmont, Angus 2019 40 Years of Excellence, Frames Gallery, Perth Fully Awake, Edinburgh College of Art Among the Polar Ice, The McManus: Dundee’s Art Gallery & Museum
1999 Mountain, Wolverhampton Art Gallery Members of the RSA, The Albemarle Gallery, London Connections, RSA, Edinburgh Painter Members of the RSA, Albemarle Gallery, London
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SELECTED COLLECTIONS
Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museum
Grampian Television, Aberdeen
ANGUSalive
HRH The Duke of Edinburgh
The Argyll Collection
High Life Highland Exhibitions Unit
Art in Healthcare
Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow
Aviva PLC, London Bank of Scotland BBC Brascan, Canada Britoil PLC, Glasgow Cambridge Shire Hall City of Edinburgh Council Clackmannanshire Council Museum and Heritage Service Clydesdale Bank Department of the Environment (DEFRA) Dundas & Wilson, Edinburgh Dundee College
IBM Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow Lillie Art Gallery, Glasgow Lloyds Bank PLC Low and Bonar PLC The McManus: Dundee’s Art Gallery and Museum Perth Museum and Art Gallery Perth and Kinross Council Royal Bank of Scotland Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh Scottish Fisheries Museum, Anstruther
Edinburgh Fund Managers
Strathclyde Regional Council
Glasgow School of Art
Tayside House, Dundee
Glasgow Museums Resource Centre
The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation, London
Government Art Collection
The Scottish Arts Council
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Universities: Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Heriot-Watt, Stirling and Strathclyde Vaughan College, Leicester William Grant and Sons Ltd Works in offices and embassies worldwide Works in Private Collections in the UK, Canada, Europe and USA
James Morrison in Angus, c.2000
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Published by The Scottish Gallery for the exhibition James Morrison: From Angus to the Arctic held at 16 Dundas Street, Edinburgh, from 4 January to 1 February 2020 ISBN 9781 912 900 14 5 Artworks © James Morrison 2020 Texts © the contributors 2020 Catalogue © The Scottish Gallery 2020 All rights reserved Works photographed by John McKenzie Designed and typeset in Sweet Sans by Dalrymple Printed in Scotland by J.Thomson Colour Printers Cover: details from Large Berg II, 7.XI.1994 [cat.39] Inside front cover: James Morrison painting in Angus, c.1973 Frontispiece: detail from Trees at Friockheim, 23.xi.1986 [cat.11] Inside back cover: James Morrison painting in Angus, 1981
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CONTEMPORARY ART SINCE 1842