David McClure RSA, RSW (1926-1998)
Art and Industry: Ardrossan to Millport An online essay by Robin McClure on the work of his father David McClure
3 - 27 April 2019 The Scottish Gallery 16 Dundas Street
This online essay is available to download via ISSUU
Above: White Chimney Stacks, Ardrossan, 1954, gouache, 49.5 x 37 cm, Exhib.No: 8* Top Left: David McClure in his Studio, Casteldaccia, Sicily, 1956.
*Exhibition numbers refer to works that are on view during The Scottish Gallery’s Exhibition, David McClure, Art and Industry: Ardrossan to Millport, 3 -27 April 2019
David McClure is best known for his colourful, painterly still lifes and flower-pieces, his subject pictures of children’s dreams or religious figures and later his nudes and studio interiors. Landscapes too were a significant part of his work, inspired by harbour scenes from the East Neuk of Fife or the East Coast fishing villages above Dundee. In later years he produced lyrical coastal landscapes of north-west Sutherland. This exhibition however, comes from his early years in the 1950s from two very different locations, the results of two awards the artist received following his return from his PostDiploma Travelling Scholarship from Edinburgh College of Art in 1953. The first group, from 1954, comes from a short period as an “Artist in Residence” at Shell Petroleum’s refinery at Ardrossan in Ayrshire.
The second is from the winter of 1955/6 when he was in Millport on the small island of Great Cumbrae on the Clyde. These works are the first results of another award, a two-year Andrew Grant Fellowship from Edinburgh College of Art. This subsequently allowed him to live and paint for a year in Florence and Sicily. Paintings from Millport, Florence and Sicily formed the basis of his first solo exhibition in the UK at The Scottish Gallery in Castle Street in 1957 on his return to Scotland.
Top Left: Sketch of Ardrossan, 1954, charcoal on paper Top Right: David McClure’s Glasgow Docks wartime security pass, 1943
Ardrossan - Shell Petroleum Refinery 1954 Returning from his Travelling Scholarship to France, Spain and Italy in 1953, McClure taught part-time in the School of Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art until 1955. In the summer of 1954, however, he spent a period painting at Shell Petroleum’s refinery at Ardrossan on the North Ayrshire coast. Shell had commissioned over 50 younger European artists, including Euan Uglow and Michael Andrews, to paint at some of their facilities throughout Europe. An exhibition, “ The Artist’s View of an Industry”, took place at the Mall Galleries in London in 1955, opened by the chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain, Sir Kenneth Clark. A similar show including work by 8 Belgian artists, “L’Industrie du Pétrole vue par des Artistes”, took place at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 1956.
Sketches of Ardrossan (details) charcoal on paper
McClure’s residency produced a fascinating and rather beautiful series of small oils, gouaches and sketches of this seemingly unpromising industrial subject with its large storage tanks, pipes, funnels and rail tanker trucks . We know from the artist’s own “sales notebook” that the following year Shell acquired 2 works, an oil painting (“Panorama”) and a gouache (“Grey Chimney”). Whether these were purchases or a stipulation of the award, we don’t know; their current whereabouts have sadly proved undiscoverable.
Sketch of Ardrossan 1954 charcoal on paper
Ardrossan Sketch IV, pen and ink wash on paper
Working with young contemporary artists was nothing new for Shell, however. Under their publicity manager, Jack Beddington, from the 1930s they employed artists such as Paul Nash, John Piper, Vanessa Bell, Ben Nicholson and Graham Sutherland to produce images for their well-known and highly sought after posters. In the late 1940s and 1950s, Beddington was also involved with Lyons Teashops in the production of affordable lithographs by a similar group of artists and illustrators. This has interesting parallels with lithographs by young and established UK artists printed by Harley Brothers in Edinburgh in the 1950s.
McClure was later included in a book “Young Artists of Promise” edited by Beddington featuring a host of painters and sculptors including future RAs Fred Cuming and Joe Tilson, the illustrator Charles Keating as well as fellow Scottish-based artists Phillip Reeves and Alastair Flattley.
Left: Cover of Young Artists of Promise, Chosen by Jack Beddington, C.B.E The Studio Publications, London and New York Right: Inside content of Young Artists of Promise Top Image: David McClure, Moon, Santa Zita, 1956, gouache, 50.8 x 53.34 cm
However, a look back at some significant aspects of the artist’s work up to this point reveals perhaps why this placement and the industrial nature of the subject matter may have had a particular appeal to the artist…
Mining - Paintings and Drawings 1946-8 Having completed his first year studying English at Glasgow University, McClure entered War Service in 1944 as a Bevin Boy at the age of 18 working in the mines in Scotland. This came to an end in 1947 and he then enrolled in the Fine Art Course, jointly run between Edinburgh College of Art and the University, combining Drawing and Painting with Art History. The following year he switched to the Diploma Course at the College to concentrate on painting. Interestingly his application for Glasgow University contains in the “Other Activities and Interests” section, his hand-written note stating he had a “keen interest in drawing and painting, and in the study of art.”
Tunnel End with Miner pen and ink wash
Some 40 small and medium drawings and watercolours of mining themes survive, ranging from landscapes with pit heads and coal bings to scenes of miners working at the coal face. These are datable between 1945 and 1948 and so include part of his period as a miner as well as his early years at college and it is likely that some of these were included in his application portfolio for the Art College where Landscape and Figure Composition were important parts of the curriculum.
Interestingly the Beddinton Book previously mentioned also featured the work of Tom McGuiness a “miner/artist” and fellow Bevin Boy. Indeed in 2018 they were both included in four-person exhibition “Bevin Boys - War’s Forgotten Heroes” the first show at the new Mining Art in Bishop Auckland. https://www.aucklandproject.org/events/bevinsboys-wars-forgotten-workforce/
Above: Head of a Miner, pen and ink wash Left: Kneeling Miner Working, pen and ink wash
Leith, Granton and the Thames - Edinburgh College of Art 1947-51 The artist’s college works, apart from more conventional set-piece subject of nudes, portraits, life drawing, figure compositions and still lifes, sees him seeking out townscape subjects in and around Edinburgh. These are dominated by coastal scenes, not from the more obviously “picturesque” fishing harbours such as Newhaven but from the busy working docks and ports of Leith and Granton. The artist had in fact himself worked as a stevedore at Glasgow Docks in 1943 between school and University. This experience, as with his subsequent time down the mines, left a deep impression on the artist and was undoubtedly a factor in his choice of subject matter for an important part of his college work.
David McClure with Thames Barges, 1950 Photograph of David McClure’s Degree Show, 1951 Barges on the Thames (opposite page) can be seen, middle row, second from right
Above: Barges on the Thames, 1951, gouache, 23.5 x 30.5cm Exhib.No: 4 Left: Sketch for Barges on the Thames, 1950, pencil on paper
Sketch of Leith Docks with Disused Paddlesteamer, 1948, pen & ink, 24 x 28.5 cm (squared for enlargement for possible larger study or oil painting). Paddle Steamer, Leith, 1950, gouache, 15 x 19 cm Exhib.No: 3
Two subjects included in this exhibition can be followed through from initial sketches and studies to finished works. The first of these was of an old, disused paddle steamer berthed near the mouth of the Water of Leith. Here we can trace the finished oil of 1951 back, over a period of around 3 years through sketches and studies in pen and ink, watercolour and gouache. The second comes from short trip to London in the summer of 1950 with his great friend and fellow student, Hamish Reid. Here the subject matter is working barges on the Thames. The finished oil with the addition of figures was prominent in his Diploma Show of 1951.
Travelling Scholarship - France, Spain and Italy 1952-53 In the summer of 1952 following his post-graduate year, David (with his by then wife, Joyce) spent a ‘painting holiday’ in Fife with Hamish Reid, David Michie and the latter’s mother Anne Redpath. On this occassion the fishing villages of the East Neuk - Pittenweem, Anstruther, St Monans and Crail feature heavily. Later that year McClure spent several months (Oct 52-May 53) with Reid on their Travelling Scholarship in France, Spain and Italy. Enriching visits to museums, galleries and churches were interspersed with painting and sketching landscapes and urban scenes. One particular sketchbook is of relevant interest here.
Charming drawings of donkeys and carriages in Toledo and several drawings of the town itself, are followed by very detailed pencil studies of Seville. Here again the artist is drawn to the working boats and buildings of the riverside harbour and docks.
Sketch of Seville pencil on paper
Sketches of Seville pencil on paper
Andrew Grant Fellowship - Millport 1955-6 While working part-time at Edinburgh College of Art, McClure was awarded a twoyear Andrew Grant Fellowship from the college. Andrew Grant was a wealthy 19th century merchant and philanthropist. Born in Leith in 1830, he worked in China, India and Liverpool and after his return to Scotland he served as a highly respected Member of Parliament for Leith. Later he was to give £10,000 towards the building of Edinburgh College of Art in Lady Lawson Street which began in 1907. When he died in 1924 he left the college the considerable sum of £350,000, well over half of his Estate, to benefit students in the form of Travelling Scholarships and the Andrew Grant Fellowship. The Bequest still operates today with resources thought to be currently worth 10 times the original amount. The Fellowship was for “£500 per annum for two years to enable a former student of the College of exceptional talent who might otherwise be prevented from fully exploiting their talent during the early stages of their professional career, to undertake a special study under the supervision of the College Authorities in Studio or Workshop, and to travel extensively abroad.” Millport Paddle-steamer (Sketch I) charcoal on paper
Notes by William Gillies, then Head of Drawing and Painting concerning the selection of candidates indicate that he considered McClure to be “the obvious choice” and a “first-rate man” and although he would have liked to “keep McClure on the teaching staff, if this is not considered desirable, then I would place him first on the list for a Fellowship”
Millport Paddle-steamer (Sketch II)
The winter of 1955 saw the artist with his wife Joyce and their 9 month-old son Robin in Millport on the small island of Great Cumbrae on the Clyde, an island then as now very much involved in a quite different industry, Tourism. His wife Joyce had herself spent many happy summer family holidays there as a child and indeed there is a nice link to his Leith paintings of a disused paddle-steamer in a large gouache of one at Millport harbour, one of the many which used to carry holidaymakers “doon
the watter” to the resorts on the Clyde.
However, during the cold winter, Millport was not the bustling, vibrant place of the summer months. A few sketches and works on paper do hark back to earlier subjects and include working boats in the harbour but the artist’s main subjects now became the seafront houses, smaller backstreet cottages and guest houses with their lanes and walls as well as a few more open rural landscapes. Given the severity of the weather it is not surprising that a significant number of works are views across the bay seen through the window of their guest house while a number of superb pen and ink still lifes, use dried flower heads and grasses gathered from surrounding hedgerows and fields. These works while still somewhat influenced by some of the work of his college tutors, principally perhaps William Gillies and Robert Henderson Blyth, see McClure beginning to fulfil the purpose of the Fellowship and develop his own artistic voice. As we have noted the Scholarship was soon to allow the artist to move to warmer climates and work for a year in Florence and Sicily where a whole range of quite different subjects and influences came into play. But that, as they say, is another story...
Robin McClure, March 2019 Sketch of Millport Charcoal on paper
Drawing of Leith Docks, 1948 (squared for enlargement for possible larger study or oil painting)
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.