modern masters vii
modern masters vii 2 – 23 december 2017 mary armour john bellany dame elizabeth blackadder william crosbie victoria crowe william crozier joan eardley ea hornel sir william gillies john houston george leslie hunter sir william mactaggart
william mccance peter mclaren john maclauchlan milne alberto morrocco david mcclure sj peploe sir robin philipson perpetua pope anne redpath geoffrey squire adam bruce thomson
16 Dundas Street, Edinburgh EH3 6HZ tel 0131 558 1200 email mail@scottish-gallery.co.uk www.scottish-gallery.co.uk
Front cover: Elizabeth Blackadder, Blue Still Life, 1980 watercolour on handmade paper, 52 x 76 cms (cat. 5) Left: William Crosbie, Womb from Womb, 1941 oil on canvas, 213.5 x 152.5 cms (detail), (cat. 7)
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Introduction Our Modern Masters series of exhibitions continues with this offering and once again we can cover 125 years with individual works which speak to the richness of talent in the Scottish school in the modern period. The expressionist tendency, the raw, immediate response to nature, is here with works by Leslie Hunter of Largo harbour in storm, a wonderful Eardley of the cliff-top at Catterline with a squall blowing in and a MacTaggart of East Lothian which sits in a Northern European landscape tradition alongside Munch and Nolde; heavy impasto and volcanic earth tones. Here are significant works by artists as varied as Mary Armour and Peter McLaren, both perhaps ripe for rediscovery. We include major early works by John Bellany, a monumental William Crosbie Surrealist work destined for the Modernist show at the SNGMA, a Gillies made on his only painting trip outside Scotland, to St-Valery-en-Caux in 1938 and a major St Tropez painting by John MacLauchlan Milne, the ‘fifth Colourist’. Each exhibition in the series presents an alternative history of Scottish painting, works selected for their quality rather being required to fulfil an art historical thesis, the individualism of each work and each artist attesting to the limitless variety of artistic production. guy peploe the scottish gallery
Opposite: Sir William MacTaggart in his Edinburgh studio, c.1963
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Mary Armour (1902-2000) 1 Poppies and Still Life, 1946 oil on board, 60 x 50 cms signed and dated lower right provenance Cyril Gerber Fine Art, Glasgow; Private collection, Newcastle
Mary Armour was one of the dominant figures in the Scottish art world in the post war decades. She taught still life composition at Glasgow School of Art from 1951 to 1962 and thereafter built a very successful career as an exhibiting artist. Her distinctive, beautifully composed floral still lifes regularly sold in excess of ÂŁ20,000. Today she is an artist ripe for rediscovery.
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John Bellany cbe, ra (1942-2013) 2 Mizpah, c.1967 oil on canvas, 131 x 153 cms provenance A gift from the artist to jazz musician Tam White, Edinburgh, thence by descent.
The subject of fishing boats recurred throughout the artist’s professional life. Mizpah is Hebrew for “Lord watch over me”, a fitting name for a North Sea trawler. Our painting is a beautifully coloured, moving and enigmatic image.
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John Bellany cbe, ra (1942-2013) 3 Mary Stuart, 1987 oil on canvas, 121 x 90 cms signed lower right, signed and dated on verso provenance Private collection, Newcastle
In the years immediately following Bellany’s liver transplant, with renewed energy, he tackled many ambitious, monumental figure compositions. The doomed Scottish queen, flanked by her royal cousin and a sinister executioner, fixes the viewer with an intense stare conveying bravery and pathos.
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Dame Elizabeth Blackadder obe, ra, rsa, rsw, rgi (b.1931) 4 Soutra, 1971 oil on canvas, 65 x 70 cms signed and dated lower left provenance The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1990; Private collection, Newcastle
Blackadder’s landscape, like her mentor William Gillies, can be dark on dark; a view in the gloaming, perfectly true to time and place and at once a satisfying abstract composition.
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Dame Elizabeth Blackadder obe, ra, rsa, rsw, rgi (b.1931) 5 Blue Still Life, 1980 watercolour on handmade paper, 52 x 76 cms signed and dated lower left provenance Mercury Gallery, London, 1980
Variegated tulips, postcards and wrapping paper, a toy bird and a cool blue background, all in perfect harmony. A Blackadder essay in all aspects of the painter’s craft.
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Dame Elizabeth Blackadder obe, ra, rsa, rsw, rgi (b.1931) 6 Untitled, Still Life, 2006 watercolour on board, 15 x 15 cms signed on label verso exhibited Christmas exhibition, Royal Glasgow Institute, Glasgow, 2006 provenance Private collection, Glasgow
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William Crosbie rsa, rgi (1915-1999) 7 Womb from Womb, 1941 oil on canvas, 213.5 x 152.5 cms signed and dated upper right exhibited William Crosbie Memorial Exhibition, Ewan Mundy Fine Art, Glasgow, 2001, cat. 1; A New Era: Scottish Modern Art 1900-1950, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, December 2017 - June 2018 provenance The Artist’s estate
This monumental “Surrealist” work from 1941 has the artist contorted, in consideration of a studio work which hints at the complexity of Dada or Surrealism, all in an interior which has the modernist design aesthetic of Kurt Schwitters and Fritz Lang. Please note: any purchaser will be requested to honour the loan to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
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Victoria Crowe obe, dhc, frse, ma(rca), rsa, rsw (b.1945) 8 Revealing Still Life, 1989 oil on board, 79 x 99 cms signed lower right; titled and signed on label verso exhibited Annual Exhibition, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, 1989, cat. 148 provenance Private collection, Newcastle
This still life was painted in West Linton in 1989, not long after the artist’s move from Monk’s Cottage at Kittleyknowe. The table top is adorned with objects from shepherdess Jenny Armstrong’s cottage; the black vase, lamb ceramic and box of assorted objects all feature in earlier paintings of Jenny’s cottage and Crowe continued to use them in her new setting. This is one of the first paintings to use a mirror as an extension of space, enabling a different view point to the still life composition.
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Victoria Crowe obe, dhc, frse, ma(rca), rsa, rsw (b.1945) 9 Lamb and Lucifer, 1994-95 oil on board, 21.5 x 26.5 cms signed lower right provenance Fine Art Society, London; Private collection, London
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Victoria Crowe obe, dhc, frse, ma(rca), rsa, rsw (b.1945) 10 Votive, Charms and Illusions, 1994-95 oil on board, 21.5 x 26.5 cms signed lower right provenance Fine Art Society, London; Private collection, London
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William Crozier (1930-2011) 11 The Table I, 1985 gouache, 45 x 62 cms signed and dated lower left provenance Private collection, Edinburgh
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Joan Eardley rsa (1921-1963) 12 Sitting Child, c.1960 pastel on paper, 27.5 x 21.5 cms exhibited Joan Eardley Festival Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1964, cat. 78 provenance Private collection, Edinburgh
Eardley’s favourite medium for drawing, particularly in Glasgow, was pastel. Her ability to pull the pastel across the sheet (sometimes a fine emery paper), work with her fingers, and use a decisive line to pick out or suggest detail are all characteristic. These works are never highly finished; she enjoyed pentimenti (after all her subject was constantly on the move) and as with street photography which fascinated her, the composition is often abruptly curtailed. Conversely if she has ‘run out of room’ on her sheet another can be added. Sitting Child would essentially have been finished in a few minutes, the time that the toddler would submit to sitting still which lends these works an urgency and truth unique in British painting.
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Joan Eardley rsa (1921-1963) 13 Autumn Landscape, c.1963 oil on board, 64 x 51 cms exhibited Joan Eardley Festival Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1964, cat. 67; Joan Eardley Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, 1984, cat. 4 provenance Artist’s studio inventory no. ED428; Private collection, Edinburgh
Like her fellow student Robert Henderson Blyth, Eardley painted the whole landscape from her feet to the roof of the sky. Her foregrounds hum with life and growth and sometimes she would press grasses and seed heads into the wet paint. Above, the skies are ever changing carrying weather, the promise of storms or clearing after rain. In the hours of painting the artist is part of a natural continuum working with instinct and intuition, making permanent an eternal truth.
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Joan Eardley rsa (1921-1963) 14 Tenement and Crane, c.1958-60 pastel on paper, 12 x 18 cms exhibited Joan Eardley, Cyril Gerber Fine Art, Glasgow, 1985, cat. 39 provenance Artist’s studio inventory no. ED28
Eardley’s powerful drawings and paintings of the urban dereliction of Glasgow in the 1950’s and early 60’s are poignant depictions of the character of place somehow indivisible from the character of its people. Eardley captured “gaunt tenements and back-courts, the dark strength of their forms and the unexpected colour in their peeling masonry.” Cordelia Oliver, Joan Eardley and Glasgow, Scottish Art Review, Special Number. Vol XIV. No 3. 1974, p.17
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EA Hornel (1864–1933) 15 A Woodland Pool, 1900 oil on canvas board, 56 x 22.5 cms signed and dated lower left exhibited Portrait of a Gallery, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2017, cat. 4 provenance The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1944; Private collection, London, thence by descent
It is no coincidence that the curators of the magnificent Glasgow Boys exhibition at Kelvingrove Art Gallery in 2010 chose 1900 as their cut-off date. Hornel was to live on until 1933, but his later work became formulaic. In 1900, aged thirty-six, Hornel was at the peak of his powers and still inspired by his eighteen months in Japan from the summer of 1893. Back in Kirkcudbright his subject reprised earlier idyllic rural scenes, essentially like the Japanese examples but with parasols, fans and kimonos now swopped for posies and pinafores. A Woodland Pool is a pre-eminent example: the tall format, partial subsuming of the figures into the woodland, rich impasto, tonal contrasts and sonorous colour are brilliantly realised without sentimentality.
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Sir William Gillies cbe, rsa, ra, pprsw (1898-1973) 16 St Valery-en-Caux, 1938 watercolour, 47 x 62 cms signed lower right, further inscribed and titled on label verso exhibited 20th Century Scottish Paintings and Drawings, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1976 provenance Private collection, Edinburgh; The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh
Aside from war service Gillies made only one trip abroad, to Normandy in 1938. His bright, breezy view demonstrates the free technique he deployed at this time, still inspired by the Edvard Munch works he saw at the Scottish Society Of Artists in 1931.
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Sir William Gillies cbe, rsa, ra, pprsw (1898-1973) 17 Balmacara near Kyle, 1946 oil on board, 35.5 x 40 cms signed lower right provenance The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh
Balmacara is a small village on the north shore of Loch Alsh where he and John Maxwell later stayed on a tour of the West Coast in 1949. During his holidays from Edinburgh College of Art, Gillies travelled extensively around Scotland. These trips were a chance to unwind and focus wholly on his landscape drawing and painting. During term time, the pressures of College meant he was only predominantly able to concentrate on his still life practice.
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John Houston obe, rsa, rsw, rgi (1931-2008) 18 Red Table and Night Sky, 1962 oil on canvas, 49 x 60 cms signed lower right provenance The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh
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John Houston obe, rsa, rsw, rgi (1931-2008) 19 Low Sunset over the Sea oil on board, 25.5 x 25.5 cms exhibited The Forth, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2017 provenance The Artist’s estate
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John Houston obe, rsa, rsw, rgi (1931-2008) 20 Beach at Gullane mixed media, 28.5 x 40.5 cms signed lower left exhibited The Forth, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2017 provenance The Artist’s estate
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George Leslie Hunter (1877-1931) 21 Storm, Largo Harbour, Fife, c.1925 oil on canvas, 50 x 60.5 cms signed lower right provenance Fine Art Society London, 1971; Private collection, Oxfordshire
The subject is an entirely familiar one painted many times by Hunter in the twenties. The treatment, the use of substantial impasto as Hunter tries to find equivalence in the power of the storm is brilliant, and unusual in his oeuvre.
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Sir William MacTaggart pprsa, ra, rsw (1903-1981) 22 Winter Sunshine, Humbie, c.1962 oil on board, 50 x 60 cms signed lower right provenance The Stone Gallery, Newcastle, 1962; Private collection, Newcastle
The expressionist landscapes of MacTaggart in the post war period represent a powerful body of work, continuing a Northern European expressionist tradition still apparent in the work of Duncan Shanks and David Cook.
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William McCance (1894-1970) 23 Seated Female Nude, 1930 charcoal, 46.5 x 36.5 cms signed and dated lower left provenance The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh; Private collection, Edinburgh
This drawing was made in 1930 just before McCance took up his position with the Gregynog Press in Wales, when McCance was living in London with his wife Agnes Miller Parker, who is the subject. McCance was working as an artist and writer, reviewing for The Spectator and meeting many of the leading figures of the vibrant art and literary scene of post-War London. The links with Vorticism are apparent in the tubular form and strong modelling but the drawing has the extra charm of acute observation: the shoe, only half worn and the upturned thumb as the hand grips the chair are surely true to the moment as perhaps is a note of impatience in the face and posture of the sitter.
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Peter McLaren (b.1964) 24 Homage to Velรกzquez, c.1999 oil on board, 168 x 122 cms signed on verso provenance Private collection, Glasgow
A bold, striking tribute to An Old Woman Cooking Eggs, by Velรกzquez it is easy to see why McLaren cites the Scottish Colourists and post war expressionist paintings as some of his early influences. There is a wonderful range of colour and tactile impasto technique in evidence in this large oil painting. The still life in the foreground is modern with a glorious sunny yellow tablecloth and jug of full blown flowers. It is in the background that we have the enigmatic presence of Velรกzquez.
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John Maclauchlan Milne rsa (1885-1957) 25 Street of the Four Winds, 1933 oil on canvas, 74 x 91.5 cms signed and dated lower left provenance Private collection, Edinburgh
Our picture comes at the end of a period beginning in 1924 when Milne lived in the south of France, based at St Tropez. Like Peploe in Cassis and Antibes, his whites allow brilliant local colour to engender a sense of heat. Milne’s position as the “fifth Colourist” is enhanced by these brilliant works inspired by the South of France.
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Alberto Morrocco rsa, rsw (1917-1998) 26 Fantasia Siciliana, 1983 oil on canvas, 110 x 105 cms signed and dated lower left exhibited Alberto Morrocco, Centenary Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, 2017, ex cat. provenance Private collection, Wiltshire
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Alberto Morrocco rsa, rsw (1917-1998) 27 Maria, 1987 oil on board, 38 x 40.5 cms signed and dated lower right exhibited Alberto Morrocco Festival Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1987, cat. 61; Alberto Morrocco, Centenary Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, 2017, ex cat. provenance Private collection, Warmister
“These subjects that I used to see in Italy, which you don’t see here – the human figure related to something that’s happening either in their work or whatever. I mean, they live out of doors, so that one is able to use the human figure on beaches to begin with – almost the nude figures in all kinds of attitudes in relation to the eternal sea, the strip of blue or green that’s in front against the sky; the abstraction of this strip of sand, this strip of sea and strip of sky in varying proportions splitting the canvas into three sections and then intervening, linking it, knitting a pattern through it with figures intrigues me a lot.” Alberto Morrocco in conversation with Clara Young, March 1993
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Alberto Morrocco rsa, rsw (1917-1998) 28 Still Life with White Bird, 1991 oil on canvas, 54.5 x 80 cms signed and dated upper right exhibited Alberto Morrocco, Centenary Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, 2017, ex cat. provenance Private collection, Glasgow
Morrocco had a thorough, academic training and drew constantly. In the earlier paintings his oils were carefully prepared with drawing. In the nineties, he used the huge resource of his sketchbooks for compositional and subject ideas and increasingly painted directly, letting the work fulfil its own potential, so honed were his decorative instincts. His home was a huge treasure trove of objects, fabrics, furniture, props and ceramics. He worked tirelessly and urgently in the last years of his life making some of his most charming and enduring images and arriving at his full potential as a colourist.
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David McClure rsa, rsw, rgi (1926-1998) 29 Flowers on a Pink Ground oil on board, 35 x 29 cms signed lower left, signed and inscribed verso provenance Private collection, Peebles
“McClure is a hedonistic painter, rejoicing in the tactile abundance of life. The rich glowing surfaces of his flower paintings are a celebration, a passionate embracing of the world.� Prof John Morrison (Senior Lecturer in History of Art at the University of Aberdeen)
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SJ Peploe rsa (1871-1935) 30 The Hair Pin: Study of a Woman Fixing her Hair, c.1898 pastel on paper, 55.5 x 45.5 cms signed lower left provenance A gift from the artist to his sister-in-law, thence by descent
The first works Peploe exhibited, in 1896, were pastel drawings and for a decade they were a significant part of his practice. The difficulty of the technique, requiring a delicacy combined with deft control of the medium, appealed to the young, ambitious artist. His subjects ranged from the realism of Newhaven Fishwives (Plate 15, SJ Peploe by Guy Peploe, Lund Humphries), to children, naturally observed, and here an interior study which suggests a narrative. The sitter is slim, and elegant: is she a dancer? The intimacy of the act of pinning her hair, which echoes the elegant shape of a flamenco pose (the artist drew his favourite model Jeannie Blyth in the act of dancing in Gypsy Girl (Plate 27, SJ Peploe, by Guy Peploe, Lund Humphries). Peploe has no doubt seen the pastels of Degas and Lautrec in Paris in the previous years, and recognised in the intimate, immediate nature of drawing a means of approaching truth in art.
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Sir Robin Philipson pprsa, ra, hra, rsw, rgi (1916-1992) 31 Threnody Study, 1970 oil on board, 29 x 29 cms signed on verso exhibited Robin Philipson Festival Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1970, cat. 30; Robin Philipson Retrospective, Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh, 1989, cat. 74; Masters of the Edinburgh School, The Scottish Gallery, 2017 provenance Private collection, Edinburgh
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Perpetua Pope (1916-2013) 32 Edge of Field, East Lothian, 2004 oil on canvas, 50 x 60 cms signed lower right exhibited Mixed Summer Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2004 provenance Private collection, Edinburgh
East Lothian is characterised by large flat fields of golden colours in late Summer and harvest time and this painting captures just such a beautiful vista. It is an example of Perpetua Pope’s enduring ability to capture the form and colour of nature and present it as an atmospheric experience. She had a 90th birthday show in 2006 at The Scottish Gallery, returning in 2008 and later in 2011.
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Anne Redpath obe, rsa, ara, rwa (1895-1965) 33 St Monans, Fife, 1952 gouache, watercolour and charcoal, 50.3 x 62.2 cms signed lower right provenance Mercury Gallery, London, 1981
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Geoffrey Squire rsa, rsw, rgi (1923-2012) 34 Composition, c.1989 oil on canvas, 102 x 102 cms signed top right; titled and signed on label verso provenance Private collection, Newcastle
Primarily known as a portrait painter working in oils, acrylic, pastel and watercolour, his works are to be found in worldwide collections and closer to home in Scottish public museums, Universities and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club. Squire was a senior lecturer at the Glasgow School of Art and an influential teacher whose pupils included John Byrne and Steven Conroy. He and his wife discovered Elie in 1971 and this painting has a label marked “The Studio, Elie, Fife.� After retiring he served as a Governor for the Glasgow School of Art and latterly lived in Edinburgh.
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Adam Bruce Thomson, obe, rsa, pprsw (1885-1976) 35 Duncraig and Castle, c.1960 watercolour, 25 x 38.75 cms signed lower right provenance The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2001; Private collection, London
Fellow artist and teacher at Edinburgh College of Art, D.M. Sutherland, rented a house in Wester Ross and it is likely that this is a painting from their time together. William Gillies, although slightly younger than Bruce Thomson and Sutherland, became a lifelong friend. Both had taught Gillies at the College before and after WWI. Here Bruce Thomson looks south west from Plockton towards Duncraig castle.
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SELL WITH US
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The Scottish Gallery offers a comprehensive and discreet service to those seeking advice on valuation or wishing to sell works of art. Sometimes, our advice will be to seek an appraisal with an auctioneer, but the associated costs nowadays make the Gallery a much more attractive option for a potential vendor The outcome of an auction is not always predictable and there can be bad as well as good days ‘on the block’. How much better to have and entirely private and discreet arrangement with The Scottish Gallery who will take every consideration into account and charge considerably less for doing so. Please do get in touch for a free appraisal and advice from Guy Peploe, Tommy Zyw and Christina Jansen, who between them have over sixty years of experience of the market to draw on.
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Published by The Scottish Gallery to coincide with the exhibition modern masters vii 2 – 23 December 2017 Exhibition can be viewed online at www.scottish-gallery.co.uk/modernmasters ISBN: 978 1 910267 69 1 Designed by www.kennethgray.co.uk Photography by John McKenzie Printed by Allander 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.
16 Dundas Street, Edinburgh EH3 6HZ tel 0131 558 1200 email mail@scottish-gallery.co.uk www.scottish-gallery.co.uk
Right: Peter McLaren, Homage to VelĂĄzquez, c.1999 oil on board, 168 x 122 cms (detail), (cat. 24)
modern masters vii
the scottish gallery, edinburgh