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framed dimensions: 96.5 x 83.5 cm
signed lower right; title inscribed on label verso
PROVENANCE:
Glasgow School of Art; Private collection, Edinburgh
In this painting, James Robertson delivers a wild and uninhibited vision of one of Scotland’s most storied landscapes. Painted in gouache with sweeping gesture and bold intent, Glencoe breaks free from romanticised traditions to embrace an expressive, modern language of mark and mood. Robertson’s Glencoe is a place in motion, filled with the turbulence of weather, land, and memory, captured in slashes of pigment and surging forms. While the grandeur of the subject evokes the legacy of Scotland’s great landscape painters, from Horatio McCulloch and Alexander Nasmyth to the theatrical expanses of William McTaggart, Robertson’s approach is wholly contemporary. His palette is earthy and urgent; his brushwork charged with emotion and abstraction. Born in 1931, James Robertson is part of a vital post-war generation of Scottish painters who brought modernism and expressionism to the fore. His long tenure as a teacher at the Glasgow School of Art cemented his influence, and he became a pivotal figure in shaping the visual language of younger Scottish artists. Known for his rigour, intellect, and unflinching commitment to the act of painting, Robertson encouraged his students to approach landscape not as motif, but as subjective terrain, something to be wrestled with, responded to, and reinterpreted.
James Downie Robertson was born in Cowdenbeath in 1931. He studied at the Glasgow School of Art under David Donaldson and Joan Eardley, graduating in 1953. In 1959 he joined the staff of the Glasgow School of Art, ultimately becoming a Senior Lecturer and temporary Head of Drawing and Painting, and had a major impact on the students he taught, before his retirement in 1996.
Robertson was predominantly a landscape painter, focusing his attention on on capturing the moods and feel of the places he painted. His work is held in many private and public collection worldwide, including that of HRH Prince Phillip and HRH The Queen Mother.
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