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framed dimensions: 84 x 73.5 cm
signed and dated lower left
While most of his contemporaries finishing their Diplomas at a Scottish Art College sought a post-diploma placement in Italy or France, James Cumming spent a year on the Isle of Lewis after completing his studies, interrupted by War service, at Edinburgh. In this time, he developed a highly personal style to depict island life, in winter confined to ill-lit cottages and pubs. L’Entracte, the interval, sees the band perhaps about to resume their set, a stout figure on the right in Glengarry and with an accordion slung over his neck. To his left a second figure is more difficult to read, perhaps seated, Braque violin over his shoulder, cigarette in his mouth as he speaks to someone outside the frame of the setting. The painting functions as entirely abstract, but Cumming has included enough real observation to take us to the smoky venue, half the village in attendance, the long nights and howling winds outside forgotten.
As a painter, James Cumming was possessed of a singular and highly personal vision. Several phases of interest took place in his work, Still Life, Portraits, Space Age, Puppets, Circus and the Electron Microscope brought forth another series of works concerning the visual nature of living cells. The hand of the draughtsman is always very much in evidence, an assured line in absolute control of the formal arrangement. James Cumming was born in Dunfermline and studied at Edinburgh College of Art. In the early 1950s a travelling scholarship took him for a year to Callanish on the Isle of Lewis leading to his acclaimed series of Hebridean paintings. His considered and meticulously wrought style became concerned with geometry, structure, and abstraction. He also began to lecture on a regular basis at Edinburgh College of Art from 1950. Whilst artist in residence at Hospitalfield in Arbroath in 1960-61, his work and language in abstraction had a significant impact on John Byrne and Alexander Fraser. His most distinctive work of the 1960s is rich in colour, where it is employed, but essentially tonal. His later career was more concerned with natural and cellular forms, vibrant colour and a more prominent geometry.
The Scottish Gallery exhibitions: 1962, 1971, 1972 (Festival), 1985 (Festival), 1995 (Memorial)
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