Loch Melfort, c.1970

Robert Scott Irvine known as ‘Otto’ to everyone, grew up in Morningside Drive, Edinburgh and went to school at George Heriot’s from 1916 until 1922. Irvine gained a scholarship to Edinburgh College of Art aged 16 in 1922 and graduated in 1927. He studied painting under Henry Lintott, David Alison, David M. Sutherland, Adam Bruce Thomson and John Duncan. He was the first Edinburgh College of Art graduate from 1927 to be elected to the RSW (Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour), one of his proudest achievements. He exhibited with the sculptor Jacob Epstein at the 19th Autumn Salon at the Grand Palais, Paris, and went on to exhibit in Toronto, Canada in 1934 with the RSW touring exhibition. Further exhibitions were held at the Salon in Paris and New York in the 1930s, and at the Royal Academy in London in 1940.

Robert Scott Irvine joined The Royal Army Service Corps in the spring of 1941 at the age of 35. He served as a 1st Lieutenant in Port Said in the Middle East where he worked as a Liaison Officer with the Royal Engineers and the 8th Army. After the war he returned to Edinburgh to paint and taught art at George Watson’s College from 1945 until 1971. He exhibited at galleries in Aberdeen, Arran, Dundee, Dunfermline, Edinburgh and Glasgow.