framed dimensions: 59 x 113 cm
signed and dated lower centre
EXHIBITED
Under a Northern Sky, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2024, cat. 15; Festival Exhibition, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 1999
Snowstorms over the Grampians, Montrose Basin would have been painted out of doors, not too far from home. This has been painted using the fast medium of gouache and watercolour. Morrison developed a particular technique which required immense skill and sureness of vision – this allowed him to record with speed, his medium allowing a wide range of brushmarks to express and record what was happening directly in front of him – the smooth calm of still water, the gathering clouds, the wide stretch of the Grampian landscape beyond which is about to be immersed under a blanket of snow.
About James Morrison
Born in Glasgow in 1932, James Morrison was one of the most significant Scottish landscape painters of the post-war period. He studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1950–54, developing the rigorous observational practice and draughtsmanship that would underpin a career spanning more than six decades. While his early paintings focused on the streets and tenements of Glasgow, his move to Catterline in 1958 marked a decisive shift towards landscape and established many of the themes that would define his mature work.
