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signed lower right
Summer Bouquet is a confident and expressive still life. Likely painted for the Royal Scottish Academy’s Annual Exhibition. This work is a symphony of mauve, yellow, and blue, where yellow bearded irises, phlox, and summer blooms overflow from a central vase, cascading across a patterned white tablecloth. The canvas is filled to its edges with floral exuberance.
The decorated vase, heavily outlined, serves as the visual anchor, rooting the loose, lyrical arrangement and drawing the viewer’s gaze back through the movement of petals and stems. The ribbon, almost theatrical in its flow, adds structure. Beaton’s bright green signature, tucked in
the lower right, becomes more than a name, it is a final flourish, the confident mark of a painter satisfied with her design. This is an artist in full command of her palette, her vision, and her craft.
Penelope Beaton was a formidable and much-admired figure in 20th century Scottish art, and a central figure in the Edinburgh School. She enjoyed an influential teaching career at Edinburgh College of Art, where she helped shape the direction of modern Scottish painting. Beaton’s approach to painting was marked by a forceful clarity of composition, expressive handling of colour, and a sharp sensitivity to the rhythms of landscape and still life. A close contemporary of William Gillies, with whom she shared both stylistic traits and teaching responsibilities, Beaton developed a strong personal voice that combined modernism with direct observation.
Elected an Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1957, she remained active in exhibiting throughout her life, contributing over a hundred works to RSA exhibitions alone. Her watercolours of Iona are known for their lyrical insight and compositional restraint. After her death in 1963, Beaton was remembered as a teacher of immense dedication and a painter of distinction. Her legacy continues in both the aesthetic lineage of the Edinburgh School and the lives of the many students and artists she passionately supported.
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