Sunset over the Sea, 1970-71

John Houston (1930–2008) was one of the great painterly forces in modern Scottish art, celebrated for a bold, expressive approach to landscape that combined instinctive draughtsmanship with a profound emotional response to place. Born and brought up in Buckhaven, Fife, Houston’s early life was shaped by the coastal landscape of the East Neuk, where changing weather, estuary light and the rhythms of rural and fishing life formed the foundations of his visual imagination. Horse fairs, football crowds, harbours, fields and shoreline villages would continue to surface throughout his career, transformed through paint into works of immense vitality and atmosphere.