A Collector’s Eye | Vintage Film Blog

A Collector’s Eye marks the beginning of a new series accentuating the vital relationship between gallery, artist and collector. This exhibition brings together two private collections, paintings belonging to the late Professor Donald Eccleston and former director of The Scottish Gallery, David Lockhart. Both collections are a celebration of lives well lived, surrounded by art which gave so much pleasure, each a way-marker in life, of time, place, and people. Discover more about individual artists below in our vintage film blog.

Born in Rothesay in 1877, George Leslie Hunter emigrated to California in 1892 where his father bought a farm. He spent all his time drawing and when his family came back in 1900 he stayed to become part of the Bohemian lifestyle of San Francisco. He earned money by acquiring illustration work for newspapers and magazines. He went to New York with friends and then on to Paris in 1904, working in each city for a few months. Back in San Francisco he lost everything in the 1906 earthquake and shortly thereafter returned permanently to Scotland. He had his first solo exhibition with Alexander Reid in Glasgow in 1915, an association that continued until his death in 1931. From 1923 he exhibited with Peploe and Cadell as the Three Scottish Colourists, and spent much of the twenties in France, often subsidised by Reid and a coterie of dedicated collectors, including T.J. Honeyman who wrote his biography after his untimely death at the age of fifty-four. He also showed regularly with The Scottish Gallery and we have continued to deal actively in his work in recent years.

Watch Michael Palin alongside Gallery Director Guy Peploe, as he explores the lives and paintings of four Scottish artists known as the Colourists: John Duncan Fergusson, George Leslie Hunter, Samuel John Peploe and Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell. First broadcast in 2009.

David McClure was born in Lochwinnoch in 1926. He enrolled at Edinburgh College of Art in 1947, from which point he was to be associated with a group of highly regarded young painters including James Cumming, William Baillie, John Houston, Elizabeth Blackadder and David Michie.

McClure’s work sits solidly within that well-documented tradition of 20th century Scottish Painting characterised by strength of colour and confident handling of paint. As a bold and inspired colourist McClure had few equals. He is best known for his colourful, painterly still lifes and flower-pieces, his subject pictures of children’s dreams or religious figures and later his nudes and studio interiors. Landscapes too were a significant part of his work, inspired by harbour scenes from the East Neuk of Fife or the East Coast fishing villages above Dundee. In later years he produced lyrical coastal landscapes of north-west Sutherland.

Duncan Shanks was born in Airdrie and studied at Glasgow School of Art where he later lectured. He draws his subjects and inspiration from the countryside around his home in the Clyde Valley. Strong colour and richly applied paint chart the changing seasons and the forces imminent in nature. His works also examine the perennial tasks and practices of traditional rural life.

Born in Glasgow in 1932, Morrison studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1950-54. After a brief spell in Catterline in the early 1960s, Morrison settled in Montrose in 1965, joining the staff of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee the same year. He resigned from Duncan of Jordanstone in 1987 to paint full-time and since then his work has been exclusively available through The Scottish Gallery. Whole-heartedly a landscape painter, his main working areas are the lush, highly-managed farmland around his home in Angus and the rugged wildness of west coast Assynt. As well as Scotland, Morrison has had extended painting trips to Africa, France, and Canada, including three trips to the Arctic in the 1990s. A suite of his Arctic paintings were recently acquired and exhibited as part of a major exhibition, Among the Polar Ice at The McManus in Dundee.

James Morrison first exhibited with The Gallery in the fifties. In June 2022, The Scottish Gallery celebrated the life and work of one of Scotland’s most-loved artists in a major retrospective show James Morrison A Celebration 1932 – 2020. The exhibition, held two years after his death, presented work from the entirety of his artistic career which spanned seven decades. In the clip below, David Lockahrt appears next to James Morrison explaining his familiarity and connection with the west coast of Scotland.

Milne is often referred to as the fifth Scottish Colourist and indeed his work and life have strong connections to his better known contemporaries. It is his French work, however, which makes the clear link with Peploe, Hunter and Cadell. He married a Frenchwoman and lived for some time at Lavardin (Loir et Cher) famed as one of the most beautiful villages in France but it is his Paris scenes made in the twenties and his many visits to the south which produced his best paintings. He was in Cassis in 1924 at the same time as Peploe and Cadell and travelled along the coast as far as St Raphael. Like Fergusson he enjoyed a long, productive life and his many paintings of the hills and harbours of Arran, where he moved at the outset of the War are a distinct and important legacy. In the film below, Maurice Millar looks at the artist’s life and career in a presentation made for the Arran Art Heritage Trust.

A Collector’s Eye runs from the 4 – 27 May and you can view the exhibition online here.