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.
There is no shortage of subjects within a few miles of Crawford’s home in Arbroath. He is attracted to the marchlands where sea meets land, where low buildings are scoured by wind and sand, where a lighthouse gives succour to a seafarer’s eye, where the chance order of a row of seagulls or reflection on a cottage window makes us pause, think and wonder. He paints the wilderness of the North Sea, lent significance by the fisherman’s blood that runs in his veins.
Born near Fraserburgh in Aberdeenshire, John Gardiner Crawford attended Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen (1959-64). Winner of many awards. Shows with us in Scotland, in London and also highly successfully in Canada. Work characterised by an almost supra-realist clarity of detail and light. Subject matter concentrates on the working landscape and paraphenalia of Scotland’s east coast fishing (and farming) communites often inspired by arresting and witty juxtapositions of things seen.
William Crozier was born in 1930 at Yoker, Glasgow, of Irish descent. Between 1949 and 1953 he studied at Glasgow School of Art under David Donaldson, Mary and William Armour. On graduating Crozier left Scotland for London, and spent substantial periods of time between 1955 and 1965 living in Europe, principally in Dublin, Paris and Malaga. He taught at the Central School of Art and later at Winchester, from where he retired as Head of Fine Art in 1987 to paint full-time. Vibrant colour, striking, sophisticatedly-simplified design and an idiosyncratic paint texture characterise his landscape work. Crozier held several one man shows at The Scottish Gallery including the Festival of 1989 where he exhibited paintings, prints, monotypes and bronze sculptures. He also had shows with huge success in Ireland, where he spent part of his time. One major exhibition worthy of note was at the SNGMA in 1995.
As a painter he was possessed of a singular and highly personal vision. Several phases of interest took place in his work, Still Life, Portraits, Space Age, Puppets,
Circus and the Electron Microscope brought forth another series of works concerning the visual nature of living cells. The hand of the draughtsman is always very much in evidence, an assured line in absolute control of the formal arrangement.
James Cumming was born in Dunfermline and studied at Edinburgh College of Art. A Travelling Scholarship took him for a year to Callanish on the Isle of Lewis leading to his acclaimed series of Hebridean paintings. He lectured at ECA from 1950 and had his solo shows with The Scottish Gallery in 1962, 1971 and Edinburgh Festivals of 1972 and 1985, as well as a major retrospective memorial exhibition to coincide with publication of a biography of the artist in 1995.
Sir William Gillies is still highly underrated in Modern British terms. Born in Haddington, he trained and taught at Edinburgh College of Art, and did the latter as principal. He was a great influence on many of the next generation of the Edinburgh School. He himself studied in Paris with Andre Lhote and absorbed, variously, the work of Munch, Matisse, Braque and Bonnard. Still life and landscape oils tend to be composed studio pieces of subtle complexity. Watercolours are lyrically observed renderings of the Scottish Borders based on decisive pencil or pen drawings or for larger works, executed alla prima. Gillies had a long and fruitful relationship with The Scottish Gallery which continues in the secondary market.
Lord Haig, son of the Field Marshall, was a prisoner of war in Colditz Castle until his release at the end of the War. The paintings and drawings he made there were exhibited at The Scottish Gallery and he went on to have a distinguished exhibiting career which spanned over 60 years, concluding with his remarkable 90th birthday show in 2008. This must be one of the most consistent relationships between an artist and a gallery in the annals of the commercial art world.
In June 2011 we hosted a memorial show and in March 2018 a major centenary exhibition. The show included work from every decade of his distinguished career post war, and demonstrated his astonishing talent in landscape and subject painting.
John, who graduated from and subsequently taught at Edinburgh College of Art showed with The Scottish Gallery from the late 1950s. His vibrant, expressive oils and watercolours will be familiar to many. He was honoured with a major retrospective at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in 2005. His death in 2008 saddened all who care for the best of Scottish painting.
We are actively looking for artwork by John Houston. If you have any works you are interested in selling please contact The Gallery.
Click here to view prints by this artist.
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 which 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.
Please contact the Gallery if you would like to arrange an appointment to view the works we currently have available for sale.
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.
Born at Loanhead in 1903, Sir William MacTaggart is one of the best-loved and yet least well-understood of Scottish artists. MacTaggart, grandson of the great landscape painter, took his Diploma at the same time as William Gillies and Geissler and followed the same route to Paris. Back in Edinburgh he was a founder member of the 1922 Group (of younger painters), in 1927 he joined the Society of Eight whose members included Colourists Cadell and Peploe and began a consistently successful exhibition career starting at The Scottish Gallery in 1929. A sumptuous painter in oils, he was a prolific draughtsman and preferred pastel to watercolour; instinctively an expressionist and romantic painter his outlook shifted dramatically after the Munch exhibition at the SSA in 1931 (eventually marrying the Norwegian curator Fanny Aavatsmark) and again after studying Roualt in Paris in the early sixties. From his home and studio in Edinburgh’s Drummond Place, some of his best-known works offer a still life, framed by a window, looking east towards Bellvue Church.
James Morrison sadly passed away in 2020. He was a great painter and a huge part of The Scottish Gallery for more than sixty years, the last thirty under an exclusive arrangement. His kindness, generosity and loyalty made him a hugely rewarding friend, and it has been a privilege to represent one of Scotland’s most distinctive and brilliant painters.
Born in Glasgow in 1932, Morrison studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1950-4. 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 (September 2019 – March 2020).
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. A new exhibition Under a Northern Sky opens in The Gallery in April 2024. This show will contain a remarkable collection of Morrison’s Scottish subjects, many drawn from private collections.
Alberto Morrocco was born in Aberdeen to Italian parents in 1917. He attended Gray’s School of Art from the prodigious age of fourteen, tutored by James Cowie and Robert Sivell, and won the Carnegie and Brough travelling scholarships, affording him opportunity to paint and study in France, Italy and Switzerland in the late 1930s. After serving in the army between 1940-46 he devoted his time to painting. His subject matter varied from the domestic interior, landscape, imaginings of Italian life, still life and many commissioned portraits. Combining his talent with abundant energy he became one of the most dominant figures in the Scottish artworld in the second half of the 20th century. David McClure succinctly explained: ‘Alberto painted as an Italian operatic tenor sings, that is with a passionate theatricality and always con brio. Alberto Morrocco was the subject of a centenary exhibition at The Gallery in August 2017.
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.
Born in Kirkcaldy in 1938, Lil Neilson studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art from 1956– 60 where she was taught by Hugh Crawford and Alberto Morrocco. She was awarded a travelling scholarship to France and Italy in 1961–62 and on her return she joined Joan Eardley in Catterline: they had become friends in 1960 at Hospitalfield House and Eardley invited Lil to paint in the studio she and Annette Stephen shared in Catterline. Lil Neilson bought a cottage at No. 2 Southside after Joan Eardley died in August 1963. Her work is texturally rich, low in tone and always true to the place. She liked to work on rough boards or wooden fragments found on the beach. Neilson’s best work is arguably of the salmon nets, cottages and stormy coast which result in part from her inspirational friendship with Joan Eardley but also from the deep connection she had with Catterline and the North East.
Ann Oram was born in London in 1956 she trained at Edinburgh College of Art. After her post-graduate year and Andrew Grant Scholarship to France and Italy, Ann returned to ECA to lecture in the Painting school.
Ann has spent many years living and working abroad and the inspiration she gets from her travels helps to keep her work fresh and vibrant. During the 1980s, as well as being elected to RSW (Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour) she spent many years living in southern Spain. More recently, Ann has returned from a long spell in Vienna, Austria. The Austrian adventure also allowed her to work in Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Italy and Hungary. She now paints full time in Scotland.
Denis Peploe was born in 1914, the second son of the celebrated Scottish Colourist S J Peploe. Denis Peploe enrolled at Edinburgh College of Art at the age of seventeen where he was a contemporary of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham and Margaret Mellis. He won post-diploma scholarships to Paris and Florence and took advantage of opportunity to travel extensively in Spain, Italy and Yugoslavia. He first exhibited at The Scottish Gallery in 1947, to critical acclaim. The Glasgow Herald critic responded to the exhibition, saying he was “an artist born fully armed”; and The Bulletin critic wrote: “the general impression of the exhibition is that we have in Denis Peploe a vital and adventurous painter”. Reviewers never avoided mention of his father, and though one couldn’t confuse their work there were similarities in their approaches: each picture was a response to a particular subject, either intellectual or emotional. His son, Gallery Director, Guy Peploe explains:
‘While he was intimately exposed to the mainstream of European art he remained better defined as an artist who responded directly to his subject, en plein air or in the studio. Here the challenge was a live model, or the intellectual exercise of reinvigorating the still life subject. His work remained free of political or art-world references but was at the same time formed by the century of modernism, the times of unprecedented turmoil and change to which he belonged. His response was to cleave to the idea that art was important, even redemptive and that it could somehow describe a better, or more vital place.’
We would be delighted to hear from you if you are considering selling any works by Denis Peploe.
Sir Robin Philipson had a significant, influential presence on the Scottish Art Scene throughout his lifetime. He served as Head of School of Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art where he diligently maintained the ideals of the post-war Edinburgh School. And, for a whole decade he was President of the Royal Scottish Academy – a period seen as a Golden Age in Scottish Painting. First and foremost, however, he was a practicing painter.
In 1961 Tom Elder Dickinson described Robin Philipson as ‘…original without being pretentious, forceful without being crass, advanced without being outré. . . At his best he is a supreme painter possessed by a mood of peculiar sensitiveness. I can think of no artist today whose understanding and feeling for the qualities of paint are so perfectly matched to his lyrical purpose; he takes the paint into his very imagination and makes it speak with (an) eloquence and fervour.’
Philipson was enormously important to The Scottish Gallery where we held nine exhibitions in his lifetime. He was doubtless the most high-profile Scottish artist of his generation earning countless honours including a knighthood in 1976.
Anne Redpath was a pivotal figure in the group of painters now referred to as The Edinburgh School. She had attended the College of Art, receiving her diploma in 1917. After a lengthy spell in the south of France, Redpath returned to Hawick in the mid-1930s. Her brilliant manipulation of paint, left in delicious peaks or eked across a rough surface with a palette knife, is characteristic of the varied responses to different subjects at different times. In the last years of her output she often favoured a limited palette; perhaps a few brilliant, jewel-like notes enlivening a dark or white composition.
Redpath was an inspirational person and formed many enduring friendships. Her flat in London Street became an artistic salon, celebrated by Sir Robin Philipson’s famous, affectionate group portrait in The Scottish National Portrait Gallery. She had considerable commercial success in her lifetime, enjoying a fruitful, consistent relationship with The Scottish Gallery and then with Reid & Lefevre in London. Since her passing, her reputation has been further enhanced with retrospective and centenary exhibitions resulting in her being established as one of the great figures in 20th Century Scottish Painting.
Duncan Shanks was born in Airdrie in 1937 and studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1955 to 1960. During his Post Diploma year he was awarded a travelling scholarship which enabled a visit to Italy. On his return to Glasgow he joined the Art School staff where he lectured until 1979, before leaving to concentrate on painting full-time. Duncan’s first solo exhibition was hosted by Stirling University in 1974. Since then he has exhibited worldwide with notable public exhibitions including Falling Water at Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh in 1988, Patterns of Flight at Wrexham Art Centre in 1991 and Poetry of Place at the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow, which coincided with the bequest of the entirety of his sketchbooks to their collection in 2013. Shanks is a member of the Royal Scottish Academy, the Royal Glasgow Institute and Royal Society of Painters in Watercolour. He has been the subject of twelve solo exhibitions at The Scottish Gallery; his most recent, The Riverbank, was the Edinburgh Art Festival exhibition for 2022.
Bruce Thomson – or ‘Adam B’, as he was often called – was a painter of great integrity whose long, productive life tells the story of Scottish painting for the first three quarters the twentieth century. Thomson was born in 1885, attending first the Trustees Academy and then the newly established Edinburgh College of Art where he received diplomas in both Drawing and Painting, and Architecture before scholarships took him abroad to Spain and then Paris. He was an accomplished etcher and lithographer and he also sought expertise in the difficult media of pastel and watercolour. By the 1920s, his technique was closest to S.J. Peploe, Cadell and other contemporaries favouring the technique of painting on a gesso ground with an oil-reduced vehicle so the subjects tended to be treated in flat areas of colour.
Thomson served in the Great War before returning to the College where he taught etching, composition and still life to the painting school and colour theory to the architecture students. His association with Edinburgh College of Art continued until his death as, although he retired from teaching in 1950, he continued as an examiner and a Trustee. His links with both the RSA, where he was Treasurer for seven years and the RSW, where he served as President for a further seven years from 1957 were very important to him. He was awarded an OBE in 1963. In 2024 the City Art Centre in Edinburgh is holding a major retrospective of his work, The Quiet Path, his first major exhibition in a public institution, to coincide The Gallery will honour Thomson with an exhibition in September 2024.
Christopher trained at Edinburgh College of Art, graduating with an Honours degree in Drawing & Painting in 1984. He has been a full-time professional artist since his first one-man exhibition in Edinburgh 1987. He is a Past-President of the Society of Scottish Artists, an elected member of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour and an elected member of the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts.
I am inspired by water, sound and nature, being fascinated by the changing colours and shapes reflected in the sea, land and sky. I enjoy looking for the rhythms created in nature and hope to capture the force of the natural elements which dictate so much to the world that we live in. I spend a great deal of time observing the coastal landscape near my Angus home, and however much at times I feel that I should escape from this recurring subject, I am always willingly drawn back by its sheer beauty and magnetism.
Nael Hanna
Nael Hanna was born in 1959 in Neneveh, Northern Iraq. At 19, Hanna entered further education before being drafted into the Army to serve during the Iraq-Iran War. Whilst in military service, he continued to paint and was awarded a scholarship by the Ministry of Education, Baghdad, which
took his studies to Britain. In 1983, he undertook art and language courses in Southampton before being awarded a scholarship to study Fine Art at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee.
In 1987, Hanna won a further scholarship to study at Hospitalfield Summer School, Arbroath, where he developed an enduring passion for the northeast of Scotland, particularly Angus and the Kincardineshire coastline. After graduating, he travelled to Florence to study before returning to the rural Angus countryside where he made his home and studio. He has also been a lecturer at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art. Today, Hanna paints full-time and is inspired by a deep love of nature and the wild Scottish landscape.
The soaring skies, building seas, bleached grasses against leaden hills, rusting tin roofs, brilliant greens of early summer and the roaring luminous surf at dusk in winter never lose their power and keep me reaching for my brushes.
Caroline was born in Edinburgh in 1964, the family then moving to the Orkney Isles in 1968 where her mother taught Latin and her father built boats. After gaining an Honours Degree in History of Art at Aberdeen University (1982 – 6) Caroline moved to Edinburgh and worked as an archaeological fieldworker in North Uist, Iona and Shetland and as a conservation volunteer.
Returning to Orkney, Caroline began painting in 1994. Although she had no formal training in painting beyond school art classes, her paintings soon began to sell. After relocating to the Scottish Borders Caroline had her first solo show at the Mainhill Gallery in Ancrum in 1997. The very same year Caroline also had her first painting, Donald’s Bible accepted into the RSA.
During these formative years Caroline was prolific, working in acrylics on large pieces, there was an out-pouring of imagery: principally elaborate, chintzy, almost glowing still-lifes, the Belted Galloway cattle on the Eildon Hills where she lived and more sombre land and sea scapes, redolent of her childhood in the Orkneys.
The millennium saw Caroline moving to Argyll where she married and had two sons: the eldest Donald was born 5 days before the opening of her solo show: “Under Western Skies” with John Martin of London in Mayfair in 2004.
Now working in oils, Caroline continues to paint & exhibit full-time, with work in Edinburgh (The Open -Eye) , Glasgow (The Billcliffe Gallery) and various west coast galleries.
In endless pursuit of conveying the subtle vibrancy of the Atlantic fringe where she walks and kayaks, occasional forays into figure-painting and always the chintzy still-lifes, her work continues to develop and endure.
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Jamieson’s distinctive paintings and drawings reflect a love of nature and close observation, finding inspiration in the things she saw around her, painting still lifes, landscapes and natural objects such as shells, wood and stones using mixed media.
Florence Jamieson is considered one of the Glasgow Girls. Born in Glasgow in 1925 to a medical family with farming roots, she was evacuated to Morar in Lochaber during WWII where she attended high school for a few years before becoming head girl of St Trinnean’s in Galashiels. She began attending evening classes at the Glasgow School of Art. She met and married the artist Robert Sinclair Thomson, ARSA (1915–1983) and they set up a commercial pottery studio in their Glasgow home; the first of its kind in Scotland and now referred to as the Clouston Street Pottery. In the 1950s Florence built a successful exhibiting career, with solo exhibitions at The Scottish Gallery in 1958 and 1961. Working in Glasgow, she was a friend and contemporary to Joan Eardley and Margot Sandeman. In 2014, she was one of four remaining living artists represented in the Glasgow Girls Kirkcudbright exhibition. Her work is represented in various public collections including Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum, the Hunterian Art Gallery, The Scottish Arts Council Collection, Gracefield Arts Centre in Dumfries, and the Scottish Fisheries Museum in Anstruther.
Her training as a geographer, allowed her to use her understanding of land formation, the delicate balance of the seasons and explore the interaction between Man and the environment.
Sheila Macnab Macmillan was born in Glasgow in 1928. She attained a degree in Geography at Glasgow University and went on to train as a teacher. Her painting talent was encouraged by her artist uncle Iain Macnab RE ROI (1890–1967) who persuaded Sheila to come to London and train under him. Iain Macnab had been Principal at Heatherley’s Art School (1925–1940) and became the founding Principal of the Grosvenor School of Modern Art. Sheila’s London influences and Glasgow School foundations evolved into a distinctive and individual style. She usually worked en plein air and her work is semi abstract.
John Piper was born in 1903 in Epsom Surrey and was an English painter, printmaker and designer. He is regarded as one of the early neo-romantic painters and a popular post-war artist. His practice encompassed the British landscape, especially churches and monuments. He lived at Fawley Bottom in Buckinghamshire near Henley-on-Thames. He was educated at Richmond School of Art and the Royal College of Art, London. Piper was an official war artist in World War II between 1940–1942, and his wartime depictions of bomb-damaged churches and landmarks, most notably those of Coventry Cathedral, made him a household name and led to his work being acquired by many public collections.
Annette Stephen’s watercolours are lively and expressive, with a strong emphasis on light and vibrant colour. Her style was uncomplicated, and she produced assured work which captured both mood and place with extraordinary accuracy. Her paintings depicted subjects close to the artist’s heart, reminding us of her fondness for east coast fishing boats and harbours, the landscape of Kincardineshire and Deeside, and particularly of her home village, Catterline.
Annette Stephen was born in Aberdeen and went on to study at Edinburgh College of Art, before moving to France preceding the outbreak of WWII. After returning home, she taught art in the Aberdeen area before buying the ruined customs watchhouse perched on the clifftop at Catterline, near Stonehaven in 1950. The Watchie became her studio and allowed her the freedom to practise painting. Although born in Aberdeen and raised in Stonehaven, she lived in the tiny neighbouring, village of Catterline virtually all her adult life, after marrying Jim Stephen, a local fisherman.
David Toner was born in Glasgow. He was educated in both Glasgow and Changi, Singapore, and studied at the Glasgow School of Art under David Donaldson and James Robertson in the mid-1970s. He specialises in mixed media. His work is mainly characterised by the depiction of buildings and October Evening is a classic example of his work which was acquired from his solo exhibition at The Scottish Gallery in 1985.
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