This June, The Scottish Gallery celebrates 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, presents work from the entirety of his artistic career which spanned seven decades.

Morrison’s distinctive technique and vision made him one of the most recognisable Scottish artists of the last fifty years, credited with helping to reinvigorate landscape painting in Scotland. Our exhibition will also be supported by the family archive, making this a very personal insight into the life and work of James Morrison.

Over an eminent career, landscape painter James Morrison enjoyed a remarkable and lengthy association with The Scottish Gallery from 1959 to 2020. The successful relationship between artist and gallery allowed Morrison to retire from teaching at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee, in 1987, and concentrate on painting full-time.

This exhibition will coincide with the release of two new publications. Land and Landscape is a revised and updated monograph written by the artist’s son professor John Morrison and published by Sansom & Co. Click here to purchase Land and Landscape.

The second is a lavishly illustrated Scottish Gallery publication, featuring over 100 works, celebrating the artist’s long and influential exhibiting career. Click here to purchase The Gallery catalogue.

James Morrison

Born: 1932

Place of Birth: Glasgow

Died: 2020

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.

James Morrison | A Celebration 1932-2020

James Morrison

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