This December our Modern Masters series of exhibitions continues with this offering and once again we can cover 125 years with individual works which speak to the richness of talent in the Scottish school in the modern period. The exhibition coincides with the opening of A New Era: Scottish Modern Art 1900-1950 at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, which offers an alternative version of the history of Scottish art from 1900 and includes works by William McCance and William Crosbie, examples of which can be seen in our exhibition.

John Bellany

Born: 1942

Place of Birth: Port Seton

Died: 2013

John Bellany was born in 1942 in the Scottish fishing village of Port Seton. He attended Edinburgh College of Art from 1960 to 1965 and the Royal College of Art from 1965 to 1968. His early work in Northern European Expressionist-Realist tradition allied to personal symbolism and iconography, often drawn from his family’s sea-faring past.

His work is often highly challenging and at times autobiographical as epitomised by a series of brutally unflinching self portraits produced in hospital following a liver transplant in the 1980s. He is considered an artist of international standing, with works in both MOMA and Metropolitan Museum in New York as well as the Tate Gallery, London. He was elected to the Royal Academicians in 1991. In 2016 the National Galleries Scotland hosted a major retrospective of his work to mark the artist’s 70th birthday.

Please click here to view prints by the artist

Elizabeth Blackadder

Born: 1931

Place of Birth: Falkirk

Died: 2021

Elizabeth Blackadder was born in Falkirk in 1931. She studied at ECA from 1949 until 1954 under Robert Henderson Blyth and William Gillies inter alia and earned travelling scholarships to southern Europe and Italy. In 1956 she married artist and fellow Scottish Gallery exhibitor John Houston and began teaching in Edinburgh. She taught at Edinburgh College of Art from 1962 until her retirement in 1986. One of Scotland’s greatest artists, she also garners recognition and success in London. In 1972, Blackadder was elected member of the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh and in 1976 she gained entry at the Royal Academy, London – the first woman to be elected into both institutions. In 2001, Elizabeth was made the first female Artist Limner by HRH The Queen, a position within the Royal Household unique to Scotland. One decade later, in 2011 (the year she turned 80) a major retrospective of her work opened at the National Galleries of Scotland.

To view prints by Elizabeth Blackadder please click here

EA Hornel

Born: 1864

Place of Birth: Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, Australia

Died: 1933

Shortly after he was born his parents left Australia for Kirkcudbright in Scotland, where he remained for most of his life. He studied for three years at Edinburgh College of Art, and for two years at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp under Professor Verlat. Returning to Scotland in 1885, he met George Henry and associated himself with the Glasgow Boys.

Hornel and Henry collaborated on many projects and in the early 1890’s the two artists spent a year and a half in Japan, where Hornel learned much about decorative design and spacing. Towards the close of the decade, his colours preserving their glow and richness, became more refined and more atmospheric, and his drawing more naturalistic, combining sensuous appeal with emotional and poetic significance. In 1901 he declined election to the Royal Scottish Academy. A member of Glasgow Art Club, Hornel exhibited in the club’s annual exhibitions.

In 1901 he acquired Broughton House, a townhouse and garden in Kirkcudbright, which was his main residence for the rest of his life with his sister Elizabeth. There he made several modifications to the house and designed garden taking inspiration from his travels in Japan. he also made an addition of a gallery for his paintings. On his death the house and library were donated and Broughton House is now administered by the National Trust for Scotland.

William McCance

Born: 1894

Place of Birth: Cambuslang

Died: 1970

Born in 1894 in Cambuslang, Glasgow, William McCance studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1911 to 1915. He was a conscientious objector in World War I and was imprisoned. Following his discharge in 1920, McCance moved to London, where he was employed as a teacher and art critic writing for The Spectator. In the early 1920s, McCance developed a near abstract style, indebted to the work of Wyndham Lewis and the Vorticists, one of the very few Scottish artists to follow such a path. From 1930 to 1933 he worked as controller of the celebrated Gregynog Press in Wales. A collection of his paintings is held in the National Galleries of Scotland.

John Maclauchlan Milne

Born: 1885

Place of Birth: Edinburgh

Died: 1957

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.

Alberto Morrocco

Born: 1917

Place of Birth: Aberdeen

Died: 1998

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 20^th 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.

Geoffrey Squire

Born: 1923

Place of Birth: Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire

Died: 2012

Goeffrey Squire,was a celebrated portrait artist and lecturer at the Glasgow School of Art. He won a scholarship to Leeds School of Art, the first of many that saw him study at the Ruskin School of Art at Oxford University and then Slade School of Fine Art at University College London.

His had an innate enthusiasm for his craft and one that helped to nurture some of the country’s most celebrated artistic talent – John Byrne, Alison Watt and Stephen Conroy – through an academic career spent entirely at Glasgow School of Art. Meanwhile he continued his private work, primarily as a portrait painter. Though he was an incredibly versatile artist, having originally studied sculpture, he worked mainly in oil and latterly acrylic. Among those who sat for him was Sir Malcolm Innes of Edingight, formerly the Lord Lyon, and Mr Squire recorded a coat of arms at Lyon Office. They featured a swan and a rose reflecting his Yorkshire roots along with the motto Natura Potentior Ars – Nature’s Art is Better.

Modern Masters VII