Scottish Women Artists – 250 Years of Challenging Perception opens at Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh on the 28 July and continues until the 4 January 2024.

This exhibition celebrates the work of women artists who have challenged and shaped the contemporary art scene in Scotland. In an era when women lead Scotland’s government, galleries and art schools, it is easy to forget the prejudices and barriers their predecessors have faced.

Throughout the twentieth century, Dovecot Studios and The Scottish Gallery have represented exceptional women artists and created routes to market for their work. Dovecot presents a new series of commemorative tapestries celebrating the life and work of Dame Elizabeth Blackadder (1931–2021). These latest tapestries are shown in the context of historic work by fellow mid-twentieth century masters Anne Redpath, Wilhelmina Barns Graham, Joan Eardley and Pat Douthwaite.

This display coincides with our own Wonder Women series of exhibitions on display at The Scottish Gallery which provides an important contemporary opportunity to acquire work and address the historic imbalance in both public and private collections.

Please note this exhibition is taking place at Dovecot Studios. You can read more here and plan your visit here.

Pat Douthwaite

Born: 1934

Place of Birth: Glasgow

Died: 2002

Pat Douthwaite was born in Glasgow in 1934. She studied mime and modern dance with Margaret Morris, whose husband, J. D. Fergusson, encouraged her to paint. This important influence apart, she was self-taught. In 1958 Pat lived in Suffolk with a group of painters, including the Scots Colquhoun and MacBryde, and William Crozier. From 1959-1988 she travelled widely, to N. Africa, India, Peru, Venezuela, Europe, U.S.A., Kashmir, Nepal, Pakistan, Ecuador and from 1969 lived part of the time in Majorca, and more recently in various properties across the Scottish Borders. She died in July 2002 in Broughty Ferry.

Gallery Director Guy Peploe knew the artist well and is the recognised expert on her work. He published a monograph on the artist in 2016.

Joan Eardley

Born: 1921

Place of Birth: Sussex

Died: 1963

There is an enduring fascination for Joan Eardley far beyond her unconventional life and early death at the age of forty-two. Born in 1921 in Sussex, Joan Eardley’s family moved to Scotland in 1939 and a year later she joined the Glasgow School of Art. She found subjects in the shipyards of Clydebank and the slums of Townhead, at first the run-down tenements and buildings and later the children and streetlife around Rottenrow where the character of the people and the place became the vital subject of her work. Her art education was finished with scholarship visits to Paris and the cities of Renaissance Italy and back in Scotland she ventured with her art school friends to Arran and back to the south of France. By the fifties, Joan Eardley divided her life between her studio in Townhead and the fishing village of Catterline, a place she had discovered in the North East of Scotland. Eardley felt at ease in these two contrasting localities and over the succeeding decade, as if by accident, she created an epic vision of the world from no more than two streets and one small fishing hamlet. The slums of Townhead are no more, the harsh realities memorialised by the honesty of her vision, the spirit of the people invested in its children captured, enduring like no other example in the history of art. Catterline remains unchanged and the village is inevitably a place of pilgrimage for the thousands who admire the artist’s deep-felt engagement with nature on the Kincardineshire coast. The Scottish Gallery held its first Joan Eardley exhibition in 1961 and later her memorial in 1964.

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham

Born: 1912

Place of Birth: St Andrews

Died: 2004

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham was born in St Andrews and attended Edinburgh College of Art 1932-7. She moved to St Ives in the 1940s where she joined the artist societies of Newlyn, St Ives and Penwith and became friends with Nicholson, Hepworth and Gabo. A trip to Switzerland in 1948 inspired her Glacier Series and further significant travel to Italy in 1955 highlighted her strong draughtsmanship. She divided her time between St Andrews and St Ives from 1960 and produced various significant series of abstract works from the geometric to the more organic. Later in her life her work took on a colourful, painterly flourishing in tandem with magnificent printmaking with Graal Press, consolidating her place as a major Modern British figure.

Please click here to view paintings by the artist.

Anne Redpath

Born: 1895

Died: 1965

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.

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

Scottish Women Artists: 250 Years of Challenging Perception | Dovecot Studios

Pat Douthwaite

Joan Eardley

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham

Anne Redpath

Elizabeth Blackadder

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