Art in modern Scotland

There was a growing interest in forms of Modernism, with William Johnstone helping to develop the concept of a Scottish Renaissance.

In the post-war period, major artists, including John Bellany and Alexander Moffat, pursued a strand of "Scottish realism".

In the twenty-first century Scotland has continued to produce influential artists such as Douglas Gordon and Susan Philipsz.

The name was retrospectively given to John Duncan Fergusson (1874–1961), Francis Cadell (1883–1937), Samuel Peploe (1871–1935) and Leslie Hunter (1877–1931).

All had spent time in France between 1900 and 1914[3] and looked for inspiration to Paris, particularly to the Fauvists, such as Monet, Matisse and Cézanne, whose techniques they combined with the painting traditions of Scotland.

[12] The philosopher, sociologist, town planner and writer Patrick Geddes (1854–1932) coined the phrase Scottish Renaissance in his magazine Evergreen.

[13] Stanley Cursiter was influenced by the Celtic revival, post-impressionism and Futurism, as can be seen in his Rain on Princes Street (1913) and Regatta (1913).

After the First World War he moved to London with his wife, fellow student Agnes Miller Parker (1895–1980), where he joined the same circles as Fergusson, vorticist Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957) and nationalist composer Francis George Scott.

He studied cubism, surrealism and was introduced to new American art by his wife the sculptor Flora Macdonald.

They focused on landscape, as can be seen in McIntosh Patrick's Traquair House (1938) and more overtly Baird's The Birth of Venus (1934).

Leading figures in the field in the inter-war period included William Wilson (1905–72) and Ian Fleming (1906–94).

[20] The longest surviving member of the Scottish Colourists, Fergusson, returned to Scotland from France in 1939, just before the outbreak of the Second World War, where he became a leading figure of a group of Glasgow artists.

[21] The group had no single style, but shared left-wing tendencies and included artists influenced by trends in contemporary continental art.

Expressionism can also be seen as an influence on the work of Millie Frood (1900–88), which included vivid colours and brushwork reminiscent of Van Gogh.

Frood's urban scenes contain an element of social commentary and realism, influenced by Polish refugees Josef Herman (1911–2000), who was resident in Glasgow between 1940 and 1943[22] and Jankel Adler (1895–1949) who was in Kirkudbright from 1941 to 1943.

[23] Also influenced by Herman were husband and wife Tom MacDonald (1914–85) and Bet Low (1924–2007), who with painter William Senior (b.

Their work included industrial and urban landscapes such as MacDonald's Transport Depot (1944–45) and Bet Low's Blochairn Steelworks (c.

[22] In the early twentieth century notable photographic work in Scotland included that of visiting artists, such as Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882–1966), whose produced illustrations for the work of Robert Louis Stevenson and Paul Strand (1890–1976), as well as atmospheric depictions of Hebridean landscapes.

[24] Notable post-war artists included Robin Philipson (1916–1992), who was influenced by the Colourists, but also pop art and neo-romanticism.

[27] Paris continued to be a major destination for Scottish artists, with William Gear (1916–97) and Stephen Gilbert (1910–2007) encountering the linear abstract painting of the avant-garde COBRA group there in the 1940s.

[14] Ian Hamilton Finlay's (1925–2006) work explored the boundaries between sculpture, print making, literature (especially concrete poetry) and landscape architecture.

Campbell often employed figures reminiscent of characters from 1930s novels confronted by the disorder and confusion of the real world, as in his Young Men in Search of Simplicity (1989).

[7] In contrast sculptor and artist Eduardo Paolozzi (1924–2005) was a pioneer of pop art and in a varied career produced many works that examined juxtapositions between fantasy and the modern world.

[12] New sources of direct government arts funding encouraged greater experimentation among a new generation of sculptors that incorporated aspects of modernism, such as Jake Harvey (b.

He is best known for his civic monuments, including 10 feet (3.0 m) bronze statues of the philosophers David Hume and Adam Smith, on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh.

1959), whose work usually consists of figure compositions, with his most famous painting The Singing Butler (1992), often cited as the best selling print in Britain.

[42] A group that emerged from Glasgow School of Art in the early 1990s, and later described as "The Irascibles", includes Roderick Buchanan (b.

[24]Scotland has had schools of art since the eighteenth century, many of which continue to exist in different forms today.

Edinburgh College of Art developed from the Trustees Academy, founded in the city in 1760, and was established in its current form in 1907.