William Gillies - Landscapes and Still Lifes

As it's the half term break, I took a trip through to Edinburgh to catch up on a few shows.  Top of the list was the William Gillies exhibition at the Scottish Gallery.

Gillies was born in Haddington in 1898, was one of the Scottish Gallery's major artists, but remains rather under-rated.  His work is quiet and subtle, with reflective interiors, views from windows, or locally Scottish landscape scenes done from the side of the road where he could park his car.  He was a well-loved teacher, and taught Elizabeth Blackadder.

This is a sepia ink drawing of Trees near Temple (Temple being Gillies's home from 1939 until his death in 1973).

It's dense, because you are glimpsing houses through tree trunks and branches, but there is a lovely calmness to it. There's also a mischevious sense there, as you're given a playful little glimpse of the buildings.  The trunks of the trees are left blank, giving a lovely vertical airiness to the piece, balancing the complexly busy horizontal band.

On the Meldons Road, painted in 1953, is a lovely subtle pastel-coloured watercolour.

It's not a painting that shouts; it doesn't depict a dramatic mountain or an extraorinary moment.  The hillside rolls up towards the sky with great familiarity, like a comfortable bedspread, and the wall at the bottom tells you that everything is very safe and enclosed and ordered.  It's a very truthful and contented piece of painting, both a recognisably real Scottish place and also about pattern-making on a 2-dimensional surface.

I also loved this little watercolour of Rockcliffe.

It's just such a happy painting, with the shape of the boats mimicing both the clouds and the waves, as if everything is just right together.  The warm yellows and earthy oranges of the hillside complement the strong blues of the sea and sky, but the blue tones are also carried through the hillside, so that everything is harmonised.  The line of the land meeting the sea is squint, making it feel natural and organic, otherwise there would be a harsh line chopping the composition in half.

Also on show was this lithograph, Cottage Window, of 1946, produced for the Arts Council.

I was very interested in this, because I have one!  I got mine many years ago at the Barras.  The example in the Scottish Gallery has faded somewhat, with rather sludgy colours.  The one I have has much brighter pinks and oranges.  I asked what the edition size was of the lithograph, but unfortunately they were unable to tell me.

I love Gillies's paintings and drawings, especially the landscapes.  They're just very, very Scottish.  I think he's really under-rated, and I'd love to own one - apparently the Scottish Gallery used to have a bargain bin of his watercolours which you could pick up for 20 guineas - sadly, no longer!

The show continues at the Scottish Gallery until 3rd March. For more information, and to see all the work in the exhibition, go to the Scottish Gallery website.

Elizabeth Blackadder Exhibition

I was over in Edinburgh during the Christmas break, and caught the end of the Elizabeth Blackadder exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy.  The show marks Blackadder's 80th birthday, and a very nice lady outside the exhibition handed me some free tickets, which was lovely.

I not a massive fan of Blackadder's work, which I find quite unengaging, but the space of the Academy is a spectacular one for a solo artist to fill, as was shown to great effect with the recent Joan Eardley retrospective.  Plus I am all for appreciating the work of women in Scottish art!

The first room showed early work, with which I was unfamiliar, and I was very taken indeed with the energetic mark-making and wonderfully evocative 1950s and 60s colourways of the prints and drawings.  They reminded me very much of William Gillies - not surprising, since he was Blackadder's teacher.  Two travelling scholarships to Italy yielded some beautiful pen and ink drawings of Italian hill-top towns, again full of a lovely variety of marks and great energy.

 Wall Town 1962 by Elizabeth Blackadder (ink & watercolour)

However I wasn't so taken with the later work, with cats, watercolours of orchids, and saturated flat pattern-making colour still lifes of kimonos and collected objects.

 Chinese Still Life with Arum Lillies by Elizabeth Blackadder 1982, Oil on canvas

The oils are certainly quite punchy at a distance, especially in the setting of the RSA, but didn't really convey anything emotionally to me.  Closer observation of these or of the botanical watercolours, which initially look so intricate, don't reveal exciting lines or astonishing passages of painting.  The cats, which could look very saccharine, are obviously well observed, but just aren't something I could really feel connected with.  Nor did the later paintings really speak of the times in which they were created, unlike the early work, which definately had a 50s and 60s vibe. 

Blackadder's work is very quiet, very still.  That's not a criticism in itself.  The work of Gillies is also very quiet and still, and yet his paintings somehow have a real soul to them, a real inner life buzzing away inside them.  I'm afraid I just didn't connect with the Blackadders, but perhaps that's just me.  Obviously she is hugely popular and much loved, and the paintings, judging by the short film that was showing, are very much a reflection of her as a person, in which she comes across as lovely and unassuming.  I just wonder where all that exciting early mark-making went.

In the shop, the catalogues were reduced, and you got two for the price of one.  My free ticket entitled me to a further discount, but even at £5 each, I decided against buying.  The merchandise was on special offer, and there were lots of cats and orchids on fridge magnets.  Everyone there seemed to have a free ticket.  Leonardo it wasn't.

Images copyright Elizabeth Blackadder