The Edinburgh School is a group of 20th century artists connected with Edinburgh. They share a connection through Edinburgh College of Art, where most studied and worked together during or soon after the First World War. As friends and colleagues, they discussed painting and were influenced by one another's work. They were bound together as members of Edinburgh-based exhibition bodies: the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA), Society of Scottish Artists (SSA) and the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour (RSW). [1] They predominantly painted still life and Scottish landscapes, and shared an interest in working both in oil and watercolour.
Art critic Giles Sutherland, writing in The Times , has suggested: "The work of the Edinburgh School is characterised by virtuoso displays in the use of paint, vivid and often non-naturalistic colour and themes such as still-life, seascape and landscape." [2]
The following are generally thought of as Edinburgh School painters.
Some other painters associated with Edinburgh may also be called Edinburgh School artists, or a 'new generation' of the Edinburgh School.
The 'Edinburgh School' refers to a group of artists whose work shares certain characteristics and is not the same as the 'Edinburgh School of Art'. This latter name is quite often used for the college even though it has been officially called Edinburgh College of Art since 1907.
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Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) is one of eleven schools in the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. Tracing its history back to 1760, it provides higher education in art and design, architecture, history of art, and music disciplines for over three thousand students and is at the forefront of research and research-led teaching in the creative arts, humanities, and creative technologies. ECA comprises five subject areas: School of Art, Reid School of Music, School of Design, School of History of Art, and Edinburgh School of Architecture & Landscape Architecture (ESALA). ECA is mainly located in the Old Town of Edinburgh, overlooking the Grassmarket; the Lauriston Place campus is located in the University of Edinburgh's Central Area Campus, not far from George Square.
Sir William George Gillies was a renowned Scottish landscape and still life painter. He is often referred to simply as W. G. Gillies.
Stanley Cursiter was an Orcadian artist who played an important role in introducing Post-Impressionism and Futurism to Scotland. He served as the keeper (1919–1930), then director (1930–1948), of the National Galleries of Scotland, and as HM Limner and Painter in Scotland (1948–1976).
Anne Redpath (1895–1965) was a Scottish artist whose vivid domestic still lifes are among her best-known works.
Sir William MacTaggart, (1903–1981) was a Scottish painter known for his landscapes of East Lothian, France, Norway and elsewhere. He is sometimes called William MacTaggart the Younger to distinguish him from his grandfather, the painter William McTaggart.
William McTaggart was a Scottish landscape and marine painter who was influenced by Impressionism.
William Crozier was a Scottish landscape painter.
William Hastie Geissler was a Scottish artist known for his watercolours of the natural world. He was one of The Edinburgh School, and much of his earlier work came from sketching trips undertaken with other members of this group, though he himself is sometimes described as a "neglected" member. Although his natural preference lay with watercolour, often with gouache and pen and ink, several works in oil survive.
Scottish art is the body of visual art made in what is now Scotland, or about Scottish subjects, since prehistoric times. It forms a distinctive tradition within European art, but the political union with England has led its partial subsumation in British art.
Dr Mary Nicol Neill Armour LLD, née Steel, was a Scottish landscape and still life painter, art teacher and an Honorary President of the Glasgow School of Art and the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts.
Art in modern Scotland includes all aspects of the visual arts in the country since the beginning of the twentieth century. In the early twentieth century, the art scene was dominated by the work of the members of the Glasgow School known as the Four, led by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, who gained an international reputation for their combination of Celtic revival, Art and Crafts and Art Nouveau. They were followed by the Scottish Colourists and the Edinburgh School. 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". Moffat's influence can be seen in the work of the "new Glasgow Boys" from the late twentieth century. In the twenty-first century Scotland has continued to produce influential artists such as Douglas Gordon and Susan Philipsz.
Landscape painting in Scotland includes all forms of painting of landscapes in Scotland since its origins in the sixteenth century to the present day. The earliest examples of Scottish landscape painting are in the tradition of Scottish house decoration that arose in the sixteenth century. Often said to be the earliest surviving painted landscape created in Scotland is a depiction by the Flemish artist Alexander Keirincx undertaken for Charles I.
David McClure RSA RSW was a Scottish artist and lecturer. He is most well known for his paintings of still lifes, interiors, figures and family portraits as well as his landscape and townscape paintings of Scotland, Italy, Sicily and Spain where he lived and travelled throughout his life.
Adam Bruce Thomson OBE, RSA, PRSW or ‘Adam B’ as he was often called at Edinburgh College of Art, was a Scottish painter perhaps best known for his oil and water colour landscape paintings, particularly of the Highlands and Edinburgh. He is regarded as one of the Edinburgh School of artists.
David Macbeth Sutherland was a Scottish artist mainly known for his landscapes and portraits paintings and for his long tenure as the Director of Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen.
Sir James Lewis Caw LLD HRSA was a Scottish art historian, critic and gallery director. He argued for the existence of an independent and free-standing "Scottish school of painting" arising in the second half of the 19th century.
Perpetua (Pip) Pope was a Scottish painter of landscapes, flower pieces and still-life compositions in both oil and watercolours, and was also an art teacher in Edinburgh.
The Society of Eight was an artistic grouping of Scottish painters. The Society set up its own gallery space in Edinburgh to exhibit their work. It was founded in 1912 and last exhibited in 1938. The Society did not reform after the Second World War.
Henry John Lintott was a British artist and teacher. Over the course of a long career at the Edinburgh College of Art, he influenced many leading 20th-century Scottish artists, including Anne Redpath.
