The artists Beatrice L. Huntington and William Macdonald (1883-1960) were married in 1925, establishing a strong artistic partnership that would endure for the rest of their lives.
Both came into the marriage with established artistic visions; Beatrice had undertaken training with periods of study in London, Munich and Paris and gained some success as a portrait painter. Following their marriage, the pair travelled in Spain and then exhibited the resulting works in a joint exhibition in Dundee in 1928.
Huntington and Macdonald’s marriage cemented their involvement with Edinburgh’s creative circles. The pair knew many artists and travelled to diverse locations including Cassis in the South of France, favoured by the Scottish Colourists, and Kirkcudbright in Dumfries and Galloway, known as an artist’s colony, where they were friendly with the artist E.A. Taylor and his wife, the designer Jessie M. King.
Meanwhile their home base was in the New Town of Edinburgh, Hanover Street, within walking distance of both the Royal Scottish Academy and the commercial gallery quarter, where both exhibited and sold their work. On that basis, the collection also contains works by other artists, both friends and contemporaries of the couple.
By the 1920s Beatrice was significantly engaged with avant-garde developments in Europe, keeping in touch with Paris, and developing a new approach, away from this softness towards something starker and more stylised, with elements of cubism.
Beatrice remained committed to her art throughout her life, still refining her approach and ideas into her late eighties.