ANNE REDPATH O.B.E., R.S.A., A.R.A., A.R.W.S., L.L.D., R.O.I., R.B.A. (SCOTTISH 1895-1965) §
BORDERS HILL FARM
Estimate: £1,500 - £2,500
Scottish Paintings & Sculpture
Auction: Day Sale | Lots 1-110 | Thursday 05 June from 2pm
Description
Signed, pencil and watercolour
Dimensions
26.5cm x 36cm (10.5in x 14in)
Footnote
Anne Redpath: A Daughter of the Scottish Borders
Anne Redpath was born in Galashiels in the Scottish Borders and grew up in nearby Hawick. After studying concurrently at Edinburgh College of Art and Moray House College of Education, her exhibiting career began in 1919 when she showed with the Edinburgh Group. Her marriage a year later to the architect James Beattie led to the couple living in France for fourteen years, where their three sons were born.
On her return to Scotland in 1934, Redpath settled back into Hawick and resumed painting in earnest. The rolling countryside of the Scottish Borders, dotted with farm buildings, provided plenty of subject matter for her brush, as can be seen in Border Farm in Spring Sunshine, A Borders Landscape and Borders Hill Farm. A low viewpoint in the first work invites the viewer to travel across water and up a hill to the crowning gathering of buildings on the high horizon. Redpath’s palette is as gentle as the light depicted in an idyllic scene of Spring calmness.
An exhibition label on the reverse of this painting posits that it was painted in about 1936 and it was included in the Royal Scottish Academy’s Annual Exhibition of 1939. Redpath was ambitious and committed in equal measure and regularly sent her work to the group exhibitions staged in Edinburgh. She revived her relationship with the Society of Scottish Artists as well as with the Academy and also began to show with the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolours and with the Scottish Society of Women Artists.
Redpath remained in Hawick until 1949, when she moved to Edinburgh. She became the first female painter to achieve the rank of full Academician at the Royal Scottish Academy – in 1952 – and in 1960 became the first Scottish woman to be elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Border Farm in the Spring Sunshine was included in the exhibition mounted by The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh in 1965, following the artist’s death that January. Redpath is now recognised as the doyenne of post-Second World War Scottish painting.