Fine Art

10 Scottish Artists You Should Know

4 February 2025

Chantal de Prez

Join Head of Sale Chantal de Prez as she takes a closer look at '10 Scottish Artists You Should Know' featuring in our February 2025 edition of The Art Edit.

Amongst these ten artists you might find celebrated household names, as well as those whose work is less familiar. All, however, made an interesting and significant contribution to the story of Scottish art.

Arranged chronologically, these artists’ careers tell a wider story about Scotland’s artistic trajectory, from traditional academic portraiture to the formative influence of continental artistic exchange – particularly with France - catalysing coast-to-coast schools of innovation including The Glasgow Boys and the Edinburgh School, which, in turn, laid the groundwork for later twentieth-century interpretations of modern Scottish life.

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HOME FROM THE FIELDS

SIR DANIEL MACNEE

SIR DANIEL MACNEE P.R.S.A (SCOTTISH 1806-1882)

Signed lower left, oil on canvas

76cm x 61cm (30in x 24in)

£600 - £900 + fees

MacNee was the leading portrait painter in late nineteenth-century Scotland. Distinguished by his draughtsmanship even as a boy, by the age of seventeen he was employed by a medical lecturer as an anatomical illustrator working across the West of Scotland. He gained renown for his talent as both an artist and a conversationalist, which made the experience of sitting for a MacNee portrait all the more enjoyable. By 1876 he had succeeded Sir George Harvey as President of the Royal Scottish Academy, and the following year was knighted. Examples of his portraiture are held by the National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery of Scotland.

BARBUIE, MONIAIVE, EVENING

JAMES PATERSON

JAMES PATERSON R.S.A., R.S.W., R.W.S. (SCOTTISH 1854-1932)

Signed lower right, signed and inscribed with title verso, oil on canvas

24cm x 34.5cm (9.5in x 13.75in)

£500 - £800 + fees

During his artistic training James Paterson spent long spells on the continent, where his work was indelibly influenced by paintings by the French romantics - particularly Camille Corot. Upon Paterson’s return to Glasgow he fell in with the anti-artistic establishment group of painters dubbed ‘The Glasgow Boys, producing atmospheric, diaphanous watercolours, pastels and oils which celebrated the tonal harmonies achieved by the contrast of blue and brown. In 1884 he settled in Moniaive, where he produced what is generally agreed to be his finest work.

SUNLIT PASTURES

DAVID GAULD

DAVID GAULD R.S.A. (SCOTTISH 1865-1936)

Signed lower right, oil on canvas

£1,000 - £1,500 + fees

David Gauld’s artworks can broadly be divided into two categories: Art Nouveau-inflected decorative figure studies, and soft-toned landscape and cattle scenes. A commensurate Glasgow Boy, David Gauld was ‘more concerned with the moods of nature than with mere transcription of facts’, and his signature cattle paintings were celebrated for their ‘tenderness and veracity’. (P. J. M. McEwan, Dictionary of Scottish Art & Architecture, Antique Collectors' Club, 1988, p.224)

FARMYARD

ANNA DIXON

ANNA DIXON R.S.W. (SCOTTISH 1873-1959)

Signed lower left, oil on board

24cm x 33cm (9.5in x 13in)

£400 - £600 + fees

CHURCH THROUGH THE TREES

WILLIAM MACTAGGART

WILLIAM MACTAGGART P.R.S.A., R.A., F.R.S.E., R.S.W. (SCOTTISH 1903-1981)

Charcoal

19.5cm x 25.5cm (7.75in x 10in)

£400 - £600 + fees

Sir William MacTaggart was the grandson of the renowned painter William McTaggart. He attended Edinburgh College of Art from 1918-1921, befriending William Gillies, Anne Redpath, John Maxwell, William Crozier and Adam Bruce Thomson, a consequential cohort that would come to be known as The Edinburgh School. MacTaggart cultivated an expressionist style which was only intensified by an encounter with Edvard Munch’s work at a 1931 Scottish Society of Artists exhibition. Like many early twentieth-century Scottish artists he made frequent trips to the south of France, and also painted scenes in the Scottish Borders and views from the window of his Edinburgh residence on Drummond Place.

STILL LIFE WITH OLD FASHIONED ROSES, 1975

MARY NICOL NEILL ARMOUR

MARY NICOL NEILL ARMOUR R.S.A., R.S.W. (SCOTTISH 1902-2000)

Signed and dated '75 lower right, oil on canvas

41cm x 51cm (16in x 20in)

£1,000 - £1,500 + fees

Many hold Bellany to be one of the greatest Scottish artists of the later twentieth century. From the 1960s his work attracted renewed attention to Scottish art and his scenes of working-class life constituted an important development in modern figurative painting. Bellany’s oeuvre generally meditates on his childhood in the coastal village of Port Seton outside of Edinburgh through depictions of eccentric characters accompanied by symbolic totems.

DISH OF FRUIT, 1958

ANNE REDPATH

ANNE REDPATH O.B.E., R.S.A., A.R.A., L.L.D., A.R.W.S., R.O.I., R.B.A. (SCOTTISH 1895-1965)

Lithograph, 22/75, signed and numbered in pencil to margin, published by Harley Brothers Limited, with their blindstamp

the sheet 36.25cm x 54cm (14.25in x 21.25in)

Based in the West of Scotland since the early 1960s, John Lowrie Morrison -’or JoLoMo’ - is a beloved contemporary Scottish artist whose career has gone from strength to strength. His vibrant impastoed paintings capture a strong sense of the atmosphere of the Scottish coast. They usually depict crofts (pockets of land, usually with modest dwellings) set within a picturesque locale.

WOMAN OF THE NORTH SEA

JOHN BELLANY

JOHN BELLANY C.B.E., R.A. (SCOTTISH 1942-2013)

Etching, 12/25, signed and numbered in pencil to margin

the sheet 57cm x 37.5cm (22.5in x 14.75in)

£300 - £500 + fees

DOWN AND OUT - BELOW THE BRIDGE

PETER HOWSON

PETER HOWSON O.B.E. (SCOTTISH 1958-)

Signed lower right, pastel on brown paper

27.25cm x 19.5cm (10.75in x 7.75in)

£500 - £800 + fees

Peter Howson’s strong, figurative style is inspired by epic history painting, but his depictions of a violent, working-class, predominantly masculine Glasgow subvert the traditional tenets of this genre. His experience in the military and as a bouncer in the dive bars of Glasgow’s city centre allows Howson to lift figures from memory and translate them into exaggerated and overgrown character archetypes, through whom he examines the most toxic aspects of masculinity in order to reveal its ugly, destructive truth. Though the acerbic, grotesque social commentary of Weimar Republic artists like George Grosz and Otto Dix are clear reference points, Howson’s work is in fact brimming with pathos. He allows his characters a tragic heroism, and his message is clear that they are just as much the victims of the violent systems they embody.

GRIBUN LIGHT, MULL, 2004

JOHN LOWRIE MORRISON (JOLOMO)

JOHN LOWRIE MORRISON (JOLOMO) O.B.E. (SCOTTISH 1948-)

Signed lower right, signed and inscribed with title verso, oil on canvas

21cm x 21cm (8.25in x 8.25in)

£700 - £1,000 + fees