Scottish Art

Anne Redpath: A Daughter of the Scottish Borders

22 May 2025

Lyon & Turnbull

We are delighted to include a fine selection of landscapes and still-lifes from the doyenne of post-Second World War Scottish painting, Anne Redpath, in our 5th June flagship Scottish Paintings & Sculpture auction.

Born and raised in the Scottish Borders and known for her accomplished still-lifes, Redpath 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.

Scottish Paintings & Sculpture

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Anne Redpath was born in Galashiels 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.

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)

BORDER FARM IN SPRING SUNSHINE

Signed, oil on board

81.5cm x 91cm (32in x 36in)

£20,000 - £30,000 + fees

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. She emerged as an artist of importance, recognised by the first purchase of her work for a public collection, when the still life The Lace Cloth was acquired by the Royal Scottish Academy in 1944.

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)

JUG OF MIXED FLOWERS

Oil on board

51cm x 66cm (20in x 26in)

£15,000 - £20,000 + fees

Five years later, Redpath moved from Hawick to Edinburgh, where she lived for the rest of her life. She took great care over the decoration and furnishing of her home, including the display of objects that she loved to collect and which often featured in her paintings. Mixed Flowers in a Jug is an attractive example of her late still lifes, in which the loosely arranged flowers and the patterned vessel in which they are gathered are presented on a tilted table-top that gives way to a gloriously abstract background. Redpath is seen as the marvellous colourist and painter on which her reputation is based, in her use of a palette based on tones of pink and grey interspersed with spots of brighter colour; the blue flowerhead is key to the composition as a whole. The thick and gestural application of paint points to a freedom during the creative process which adds to an overall feeling of joy.

Redpath’s professional success culminated in election to the Royal Scottish Academy and the Royal Academy of Arts in London, as well as the award of an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Edinburgh and the OBE. 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.