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Modern Scottish Women 100 Years of Women’s Suffrage Many observers of the art world have remarked at how male-dominated it seems. No named artists survive from pre-antiquity, and few, all male, from classical times. When Vasari published his Lives of the Artists in 1550, recognised as the first work of art history, women were left unnoticed.
In the modern period, we have new measures of visibility: inclusions in collections and exhibitions and statistics about popularity in an era when we consume art like any other commodity. In the last hundred years, as impediments were removed, many social pressures persisted and we have to congratulate many of the great women artists of the last century on their dedication and perseverance as well as their genius. In the generally strong area of Modern British art sculptors like Barbara Hepworth still lags behind Henry Moore. In the second rank however Elisabeth Frink competes well with Lynn Chadwick, Anthony Caro and Michael Ayrton. The painters are even further behind however – or, in the logic of a potential investor, the women have more potential. While Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon occupy an international stratosphere, permanently in the top ten, painters like Prunella Clough, Joan Eardley and Anne Redpath are well adrift of the values achieved by William Scott,
Patrick Caulfield or Ivon Hitchens. While the marketplace is one measure the museum sector is another and in Edinburgh, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art has gone some way to addressing the historic deficit, with Alice Strang’s exhibition Modern Scottish Women: Painters and Sculptors 1885–1965 (2015–2016). The Scottish Gallery has been a champion of women artists consistently for decades, not to fulfil any quota or gender equality ‘policy’ – we have championed women because the work was valid. The journey for women has not been easy and The Gallery has championed exceptional women artists who in turn paved the way for future generations. In the first half of the last century, art education was in effect only available to the upper classes, and a career as an artist was routinely curtailed for women, by marriage and children. By the mid to late 19th century, more women from the middle classes were entering art schools; needlework, pottery, still life drawing and painting, in particular
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Art Studies League–Still Life Class, New York, c.1885 This rare photograph of a New York art studio gives us a unique insight into how a woman’s art class would have looked like during the 19th century. Very few women from this period would have had the opportunity to enter into formal art education. Photo: private collection
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Bessie MacNicol (1869-1904) First known woman with proven commercial success shown in The Scottish Gallery, 1896. Trained at Glasgow School of Art and part of the Glasgow Style. Photo: Artist’s Footsteps, Dumfries and Galloway Council
Jessie Dott (1871-1930) Niece of Peter McOmish Dott, senior partner of The Scottish Gallery 1890-1915 (see page 73). Image courtesy of the artist’s estate
Jessie Dott, New Haven Children, 1897, watercolour. Private collection
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In 1896, Peter McOmish Dott (pictured, watercolour were considered appropriate page 2) held its first Annual Exhibition of selected mediums for women. artists which included paintings by Farquharson, Although women artists had been associated with the RSW (1891) and the SSA (1876) from Lawton Wingate, Paton Reid, Ramsay, Bessie the beginning, and although a Glasgow Society MacNicol, Archibald Kay, Alexander Roche and others. Bessie MacNicol appears to be of Lady Artists had been formed in 1882, many talented women artists continued to find it our first confirmed commercial success by a difficult to have the opportunity to exhibit their female artist; our daybooks only reveal what work due to overt male prejudice. It was not we sold from this period which is dominated by male artists. When Bessie MacNicol died until 1938 that the RSA elected its first female Associate and the first elected female painter to prematurely at the age of 34 from eclampsia in 1904, her obituaries become an Academician spoke of Scotland’s loss was Anne Redpath in ‘of a potentially brilliant 1952. It was against such The journey for women has not been a milieu that the Scottish easy and The Gallery has championed painter… ‘worthy to Society of Women Artists exceptional women artists who in turn rank with the best of her artist sons’. Jessie Dott was founded in 1924, paved the way for future generations. (c.1871-1935) was the striking a blow for the niece of Peter McOmish feminist cause – and Dott (1856-1934) who for the advancement of was the senior partner in The Gallery from women in the arts in Scotland and providing a much needed platform and forum for applied 1890-1915. Her father and grandfather had been artists and in the photograph of her opposite, arts. she is seated in front of her easel aged around The SSWA’s exhibition moved to the sixteen with her younger sister sitting in the National Gallery in 1941 where it exhibited annually until 1944; and since 1945, when foreground. She wanted to be an artist. Jessie Anne Redpath was President, works were Dott would have had direct access to the firm and no doubt she would have applied pressure shown at the RSA. The Scottish Society of painters in Watercolour has a pedigree dating for women to be allowed to rent rooms and from its foundation in 1876. It staged its first exhibit and sell work and she certainly would have pushed for women to be represented public exhibition in 1879 in rented premises alongside men in selected exhibitions. In the in Glasgow. The first elected President was Francis Powell RSW who was already a member early 20th century, Jessie Dott became one of of the RWS. Today, the membership of over 120 the founding members of the Scottish Society of Women Artists such was her determination is replete with the names of painters who have international reputation in Scotland, Britain for women artists to have a voice and platform for their work in Scotland. and beyond.
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Anne Redpath (1895-1965) The artist is seated front left, Edinburgh College of Art, 1915. Image courtesy of the artist’s estate
Post WWI, radical social change took in international painting by moving towards an place and art education became more readily undefined picture space in which her flowers and vases merge into backgrounds built up available to those from different classes and with the vigour and élan of Nicolas de Staël or backgrounds, but women artists still struggled to survive. In these decades, a succession of Antoni Tàpies. During WWII, Miss Proudfoot, the sister great women artists have underpinned our programme, supported by many dozens of of George Proudfoot took The Gallery through some difficult years and she was succeeded by others, many showing multiple times. Anne Redpath, in particular, was outward in her her sister-in-law, the young French-born widow gaze, partly because of the necessity to make of George. Many of our existing male artists had her way as a professional artist while mother enlisted which left the rosta of artists available to three young boys through the difficult war very thin; Miss Proudfoot showed the best of emerging artists from years, living back in the London and Scotland Borders after more than and blended the French ten years in France. In Post WWI, radical social change school with Scottish the war’s aftermath took place and art education became contemporary artists. her star rose rapidly; more readily available to those from She ran a comprehensive the beginning of the different classes and backgrounds programme of solo Edinburgh International and mixed exhibitions Festival and the wealth of exclusively of Scottish exhibiting opportunities that emerged in the fifties in Edinburgh, Women Artists (November 1941, 1942, 1943) and regularly showed women artists as the London, and Bristol, as well as with the Arts Council of Great Britain, saw Redpath in the norm rather than the exception. A number of established Polish artists were stationed in vanguard. She was the direct descendant of the Scottish Colourists, Peploe in particular, as she Scotland and The Scottish Gallery gave them a demonstrated her extraordinary facility, colour platform to exhibit including Aleksander Zyw and Josef Herman. Mrs Jadwiga Walker, an artist sense and unerring choice of subject. Latterly her curiosity and adventure found painterly commissioned by the Polish Army as an official fulfilment in long trips to continental Europe, War artist, was given an exhibition of drawings initially back to the France she knew so well of the Armoured forces in October 1944. After the war, Joan Eardley found from the twenties, but then to Spain, Venice, Portugal and the Canaries. This adventure opportunities unavailable to a previous generation in the fifties and sixties, not least was always put to good use, with sketchbooks with The Scottish Gallery, and in the more than filled and objects found and brought back to the studio to enrich her iconography. In later fifty years since her death we have continued to represent her estate and promote her years she was able to respond to developments
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Joan Eardley sketching on the street, Townhead, c.1955. Photo by Audrey Walker
Kate Downie sketching by the new bridge, August 2017.
national and international reputation. Her only Series and further significant travel to Italy in commissioned work is the portrait of (Gallery 1955 highlighted her strong draughtsmanship. Director 1952-1975) Bill Macaulay’s children. She divided her time between St Andrews and St Ives from 1960 and produced various The power of her work to engage and move significant series of the viewer is undimmed; abstract works from the her twin subjects of geometric to the more Glasgow and Catterline Dame Elizabeth Blackadder, Victoria organic. are now rediscovered Crowe, Kate Downie and Alison Watt Over the last forty by new generations, her have emerged as four of Scotland’s most years or so, Dame poignant story retold eloquent and significant painters Elizabeth Blackadder, and better understood. Victoria Crowe, Kate Another powerful woman Downie and Alison artist to emerge after WWII was Wilhelmina Barns-Graham who was Watt have emerged as four of Scotland’s born in St Andrews and attended Edinburgh most eloquent and significant painters, their work fresh, original and widely appreciated. College of Art 1932-37. She moved to St Ives in the 1940s, where she joined the artist societies Blackadder, well known in the capital through her membership of the Royal Academy, was a of Newlyn, St Ives and Penwith and became friends with Nicholson, Hepworth and Gabo. senior tutor at Edinburgh College of Art and A trip to Switzerland in 1948 inspired her Glacier has been lauded with honours, degrees and
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Victoria Crowe in her Edinburgh studio, June 2018. Photo by Kenneth Gray
retrospectives. Her painting in watercolour and oil and her prodigious oeuvre of printmaking are marked by a restraint and delicacy which still deliver arresting strength. Victoria Crowe, who came to Edinburgh from London in the late sixties, like the other two has found inspiration in travel (she has a second home in Venice), but much of her inspiration is internal, or springs from text and ephemera, nature and the built environment. Her sensitivity to time of day, to texture and to surface has led to a layered approach in picturemaking unique in contemporary practice, which has brought her wide and deep appreciation. She is our Edinburgh International Festival exhibitor this year and she also has a portrait Retrospective Beyond Likeness at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Born in North Carolina, Kate Downie studied at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen
before travel and residencies took her to the United States, England, Amsterdam and Paris. Downie is one of the most subtle and persuasive colourists of her generation and she will only add to her palette from real experience. This gives her work a truth and authority, a right to transport us to the unfamiliar or provide an urgent reminder of where we have also been. Alison Watt is no longer represented by The Scottish Gallery but her first solo exhibition was with us in 1990. Women now dominate many aspects of the visual arts and we are proud to be part of a legacy of equal opportunity; the success of The Gallery has always been built on a quality platform for art in all its forms. CHRISTINA JANSEN The Scottish Gallery