Modernism and Nation: William Gillies and his Contemporaries: Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney

This gallery celebrates some of Gillies’ fellow artists who practiced alongside him in Scotland and explored aspects of Modernism in their own painting.

Some, like William Crozier and William MacTaggart were students with Gillies at Edinburgh College of Art (ECA), while others like Anne Redpath, John Maxwell and James Cumming taught with Gillies at the college over the many years he was there and became good friends. Prominent students such as Elizabeth Blackadder and John Houston exemplify the strong influence Gillies had on generations of artists who followed him. Their return to the college as tutors themselves forms part of a shared story from artist to artist, which is entwined with the evolution of art in Scotland.

In the early twentieth century, ECA was a hotbed of creative talent and the gifted group of painters at its heart became known as The Edinburgh School.

Following their studies at ECA, William Gillies, John Maxwell and William MacTaggart went on to become tutors there. As artists who held studios and practiced their own painting in the college, their example fostered a dedicated creativity that was to flourish over the coming decades.

Elements that Gillies explored in his own art is found in the work of his peers. Gillies’ scholarship with Crozier to France and Italy in 1923 shaped the introduction of cubism to Scottish art, which resurfaced with John Houston who travelled to Italy thirty years later.

Travelling scholarships are key to personal and artistic development, and in 1949 James Cumming trod his own unique path, exploring figurative abstraction in Lewis and the Western Isles. As an island nation, the sea and its culture, apparent in the work of Ian Fleming and John Maxwell, is a recurring fixation.

And just over the sea to the east, French and Northern European painting and modernism have had a strong influence on our artists. Two forces in Scottish twentieth century art, Anne Redpath and William MacTaggart, transmitted these influences in their roles within The Edinburgh School.