Portrait of a Gallery - The Scottish Gallery

Sir Robin Philipson RA, PRSA, RSW (1916-1992)
Iconostasis 1974 oil on canvas 81 x 76 cms
Robin Philipson and David Donaldson are the dominant personalities of the Scottish art scene of the 70s
and 80s. Each running the art colleges, in Edinburgh and Glasgow respectively, ruling the RSA by force of
achievement and personality, friends and rivals. Philipson, who had exhibitions with The Scottish Gallery in
his lifetime and several reappraisal shows since, was a generous teacher, able administrator and politician
within his chosen institutions and an uncompromising painter, striving for the significant, pushing his
technical boundaries to the limit, sometimes on an enormous scale.
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