Portrait of a Gallery - The Scottish Gallery

sparked a renewed interest in the painterly
qualities of lithography, and encouraged
Edinburgh based printer Harley Bros. to
commission a large series of lithographs from
contemporary painters. A number of Scottish
Gallery artists were invited to participate, with
Anne Redpath, Robin Philipson, Earl Haig,
William MacTaggart and David McClure,
among others, producing memorable
‘Edinburgh School’ images.
The 1960s and 70s saw the opening up
of print workshops in all of Scotland’s major
cities, providing the facilities, equipment
and expertise to allow many more artists
to experiment with printmaking. Numerous
Scottish Gallery painters took up this
opportunity – W Barns-Graham, John
Houston, Barbara Rae, Elizabeth Blackadder,
John Bellany, Victoria Crowe, John Byrne –
and greatly expanded their oeuvre by doing
so. In the early 1980s the gallery returned to
publishing with a series of original lithographs
– a typically emotive sunset from John
Houston and some mystic symbols from Alan
Davie, for example – and in the 90s was joint
publisher of The Sutherland Suite, a series of
ground-breaking etchings from Barbara Rae.
Print highlights I recall from my fifteen
years with the gallery include a major show
of monotypes and screenprints from the
mercurial Bruce Mclean, a moving collection
of etchings by Ian Fleming, the first joint
exhibition of prints by John Houston and
Elizabeth Blackadder, engraved portraits of
17th Century nobility by Robert Nanteuil,
the poised minimalism of master printmaker
Philip Reeves, and a show from Glasgow
Print Studio that included works from the
then ‘New Glasgow Boys’, Steven Campbell,
Stephen Conroy, Peter Howson and Adrian
Wiszniewski.
With the gallery’s move from 94 George
Street to their current premises, the print
department closed. Yet, The Scottish
Gallery continues to exhibit printmaking
at its best, perhaps with a return to the
more international outlook of earlier days,
evidenced by a recent show of Picasso
etchings and, in 2010, prints from the École
de Paris.
Iain A Barnet
*Ronnie Miller worked in the Framing Department
of Aitken Dott from 1940-1989 and had a wealth of
knowledge about all aspects of the business.
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