Anne Redpath
Encyclopedia
Redpath's father was a tweed designer in the Scottish Borders. She saw a connection between his use of colour and her own. "I do with a spot of red or yellow in a harmony of grey, what my father did in his tweed." The Redpaths moved from Galashiels
Galashiels
Galashiels is a burgh in the Scottish Borders, on the Gala Water river. The name is often shortened to "Gala" .Galashiels is a major commercial centre for the Scottish Borders...
to Hawick
Hawick
Hawick is a town in the Scottish Borders of south east Scotland. It is south-west of Jedburgh and south-southeast of Selkirk. It is one of the farthest towns from the sea in Scotland, in the heart of Teviotdale, and the biggest town in the former county of Roxburghshire. Hawick's architecture is...
when Anne was about six. After Hawick High School, she went to Edinburgh College of Art
Edinburgh College of Art
Edinburgh College of Art is an art school in Edinburgh, Scotland, providing tertiary education in art and design disciplines for over two thousand students....
in 1913. Post-graduate study led to a scholarship which allowed her to travel on the Continent in 1919, visiting Bruges
Bruges
Bruges is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located in the northwest of the country....
, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
and Siena
Siena
Siena is a city in Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the province of Siena.The historic centre of Siena has been declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site. It is one of the nation's most visited tourist attractions, with over 163,000 international arrivals in 2008...
.
The following year, 1920, she married James Michie, an architect, and they went to live in Pas-de-Calais where her first two sons were born; the eldest of whom is the painter and sculptor Alastair Michie. In 1924, they moved to the South of France, and in 1928, had a third son: now David Michie
David Michie
David Michie OBE RSA is a painter who was born in 1928 in the South of France, and brought up in the Scottish Borders. After national service service as an instructor in the Royal Artillery Signals Training regiment he studied at Edinburgh College of Art from 1949 to 1953, where he was taught by...
the artist.
In 1934, she returned to Hawick. Redpath was soon exhibiting in Edinburgh, and was president of the Scottish Society of Women Artists from 1944 to 1947. The Royal Scottish Academy
Royal Scottish Academy
The Royal Scottish Academy is a Scottish organisation that promotes contemporary Scottish art. Founded in 1826, as the Royal Institution for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts, the RSA maintains a unique position in Scotland as an independently funded institution led by eminent artists and...
admitted her as an associate in 1947, and in 1952, she became the first woman Academician. In 1955, she was made an OBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
for her work as "Artist" and "Member of the Board of Management of the Edinburgh College of Art".
With her children grown-up, and an active involvement in Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
art circles, she moved to live in town at the end of the 1940s. In the 1950s and early 1960s, she also travelled in Europe, painting in Spain, the Canary Islands, Corsica, Brittany, Venice and elsewhere.
There is a commemorative plaque on the house where she lived and entertained in London Street, Edinburgh.
Painting
Sienese School
The Sienese School of painting flourished in Siena, Italy between the 13th and 15th centuries and for a time rivaled Florence, though it was more conservative, being inclined towards the decorative beauty and elegant grace of late Gothic art...
paintings which impressed her on her first trip abroad. At this time she first discovered the richness of Catholic imagery (unfamiliar to a young woman brought up as a Scottish Protestant), a theme explored in her later work.
She and a group of her contemporaries are sometimes called The Edinburgh School
The Edinburgh School
The Edinburgh School refers to a group of 20th century artists connected with Edinburgh. Most studied at Edinburgh College of Art during or soon after the First World War, and some taught there together in the mid-20th century. As friends and colleagues, they discussed painting and were influenced...
. They may be seen as the "heirs" of the Scottish Colourists
Scottish Colourists
The Scottish Colourists were a group of painters from Scotland whose work was not very highly regarded when it was first exhibited in the 1920s and 1930s, but which in the late 20th Century came to have a formative influence on contemporary Scottish art....
: Redpath's The Orange Chair, for example, suggests the Colourist
Colourist painting
Colourist painting is characterised by the use of intense colour, which becomes the dominant feature of the resultant work of art, more important than its other qualities. This tendency in painting was foreshadowed by French Impressionism in the late 19th century, and came to prominence in the work...
heritage.
During her years in France (1920–1933), Redpath's painting was limited by family commitments, but she produced enough for exhibitions in 1921 and 1928. She also decorated furniture with bright flower and bird patterns. (See Still Life with Painted Chest) Later there would be many paintings of flowers: in vases, or growing abundant in the wild. (The Poppy Field) Redpath became heavily influenced by the likes of Matisse and Bonnard
Pierre Bonnard
Pierre Bonnard was a French painter and printmaker, as well as a founding member of Les Nabis.-Biography:...
.
On her return to Scotland in 1934, she started to sketch the countryside round Hawick, and painted landscapes with a more muted look than much of her work: Frosty Morning, Trow Mill (1936), for example. In the early 1940s The Indian Rug showed that she was developing the freer, individual approach described above. Other works representing this style include The Mantelpiece and Still Life with Table.
Window in Menton, painted in 1948, a favourite of Redpath's, is also a richly-textured surface with familiar elements - flowers, chair, printed wallpaper - but here a seated woman looks towards an open full-length window. The view is of a hillside patterned with houses and trees.
Redpath painted more hillsides, like Les Tourettes (1962), as she travelled in the later years of her life, but her interest was still often interior. Her Courtyard in Venice (1964) is another view from inside looking outwards.
Some later works reflect religious influences, especially paintings of altars in The Chapel of St Jean - Treboul (1954) andVenetian Altar. These are highly regarded by commentators who admire her mature work even more than the pieces from the 1940s.
Reading
- Bourne, Patrick Anne Redpath 1895–1965: her life and work (Edinburgh: Bourne Fine Art in association with The Portland Gallery, 1989)
- Bruce, George Anne Redpath (1974)
- Exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (1975)
- Long, Philip Anne Redpath, 1895-1965 (National Galleries of Scotland, 1996)
- Jones, Ruth Anne Redpath in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography