Anne Redpath (1895-1965) Scottish artist Born in Galashiels in 1895, Anne Redpath was brought up in Hawick and later studied at Edinburgh College of Art under Robert Burns and Henry Lintott. Redpath showed her exceptional talent as an artist at a young age and in 1919 she won a travelling scholarship which enabled her to spend that year in Florence, Siena, Bruges and Paris before returning to the Borders. In 1920 Redpath married the architect James Michie. His work took the family to Cap Ferrat. During this time Anne rarely painted, preferring to concentrate on her role as a mother to her three sons. On her return to Hawick in 1934 she started to paint prodigiously. As she later explained, 'Taking up art again is different from music. The actual technique doesn't matter quite so much as it would in music. But at first it is difficult to attain the same kind of abandon and bravura in your painting.' Accordingly, her work from this period which concentrated on Border landscapes and studio interiors was executed in a subdued palette. It was not until 1942 that her painting regained the confidence that her brilliant student days had promised. Her palette gradually became more vibrant and, from the mid-1940's onwards her works showed an increasing tendency towards abstraction. She was elected an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1947 and was the first woman to be elected as a full member, in 1952. She exhibited regularly at the Royal Scottish Academy, the Society of Scottish Artist's, the Royal Glasgow Institute and, from 1946 at the Royal Academy. During her lifetime she exhibited more than four hundred works at public exhibitions. In 1960 she was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy having already been awarded the O.B.E in 1955, the same year that she was awarded an honorary Doctorate from Edinburgh University. Redpath was represented by Aitken Dott in Edinburgh and by Alex Reid & Lefevre in London. The majority of her exhibited work was produced between 1950 and 1965 when she travelled extensively throughout Europe. Spain, Portugal, Corsica, the South of France and the Canary Island were her favorite locations. ANNE REDPATH is one of the best loved and most important Scottish painter of the twentieth century. She was a personality of starkly contrasting stripes: an intellectual who painted the most direct and expressive pictures;a strict Congregationalist who developed a passion for Catholic architecture and ornament; a political leftist who indulged a desire for Parisian couture. Cosmopolitan and internationalist in outlook, she remained an unmistakable Scot. At the start of a promising career, she all but gave up painting for 14 years when she followed her architect husband to France, where she raised their three boys. It was only on moving back to her hometown of Hawick in 1934 that restricted finances forced a need for her to earn a living as a painter for the first time. ‘Taking up art again is different from music,’ she said at the time. ‘The actual technique doesn’t matter quite so much as it would in music. But at first it is difficult to attain the same kind of abandon and bravura in your painting.’ Though solvency was initially of prime importance, the pursuit of artistic fulfillment soon took over. From her new home, she painted a series of intimate interiors and still lifes which are now amongst her most coveted work. The other side of Redpath’s oeuvre took her away from the domestic to foreign climes. Financial constraints and the Second World War made travel impossible for several years after her return to Scotland. However, in 1948, she returned to France, visiting Paris and then Menton in the south. Travelling widely, she went on to complete some of her most exciting work in Spain, Corsica and the Canary Islands: ‘I think I have always been interested in the structural quality of paint and painting,’she wrote, ‘and I think what I have got out of different countries such as the Canary Islands, Corsica, Brittany and Portugal is something structural.’ Her later work is amongst her most adventurous and daring. Redpath’s success grew as time went on. Her Lefevre gallery exhibition and Royal Academy exhibits of 1962 sold out and did so again in 1964. The uncompromising palette, the abstraction and the sheer physicality of the paint make these pictures some of her best work. It wasn’t without setbacks, however. As with her Spanish paintings, Redpath’s Corsican pictures were not completed for another two or three years after her visit in 1954,on account of a coronary thrombosis and the temporary loss of the use of her right arm. And not until 1959 did she feel strong enough to travel again. In this respect there is a parallel with the career of her contemporary, Joan Eardley, who suffered from and died of cancer. They both produced some of their most powerful work in their final years when their health was failing, painting with a vigour and robustness hat refuted their infirmity

Comments

1. This was lovely to watch. Thanks very much!
2. Thanks very much for the work you've put in. A tremendous artist. I've just been enjoying Michael Palin's documentary here, with a marvellous painting of Menton which he owns..