The Art of Picture Making 5 - 29 March 2014
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(1926-1998) the art of picture making 5 - 29 march 2014 16 Dundas Street, Edinburgh EH3 6HZ tel 0131 558 1200 email [email protected] www.scottish-gallery.co.uk Cover: Paola, Owl and Doll, 1962, oil on canvas, 63 x 76 cms (Cat. No. 29) Left: Self Portrait, 1965, oil on canvas, 91.5 x 73 cms (Cat. No. 33) 2 | DAVID McCLURE THE ART OF PICTURE MAKING | 3 FOREWORD McClure had his first one-man show with The “The morose characteristics by which we Scottish Gallery in 1957 and the succeeding recognise ourselves… have no place in our decade saw regular exhibitions of his work. painting which is traditionally gay and life- He was included in the important surveys of enhancing.” Towards the end of his exhibiting contemporary Scottish art which began to life Teddy Gage reviewing his show of 1994 define The Edinburgh School throughout the celebrates his best qualities in the tradition 1960s, and culminated in his Edinburgh Festival of Gillies, Redpath and Maxwell but in show at The Gallery in 1969. But he was, even by particular admires the qualities of his recent 1957 (after a year painting in Florence and Sicily) Sutherland paintings: “the bays and inlets where in Dundee, alongside his great friend Alberto translucent seas flood over white shores.” We Morrocco, applying the rigour and inspiration can see McClure today, fifteen years or so after that made Duncan of Jordanstone a bastion his passing, as a distinctive figure that made a of painting. His friend George Mackie writing vital contribution in the mainstream of Scottish for the 1969 catalogue saw him working in a painting, as an individual with great gifts, continental tradition (as well as a “west coast intellect and curiosity about nature, people and Scot living on the east coast whose blood is part ideas. Welsh and wholly Celt”) and exemplary of the artist as antidote to the dour Scot. GUY PEPLOE, THE SCOTTISH GALLERY Opposite: The artist in his studio at Casteldaccia, Sicily, 1956 4 | DAVID McCLURE INTRODUCTION This exhibition catalogue opens with a series His intellectual curiosity also led him to of works carried out during, or inspired by the experiment with different media including artist’s period of War Service as a Bevin Boy in collage and he had a lifelong commitment to the mines of West Lothian. Previously he had working on paper: with brush, pen, watercolour been studying English and History at Glasgow and gouache. His subjects could be musical, University but his mining experiences seemed intimate, fantastical or serious, but he returned to have helped determine that an already again and again to still life, the nude and strong interest in the visual arts developed landscape as the subjects through which he into a need to paint. On his father’s side of the could explore composition and celebrate the family were several generations of Lochwinnoch beauty of the natural world. furniture designers and manufacturers; many The family home in Strawberry Bank in of the great, Clyde–built liners were fitted out Dundee was filled with objects, rich fabrics with Lochwinnoch furniture and decorative and pictures, many by artist friends, everything woodwork. His father, Robert, in his spare resonant with meaning and association. For a time was active in the local Art Society, went to guest the conversation was always stimulating drawing classes and even painted portraits of and wide-ranging, helped along by liberally locals’ prize pets or racing pigeons. poured whisky and sustained by a fine eclectic David McClure first enrolled in the Fine table. Art Course at Edinburgh, the student’s time McClure was one of a group of highly divided between History of Art at the University regarded young painters that included James and Drawing and Painting at the Art College. Cumming, William Baillie, John Houston, Tellingly, after a year, he moved solely to the Art Elizabeth Blackadder and David Michie all College and to painting. of whom graduated from Edinburgh College Perhaps this background goes some way of Art in the early 1950s having benefited in to explain the rigour one finds in his approach their formative years from the examples of a to painting, a discipline that could perhaps remarkable concentration of talent in the capital, be recommended to many today. He did not both on the Art College staff and in the annual leave his intellectual or even literary faculties exhibitions of the RSA, RSW, SSA or SSWA. at the studio door so that his work can often In addition, The Scottish Gallery were regularly have symbolic as well as emotional (and, yes, showing established artists such as Anne decorative) content. There can be present Redpath, William Gillies, William MacTaggart, whimsy, wit, devilment and irony, but never as well as younger artists such as Joan Eardley at the cost of good painting, his work sitting and Robin Philipson. McClure and many of his solidly within that well-documented tradition Edinburgh College peers soon joined them. of 20th century Scottish Painting characterised His early work demonstrates how much was by strength of colour and confident handling of learned from this rich milieu. Houses in Millport, paint. As a bold and inspired colourist McClure 1955 (Cat. No. 15) shows the tonal influence of had few equals. Robert Henderson Blyth while Gillies’ studio THE ART OF PICTURE MAKING | 5 Exhibition of McClure’s Diploma paintings, Edinburgh College of Art, 1951 work (and MacTaggart’s) may be traced in Still Life and organised crime (Come to Sunny Sicily, 1964 with Jug and Grapes (Cat. No. 8) or Still Life on a Stool, (Cat. No. 32)) must undoubtedly have been 1957 (Cat. No. 21). Redpath was a major influence the “First Mafia War” then currently filling the perhaps here most discernable in his gouache media with its reporting of corruption, bloody work from Florence and Sicily. These mixed massacres and police crackdowns. influences, and others, such as the watercolours These works are perhaps all the more and drawings of Willie Wilson, profound and surprising because the majority of the artist’s vital as they were, are arguably more of a stylistic oeuvre is warm and optimistic: a celebration nature and did not lead the artist outwith the of the abundance and fecundity of nature as standard genres of still life or landscape. witnessed by sumptuous displays of flowers In this respect, perhaps the most profound or again by paintings of Joyce, sometimes influence upon McClure was that of John intimately observed as mother and wife in the Maxwell, an intense interest and admiration interior of their Dundee home, other times as in resulting in his excellent monograph for The Yellow Studio (Cat. No. 38) straightforwardly Edinburgh University Press published in 1976. as artist’s model. The example of Maxwell [and through him In this mature vein McClure turned quite no doubt of Chagall and Redon] however, unashamedly to the European mainstream for produced a shift in approach and intent. This is inspiration coming close to the spirit of the perhaps seen more clearly in a series of works Post-Impressionist masters, Matisse, Gauguin, of the early 1960’s where figures, flowers, Braque, Chagall or Redon; all art of the past was animals and objects, often in twilight or night- seen by McClure as a heritage to be openly and time landscapes, float together in enigmatic knowingly acknowledged and celebrated, its and tender narratives. These often involve the rich veins of style and genres to be mined and artist’s young daughter Paola [her “Dreams”] as wrought to aid his own picture making. in Paola, Owl and Doll, 1962 (Cat. No. 24) or else He was periodically dogged by ill-health but can take the form of sensual celebration of his not until the very end did this affect the vigour wife and muse, Joyce as in Figure & Flowers, 1963 and spontaneity of his painting indeed in his (Cat. No. 31). last years he produced some of the finest, direct A subsequent group of figure paintings landscapes of his career inspired by summer however contain some of the most surprising visits to North-West Sutherland. (Gate Posts at and challenging works produced by the artist. Culkein - Drumbeg, 1994 (Cat. No. 47)) Although they have antecedents in religious Much of the artist’s generosity and his subjects of a more mildly satirical nature (The fascination with the world around him, which Ritualists, 1962 (Cat. No. 26)) these new works made him such a good companion, permeate from 1964 draw specifically on his experiences the rich and varied work he has left us. of Sicily, where he worked for six months in 1957. The catalyst for these biting commentaries on the power and influence of organised religion ROBIN McCLURE 6 | DAVID McCLURE 1 Mine Workings I, 1946 pen & wash, 17 x 23 cms dated lower right provenance The Artist’s Estate (WP162) Like many Scottish Bevin Boys, McClure trained initially at Townhill in Dunfermline but the only title on one of these landscapes indicates they depict West Lothian. All but a few Bevin Boy records from part of the Midlands were tragically destroyed in the 1950s. Shamefully, it is only in the last few years that Bevin Boys or their surviving widows were deemed fit to be awarded War Service medals or attend the annual Cenotaph service and march-past. They were predominantly conscripted on a ballot basis and although a small number of younger men of call-up age volunteered to be sent down the mines, it was also a favoured punishment for Conscientious Objectors. We do not know what circumstances led to McClure’s experience as a Bevin Boy.