ANNE REDPATH O.B.E., R.S.A., A.R.A., L.L.D., A.R.W.S., R.O.I., R.B.A. (SCOTTISH 1895-1965) §
FARM AT SPITTAL ON RULE
£27,700
Scottish Paintings & Sculpture
Auction: Evening Sale | Lots 103-196 | Thursday 05 December from 6pm
Description
Signed, oil on canvas laid down on board
Dimensions
51cm x 61cm (20in x 24in)
Provenance
Exhibited:
Society of Scottish Artists, 1944;
Portland Gallery, London, Anne Redpath Centenary Exhibition June-July 1995, no.16;
Literature: Patrick Bourne, Anne Redpath 1895-1965: Her Life and Work, Atelier Books, Edinburgh, 1989, pl.31, p.36
Footnote
After fourteen years spent living in France and establishing a family, Redpath returned to the Scottish Borders in 1934. With all three of her sons attending school, Redpath resumed painting in earnest. She was ambitious and committed in equal measure, sending work regularly to the group exhibitions staged in Edinburgh. She revived her relationships with the Society of Scottish Artists (SSA) and the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) and also began to show with the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolours and the Scottish Society of Women Artists (SSWA, now Visual Arts Scotland).
It was during the 1940s that Redpath emerged as an artist of importance. This was recognised by the first acquisition of one of her works for an Edinburgh public collection, when the RSA purchased The Lace Cloth for £50 in 1944. That year she painted and exhibited – at the SSA – Farm at Spittal on Rule and was elected President of the SSWA. The titular farm is some six miles northeast of Hawick, where Redpath had grown up and where she also lived from 1934 until 1949.
With a simplification of form as gentle as her palette, Redpath depicted the array of farm buildings scattered over the inclined site. More freely painted passages, such as the sky and the foreground, point to the untrammelled expressiveness which was to develop later in her practice, whilst the mixture of deep black with sensitively combined hues of grey, white and violet reveal a sensitivity to colour which was a defining characteristic of her oeuvre.
Three years later, Redpath received her first solo exhibition in Scotland, at Gordon Small’s gallery in Edinburgh. The review of it in The Scotsman on 13 March 1947 praised the ‘individuality of colour and intimate gaiety’ of the work shown, which could be taken as a description of the present painting.