Scottish Art in Newcastle

I’m half-Geordie, so I particularly enjoyed writing about modern Scottish art in the collection of the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle.

I wrote about paintings by the Glasgow Boy E. A. Hornel, Glasgow School of Art Director Fra Newbery, the Scottish Colourist S. J. Peploe and Flora Macdonald Reid, a pioneering woman artist. The works take us from Kirkcudbright to Devon, Belgium and Edinburgh. They include outdoors scenes, an interior portrait and a still life.

The article is called ‘From Hornel to Peploe: Early Modern Scottish Art in the Laing Art Gallery‘. It is one of a series of essays I have written for UK public galleries during lockdown. They have been a pleasure to do, as I have learnt about the richness of collections throughout the country.

If you like Peploe’s work, you can read more about him in my feature ‘The Success Story of a Scottish Colourist‘ for Art UK. I think his painting above, Yellow Tulips and Statuette of the early 1920s, is a particularly good example of his work. It’s nice to think that I might have walked past it during childhood visits to the Laing, when we staying with our grandparents in Newcastle.