Spend November with me and modern Scottish art and architecture! I will be taking part in a Wilhelmina Barns-Graham book launch, giving talks about Mabel Pryde Nicholson and Fountainbridge Library and will be contributing to a John Duncan Fergusson symposium.
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham The Glaciers Book Launch
First up, on Thursday 14 November 2024 at 6.30pm, is the Edinburgh launch of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: The Glaciers. Edited by Rob Airey, Director of the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust, it has just been published by Lund Humphries. I have contributed the essay ‘Into the Vortex: The Glacier in Wilhelmina Barns-Graham’s Work’. The other texts are by art historian and curator Martin Kemp, the Trust’s Archivist Tilly Heydon, the glaciologist Peter Nienow, the poets Alyson Hallett and Holly Corfield Carr, the film-maker Mark Cousins, Rob Airey and the Trust’s Collection Manager, Cassia Pennington. Information about the event and a link to book a free place can be found here.
oil on canvas, 92 x 73cm
National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh:
On Long-loan from a Private Collection
Mabel Pryde Nicholson: An Artist of Edinburgh Talk
Continue to spend November with me by coming to my talk ‘Mabel Pryde Nicholson: An Artist of Edinburgh‘ at the Scottish Arts Club at 12 noon on Saturday 16 November 2024. I shall be discussing Mabel Pryde Nicholson (1871-1918) in the context of her Scottishness. She grew up in the centre of Edinburgh’s artistic, literary and theatrical circles, not least due to being the sister of the artist James Pryde and the great-niece of Robert Scott Lauder and James Eckford Lauder, who were both members of the Royal Scottish Academy. I shall also be examining the opportunities for women to become professional artists in late nineteenth-century Scotland and the fortunes of Nicholson’s Scottish female contemporaries. Her relationship with the Scottish art world will be explored, concluding with the post-humous inclusion of three of her paintings in the Royal Glasgow Institute’s Annual Exhibition of 1920 and the works by her now held in Scottish public collections.
Image: Capital Collections, Edinburgh Libraries and Museums and Galleries
The Publisher, the Architect and the Sculptor: The Building of Fountainbridge Library Talk
Third up, at 6pm on Wednesday 20 November 2024, I will be giving the talk ‘The Publisher, the Architect and the Sculptor: The Building of Fountainbridge Library‘ in the library itself. Fountainbridge Library is an icon of modern Scottish architecture and opened in 1940. Funded by the publisher Thomas Nelson Jnr, designed by the architect John A. W. Grant, and with friezes on its façade by the sculptor Charles d’Orville Pilkington Jackson, it was a purpose-built, state-of-the-art library and community hall which embodied the most far-sighted concerns of architects, librarians and social policy makers of the inter-war period. External and internal photographs and press coverage recording the progress of this major civic commission show the planning, construction and successful completion of a library which opened during the blackout, and which still serves the community today. The talk is part of Edinburgh Printmakers’ Edinburgh900 project 900 Stories in Print.
John Duncan Fergusson at 150 Symposium Paper
You can complete your November with me by attending the John Duncan Fergusson at 150 symposium at Perth Art Gallery on Saturday 23 November 2024. Organised by the Scottish Society for Art History and Culture Perth & Kinross, with support from the John Duncan Fergusson Art Foundation, the symposium will explore Fergusson’s work and legacy. I will be giving the paper ‘Beyond the Scottish Colourists: John Duncan Fergusson at 150’. My fellow speakers include Amy Fairley, curator of the current permanent collection exhibition Fergus and Meg: A Creative Partnership in the Gallery, Susan Moore, author of a forthcoming monograph about Fergusson’s partner Anne Estelle Rice and Richard Emerson on Fergusson’s role in his wife Margaret Morris’s Summer Schools.
You can find out more about Wilhelmina Barns-Graham in this article, about Mabel Pryde Nicholson here, Fountainbridge Library in this feature and John Duncan Fergusson in this news feature.
