I am delighted that my essay, ‘The First Women of the Royal Scottish Academy’ has been published on the Academy’s website today.
It looks at the eight ‘first women’ of the Academy, from Christina Robertson (1796-1854) being elected the first Honorary Member in 1829, to the election of Joyce W. Cairns (b.1947) as the Academy’s first female President in 2018. The essay can be read here.
An abridged version, ‘Pioneering Women at the Royal Scottish Academy’ has also been published on the Art UK website. You can read this here. For more on this project please see this news feature.
I will be publishing a blog, ‘Four of the First: Women at the Royal Scottish Academy’ on this website on Saturday 28 November 2020, to mark the second anniversary of Cairns becoming the Academy President.
If you’re interested in the Royal Scottish Academy, you might like to attend a lecture I am giving about it next year – details can be found here. If you’d like to read my Art UK stories about the Scottish Colourists F. C. B. Cadell (1883-1937) and S. J. Peploe (1871-1935) you can do so here and here.
