Exhibitions by Scottish painters have been well received here in the past, so it is understandable that Suzanne Macdougald of the Solomon Gallery had the idea of organising a show featuring the work of several Scottish painters, including one long-resident here, Bob Lynn. However, she could hardly have anticipated the formidable line-up she eventually recruited. Seven Scottish Painters, open from Tuesday, features some of the most important Scottish artists to have emerged in the latter half of the century, including John Bellany, Elizabeth Blackadder and John Houston.
In the past, Scottish and Irish artists have faced similar problems, finding themselves in cultural milieu that functioned largely as English satellites, consigned by definition to the provincial periphery, with London as the centre. One recourse was to gravitate towards the centre, as artists from both countries have traditionally done and, to a lesser extent, continue to do.
Another recourse is to look beyond London, to Europe, and that is what many artists in both Scotland and Ireland did in the last century. The Scottish equivalents of those Irish artists labelled (purely for convenience) the Irish Impressionists formed the famed Glasgow School and provided the foundations for a strong, autonomous colourist tradition in 20th century Scottish art. By 1920, however, this tradition was in serious decline, together with the economic fortunes of Glasgow. As with Ireland, although for different reasons, a radical Modernist programme never took root and there is a relative conservatism to the mainstream of Scottish painting this century.
In the long run, however, it is arguable that this conservatism has been a boon rather than a disadvantage. For one thing, there is a virtually unbroken lineage of strong painters in Scotland throughout the century. It's a simplification, but not too much of a one, to describe them as often critical descendants of the Glasgow School. And of course, Glasgow has re-emerged as a centre of Scottish art, together with Edinburgh.
Scottish painters have usually found a ready audience here (as well as Lynn, William Crozier and Janet Pierce are resident here for all or part of every year). Some years ago, Bellany had a highly praised show in Kilkenny during Arts Week. Jorgensen Fine Art and the Graphic Studio Gallery have shown work by Barbara Rae (who is not in the Solomon show). Last year, June Redfern was one of the invited artists at Eigse Carlow. But, oddly enough, two of the key figures in contemporary Scottish painting, Blackadder and Houston, who are married, have not shown here until now.
Both have been influential, not solely through their work but also as teachers. There is a pronounced Japanese influence in Blackadder's wonderfully fluent landscapes and studies of plants and animals. This is apparent not only in the way she mostly dispenses with conventional perspective, but also in the spontaneity of her approach. A brilliant draughts-woman, she is a superb painter of plants, combining botanical precision with a sense of the plant as something living.
Houston, born in Falkirk, is an audacious painter of landscape with a flair for extremes of light and shade, intense colour and strong colour contrasts. He makes images with great vigour and attack, and does not go in for any decorative embellishment - but he can also be surprisingly sensitive to the nuances of atmosphere, perhaps because his work is very much grounded in a sense of place.
Bellany is a fine painter whose often autobiographical, allegorical compositions are strongly influenced by Max Beckmann. There is a celebratory quality to his work that has a great deal to do with his personal history, including his near-death in 1988, the year he received the liver transplant which gave him a new lease of life and seemed to sharpen his appreciation of everything around him. He comes from Port Seton, an East Lothian fishing village with a staunch Calvinist ethos, a background which may account for the way he is able to imbue a pictorial strategy that in other hands might seem merely decorative - even frivolous - with real gravitas.
Redfern also comes from a coastal, fishing background, Fife, Houston's home town. This provides the recognisable setting for her broadly brushed figurative compositions, usually sited along a shoreline and typically featuring stoical, introspective women, horses, buildings and boats. There is nothing naturalistic about her images, though, given her extremely elliptical, shorthand style of description and her liking for a harsh, astringent palette.
As the son of the renowned Scottish painter Anne Redpath, David Michie embodies the continuity of tradition. His paintings are gentle, nuanced descriptions of places and events.
The colours in Marj Bond's densely worked paintings have a jewel-like glow. Her use of colour, together with a liking for formal, stylised compositions, was strongly influenced by a stay in India. Colour is also central to Lynn's work, which has developed from boldly stated accounts of fishing port and countryside (in Ireland, where he has lived since 1981) to more abstracted, formalised compositions, still anchored, though, in his environment.
That is true of the work of all the painters in the show. But they are not obsessed by Scotland or Scottishness. It is striking that many of them have travelled and that, like their forbears, they have looked further afield than England for sources, finding inspiration in the Far East, for example. The Solomon show is a feast of painting, but more than that, it's also a useful primer in one of the central strands of Scottish art in the 20th century.
Seven Scottish Painters can be seen at the Solomon Gallery, Powerscourt Townhouse, Dublin, from Tuesday April 13th