Overview

Providing new evidence on the life and times of this Scottish painter, Andrew McPherson shows Gillies to be a modernist thinker. Including paintings never seen before, he reappraises his creative output, including the relationship of portraiture to still life, placing him firmly within not only a Scottish context but a British and European one too. Andrew McPherson has been researching the life, times and works of William Gillies for over twenty years. He has rethought the formative influence of his art of two World Wars, gender inequalities and the modernist crisis of meaning and belief.

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9781399518352

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Reviews

"""Published to celebrate both the 125th anniversary of his birth and the 50th of his death, this is a revelatory account of the life and art of the Scottish painter William George Gillies (1898-1973). Until now he has been considered a ruralist, a Neo-romantic and a traditionalist. This detailed biography dispels the myth of such interpretation and for the first time places him securely within the modernist canon. In his persuasive analysis Andrew McPherson reveals the tight relationship of Gillies's art to personal experience from the trauma of family history to the 'theatre' of war, both of which were counterbalanced by the attraction of new European art. McPherson reveals how Gillies's grief at the early death of his artist sister Emma became formalised through his art. A thorough and skilful analysis of selected art works identifies many signifiers of remembrance over time. This is a compelling book which closely interrogates art and in so doing not only repositions a modest and sensitive artist but also illuminates the nature of Scottish art in the central decades of the twentieth century."" -Elizabeth Cumming, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh"

Author Information

Andrew McPherson, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of Edinburgh.

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