Modern Scottish Painting

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About the Book: 

To earn the name artist it seems clear that one must create something, must make something, be a ‘makar’.

In 1939, Scottish artist and sculptor J.D. Fergusson was commissioned to write a fully illustrated book on modern Scottish painting. The Second World War made this impossible and the first edition of Modern Scottish Painting was published in 1943 without illustrations. This new edition – edited, introduced and annotated by Alexander Moffat and Alan Riach – finally brings Fergusson’s project to fruition, illustrating the argument with colour reproductions of Fergusson’s own work.

Moffat and Riach frame Fergusson’s important art manifesto for the 21st-century reader, illuminating his views on modern art as he explores questions of technique, education, form and what it means for a painting to be truly modern. Fergusson relates these aspects of modern painting to Scottishness, showing what they mean for Scottish identity, nationalism, independence and the legacy that puritanical Calvinism has left on Scottish art – a particular concern for Fergusson given his recurring subject matter of the female nude.

Reviews: 

The manifesto of a major working artist, expressing his belief in, and commitment to, what modern Scottish art is for, could be, and should be, and also it is a critical appraisal of how modern Scottish painting, and painting in the modern world, has developed and reached the point at which it has arrived. FROM THE INTRODUCTION BY ALEXANDER MOFFAT AND ALAN RIACH

About the Author:

JOHN DUNCAN FERGUSSON was born in Leith in 1874. An artist and sculptor influenced by the Glasgow Boys and the French artists he met in Paris, he was one of the best known of the Scottish Colourists.

ALEXANDER (SANDY) MOFFAT RSA is an artist and teacher. Born in Dunfermline in 1943 he studied painting at Edinburgh College of Art. From 1968 to 1978 he was the Director of the New 57 Gallery in Edinburgh. In 1979 he joined the staff of The Glasgow School of Art where he was Head of Painting from 1992 until his retirement in 2005. His portraits of the major poets of the Scottish Renaissance movement now hang in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and his paintings are represented in many public and private collections including the Yale Center for British Art, USA and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.