Women Modern Masters at Edinburgh’s The Scottish Gallery seeks to look back as well as forward, celebrating major female artists throughout history

The exhibition revisits great names of the past, and presents less well known current painters.
Over the last hundred years, the exhibition history at The Scottish Gallery has included all major female Scottish artists, as well as the models, mistresses and muses for the Academy.
Christina Jansen, Managing Director of The Scottish Gallery, commented: “The Scottish Gallery’s positivity can be explained, in part, by a commercial pragmatism: for the collector, the gender of the artist is of little concern. In the 1920s, the art colleges were full of aspirant, creative young women understanding the new societal contract after WWI … These were heady days, not as yet undermined by the political correctness which today undervalues individual talent in favour of identity politics: if you were good enough, The Scottish Gallery would offer you a one woman show, not because it needed to fulfil a quota.”

Pat Douthwaite

The exhibition includes works by: Anne Redpath (1895 – 1965), Lily Cottrell (1896 – 1984), Winifred McKenzie (1905 – 2001), Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912 – 2004), Joan Eardley (1921 – 1963), Bet Low (1924 – 2007), Barbara Balmer (1929 – 2017), Mardi Barrie (1930 – 2004), Pat Douthwaite (1934 – 2002), Sylvia Wishart (1936 – 2008), Lil Neilson (1938 – 1998), Elizabeth Blackadder, Victoria Crowe, Kate Downie, Claire Harkess, Angie Lewin, Hannah Mooney, Emily Sutton and Frances Walker. Women Modern Masters strives to emphasise the individual commercial potential of each artist, making no apology in taking an exclusive curatorial position.

Anne Redpath, 1962

This exhibition replaces the previously announced exhibition of works by Jock McFadyen which has been postponed. McFadyen’s exhibitions at The Lowry, City Art Centre and the Royal Academy of Arts will still take place in 2020 – 2021.

Women Modern Masters
The Scottish Gallery, 16 Dundas Street, Edinburgh EH3 6HZ
Thursday 30th July – Saturday 29th August 2020

Joan Eardley, 1957
Hannah Mooney, 2018


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