The Fine Art Society

26/09/2024

Meet us at the this weekend. We are at stand 12.

Amongst the artists on show we have John Byrne, D Y Cameron, William Crosbie, Pat Douthwaite, Kenny Hunter, Gerald Laing, Iain Macnab, John Maclauchlan Milne, John McLean and more.

And we won the Best Curated Stand prize!

Saatchi Gallery, Chelsea
Thursday 26th: 11am - 9pm
Friday 27th: 11am - 9pm
Saturday 28th: 11am - 6pm
Sunday 29th: 11am - 5pm

06/06/2024

Gerald Laing – Myth & Muse
The Cult of Celebrity
now open in our Edinburgh gallery until 31 August

Over five decades Gerald Laing explored the cult of celebrity. He made the myth and mystery of stars his subject, elevating them to become his muse. Enigmatic and depersonalised through dot art and abstraction, their public image – disseminated through mass imagery – often belies tales of tragedy.

Laing’s first Pop image, Anna Karina, 1962, was painted while he was a student at St Martin’s School of Art. It was followed by Lincoln Convertible, 1963-64, created shortly after Laing’s return to the UK from the US during which time JFK was assassinated. During the 1970s Laing created a series of bronzes of his wife, Galina Vassilovna Golikova, as a model and muse.

In the early years of the 21st century, his interest in the mass media imagery was stirred again, and the lives of Kate Moss and Amy Winehouse were committed to canvas. As he did in the 60s and 70s, his technique depersonalises the subject and, by the end, renders them as remote as they were originally.

view the exhibition online at the link in our profile

31/05/2024

This June we will be part of the second edition of in Edinburgh from 7-30 June with the exhibition ‘Gerald Laing: Myth & Muse - the cult of celebrity’.

New Town Art Month is a month-long festival which celebrates the independent art galleries of Edinburgh’s New Town. The festival launches next Thursday 6th June, 6pm-8:30pm. RSVP at the link in our bio.

17/05/2024

03/05/2024

Thank you all who came last night to the launch of Bill Hare’s new book ‘Scottish Art and Artists in Historical and Contemporary Context’, a collection of essays and commentaries on the artists of post-war Scotland.

The book is available to purchase from here:
https://www.luath.co.uk/product/scottish-art-and-artists-in-historical-and-contemporary-context

For those who came to the talk, the video mentioned at the end featuring Bill’s interview to Sandy Moffat, can be found on the Friends of Edinburgh University Visual Arts page, at the link below:
https://youtu.be/iO4sw1rlCTM

26/04/2024

Art & Design 1950-2000 now open until 1st June.
Visit us in person or see the exhibition online and in our online shop.

16/04/2024

Join us in the gallery this week, on Thursday 18th & Friday 19th April, for a sale of books, prints, small pictures and frames.
In person only, no reserves, no price list available.

At 6 Dundas Street, Edinburgh, 18th & 19th April, 10am-6pm.

15/04/2024

Another corner of our gallery, part of the exhibition ‘Art & Design 1850-1950’.

In front of Ben Nicholson’s ‘Princess Textile’ (1946) are a steel and oak Typing desk designed in 1934 Wells Coates for PEL – Practical Equipment Ltd and a leather and tubular steel chair, also made by PEL.
On the desk, a Mary Adshead drawing (‘An Accident’, 1930) is lit by an original 1227 Anglepoise lamp designed in 1932 by George Carwardine.

Carwardine was an automotive engineer. In 1932 he was working on a new concept for the vehicle suspension system when he noticed that the spring mechanism he had just invented could be applied in other fields. Used in a task lamp, the springs would allow the pivoting arms to be positioned at any angle with the lightest touch. In 1934 he partnered with Herbert Terry and Sons who would manufacture and market the lamp. Since then, the Terry family have continued to oversee the Anglepoise style evolution for the last eight decades.

12/04/2024

“A Culinary Map of Great Britain”

In 1937 Mary Adshead (1904-1995) was commissioned by architect friend Oliver Hill a pictorial map for the restaurant of the British Pavilion at the 1937 Exposition Universale in Paris. The map shows over fifty traditional culinary specialties from different parts of Britain. It was painted on glass but the panel broke in transit. Only this annotated preparatory drawing remains. Adshead painted various other panels and murals for the British Pavilion.

03/04/2024

Inspiring Interiors from our current exhibition: a hand-knotted wool rug after a design by Gunta Stölzl placed at the bottom of our stairwell.

Christopher Farr, Plate 111 rug, 106 x 67 inches (270 x 170 cm)

This work was originally created on paper at the Bauhaus in the 1920’s. Gunta Stölzl is known for her textiles as well as being one of the few women to teach at the Bauhaus, and the only woman to hold a senior role in the faculty.

Our online shop features a selection of objects, lights and rugs. Visit us at the link in our profile.

28/03/2024

Happy Easter weekend! We hope it is a sunny one.

The gallery will be closed on Friday 29 March and Monday 1 April, but open to the public on Saturday 30 March, 11am-2pm.
We will reopen as usual from Tuesday 2 April at 10am.

These three oil sketches by George Leslie Hunter are part of our current exhibition ‘Art & Design 1890-1950’.

Click on the link in our profile to see the exhibition online and to purchase a selection of works directly from our website.

22/03/2024

Art & Design: 1890 - 1950

Our new exhibition opens tomorrow, 23 March.

Painting, prints, furniture, rugs, applied arts and Silver Studio textiles c.1890-1900.
Also included are watercolours by Derek Clarke RSA of Donegal and Connemara from 1938 and 1946.

Come visit us, there’s a lot to see.

21/03/2024

Joan Hills 1931-2024

Joan was the soft power behind the Boyle family. Our thoughts are with her family.

Back in 2009 we exhibited a group of works from the 1960s and 70s. Unconventionally working collectively as a husband and wife, son and daughter team, the Boyles’ work is wonderfully original; their innovative techniques and astonishingly realistic ‘earth studies’ provoking both fascination and controversy. These techniques are both highly celebrated and closely guarded, notoriously beginning with a specific area being chosen at random by the throw of a dart at a world map. The family then travel to this location and the surface of the area is then meticulously recorded, a series of studies made and eventually a resin cast taken; the whole site painstakingly replicated as a semi-sculptural fibreglass relief, completely accurate in colour and texture.

07/03/2024

Happy 100th birthday, Eduardo Paolozzi!

Here are some his most significant works which have passed through The Fine Art Society in recent years.

If you are in Edinburgh, the current show at is a must: ‘Paolozzi at 100’, at Modern Two, until Sunday 21 April 2024.

08/02/2024

The definition of Scottish Art is wide and draws in artworks and artists with many kinds of association with Scotland. The pictures in this show illustrate not just topography, for which Scottish art is best known, but culture too: daily life, farming, fishing and religion. Within them are observations of artists whose familiarity with their subject is the very essence of the work.
Hugh MacDiarmid put words to this in his poem, ‘Scotland’:

It requires great love of it deeply to read
The configuration of a land,
Gradually grow conscious of fine shadings,
Of great meanings in slight symbols,
Hear at last the great voice that speaks softly,
See the swell and fall upon the flank
Of a statue carved out in a whole country’s marble,
Be like Spring, like a hand in a window
Moving New and Old things carefully to and fro,
Moving a fraction of flower here,
Placing an inch of air there,
And without breaking anything.
So I have gathered unto myself
All the loose ends of Scotland,
And by naming them and accepting them,
Loving them and identifying myself with them,
Attempt to express the whole.

25/01/2024

Happy Burns Night!

This oil by George Harvey is titled after on one of Robert Burns’s most popular poems, ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and is one of a pair.

We twa hae paidl’d I’ the burn,
Frae mornin’ sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d,
Sin auld lang syne.

The seaman on the main mast gazes at the horizon longing for the years of his youth when the sea had not yet separated him from his childhood companions and a carefree life. The sharp lines of the ship’s mast add to the sailor’s seclusion and the sky’s pale blues and greys complement his melancholy. Sir George Harvey is best known for historical and religious paintings in particular the lives of the Covenanters in seventeenth-century Scotland.

The companion piece, ‘Auld Lang Syne I’, was illustrated alongside our work in ‘a book on George Harvey published in 1870, but its present whereabouts are unknown.

Sir George Harvey PRSA (1806-1876)
Auld Lang Syne II, 1856
oil on canvas, 23 x 30 in

17/01/2024

Charles Mackie (1862-1920), Bassano Bridge, c.1915
woodcut.

Also called Ponte Vecchio, Bassano Bridge was originally designed by the architect Andrea Palladio in 1569 and spans the River Brenta in the north-east Italian town of Bassano del Grappa. Over the centuries the bridge was destroyed three times and each time rebuilt according to its original Palladian wooden design.

The bridge became famous during WWI as it was crossed by the Italian Army on its way to the frontline, just a few miles from the town. Ernest Hemingway spent many days in Bassano and his experience there provided inspiration for his novel ‘A Farewell to Arms’. The bridge was destroyed for the third time in 1945 by a WWII bomb. When it was rebuilt in 1948, many of the workers were former members of the Alpini, the Italian Army’s mountain infantry. In honour of this and of the many Alpini who died in the wars, the bridge became known as Ponte degli Alpini.

Mackie’s love affair with Venice lasted between 1908 and 1914, cut short by WWI. He visited Bassano in 1911 and painted a watercolour of the bridge, now in the collection of Perth Museum & Art Gallery. This woodcut is based on the watercolour and was composed of 14 blocks which Mackie coloured individually and layered more than once. Because of this, each print is different from the others.
In the current exhibition ‘The Printmaker’s Art’ two impressions of Bassano Bridge are hanging side-by-side to highlight the differences. (closes 25 February).

Our print show is on until the end of January. The link in our profile will take you to the online show and shop.

12/01/2024

Our annual print show is now open in Edinburgh. This year’s exhibition focuses on British printmaking across the 20th century, with work by Gerald Brockhurst, D Y Cameron, Ian Fleming, Gertrude Hermes, Iain Macnab, Paul Nash, and more.

Works in the exhibition can be viewed in Edinburgh or purchased online at thefineartsociety.com (link in our bio)

We will be sending online orders following the end of the exhibition. For sales and enquiries, please contact us.