20th CENTURY BOYS: A Memorial

Throughout our long history, the Royal Scottish Academy has honoured its recently deceased Academicians with a memorial selection in the Annual Exhibition. In 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic impacted upon all of our daily lives, our Annual Exhibition – the ‘yearbook’ of the Academy – found itself in a very unusual position. In an unbroken line since 1826, this show has been a mainstay of the exhibition calendar in Scotland. The closure of the Academy didn’t halt us though and the exhibition moved online for both 2020 and 2021. We look forward to it returning to the galleries in 2022 where it will continue to be accompanied by its online version.

The move online brought significant benefits in that it could reach a wider, and international, audience. The artists and their studios could be further explored and there was a greater opportunity for a far-flung audience to take part in events. We found, however, that this was not the platform to best honour our Academicians with memorial presentations.

So, today we celebrate the careers of a selection of five Academicians whom we have lost over the past 20 months. All are men and all are painters who have spent their working lives as artists and as educators.

This exhibition is but a snapshot of this energy - an opportunity to celebrate their terrific commitment to their art and their vision. We see the world through their eyes and these pictures are here for us to enjoy and deliver their story even after the artists are no longer here to tell us in words.

Although we have dipped into the rich resource of our own Collections to begin this grouping, the exhibition would not have been possible without the help and collaboration of the artists’ families. We extend a great thanks to all whom have sourced, researched, loaned and offered these works for the show.

I very much hope that you enjoy this selection of works by these artists. Sourcing the exhibition has been both a poignant and pleasurable experience. Memories of times spent with these artists have invariably given me time to ponder, smile and wonder at the just how fortunate I have been to have known them.

Colin R Greenslade, Director of the Royal Scottish Academy