E capital talent

2,000-plus works for Edinburgh School paintings as part of her painstaking research for the exhibition, which took close to six months to prepare.

“This was an area of art history I really wasn’t familiar with so it was a good opportunity to get my teeth into something new,” she explains.

“I started looking into our database to figure out how many works we had by artists who’d been to Edinburgh College of Art and gone back and taught there. I had to decide which works told the story best and I also wanted to represent each of the artists as best as I could.

“The way they’re hung on the wall kind of moves on from that, so that it makes sense as you walk round.”

“I think it’s the first time in several decades that we’ve had an Edinburgh School exhibition,” adds Janice.

“There are a few paintings that’ve only been out very briefly in other exhibitions over the years and we also took the opportunity to display a newly acquired painting by William Gillies, which was a bequest we received last year.

“It’s the first time it’s been displayed in public and it’s important when people are donating works to the collection that they see that they do get out there and that they’re enjoyed.

“The Gillies painting’s in beautiful condition and it’s a joy to put something like that up.”

Buckhaven-born Houston is A Brush With Colour’s sole Fife representative. “We have a good handful of his works on display,” says Janice.

“They include a pair of still-lifes which sit nicely together and which complement the other still-life paintings within his generation. I’ve also chosen a couple of his landscape paintings which I felt illustrated his love of colour and very loose and expressionistic style.”

However, it is a Redpath depicting a hillside village in Italy that is Janice’s personal favourite. “The painting that jumped out at me and which gave the exhibition its title is called Dolce Acqua.

“When I looked at it in the museum store I thought it was the one I wanted everyone to see first when they come in.”

They were handing on traditions and passing on knowledge

ht: William’s painting of Anstruther dating from 1946.