Bridging the gender art gap

FESTIVAL season may not be the same this year, but there are skeins of it everywhere in Edinburgh, from the giant Hello flags fluttering from the city’s flagpoles to the International Festival’s televised “opening” night event and the Book Festival’s online author talks.

There are even, if you know where to look, festival shows – the ghost of what was meant to be. So it is at The Scottish Gallery – or Aitken Dott, as it was founded in 1842 – which has decided to burst out of lockdown in style and put on its pre-planned Art Festival show – by appointment only, in these pandemic times – along with an online series of short talks and events, in a celebratory microcosm of what might have been, city-wide.

It is, of course, easier to do this as a commercial gallery, which is essentially a retail establishment that makes money from the art on display rather than rely on public funding. But The Scottish Gallery also has a fine pedigree of artists, as shown in this all-female take on their Modern Masters series, showcasing the artists whom they have exhibited in the past century or so.

There are the usual enticing big mid-century names here for those who’ve saved up their pennies during lockdown, from Joan Eardley to Wilhelmina Barns-Graham alongside far less well known ones too, and all the better for it.

That, indeed, is the crux of this show: that women artists over the centuries have been ignored, dismissed as amateurs, allowed their tilt at the art world, much as the rare

AN LANNTAIR, SKETCHBOOK PROJECT

Stornoway’s An Lanntair has, along with all the country’s other indoor arts venues, been closed for the last few months but next week it enters the first phase of reopening and will welcome visitors to the ground floor where their new exhibition, the An few who made it as composers were, until they were married off into obscurity.

Until the 20th Century, it was a rare woman who could, financially or socially, fend off a prospective husband for the sake of her art, much less her personal inclinations.

But, as The Scottish Gallery is keen to point out, not everyone in the art world ignored or belittled women artists, although it was an institutional trait, from art schools to the galleries themselves.

The Scottish Gallery’s own books show their first female exhibitor to have been landscape painter Mary GW Wilson in 1903, although there may have been others and, whilst no-one emerges unblemished from the 19th and 20th centuries, there is a formidable list here.

On show, there is A Wave, a superb energy-filled oil from Joan Eardley produced in her Catterline period, painted on board in the heart of a storm one anonymous night in the Aberdeenshire village.

Here too, there are elements of the cityscapes in pastels from her time in

Lanntair Sketchbook Project, will be on display, subject to all the usual bounds of hand sanitizing, masks and distancing – a small price to pay to wander inside again, although you’ll have to wait another month or so for the cafe and the cinema.

Created entirely during lockdown, the inspired Sketchbook Project has been produced with

100 of the island’s residents, all of whom were sent a sketchbook by the gallery, with daily email prompts for drawing. Some posted their

Glasgow, and are typical of her distinctive blocking and smudging of colour.

Catterline appears again in the work of Lilian Neilson, who joined Joan Eardley in her studio in the small north-eastern village and stayed after her friend’s death; and then there are

responses online as the lockdown went on, sharing their ideas and drawings. Others waited until the endpoint, all posting back their sketchbooks for this exhibition, which will also display many of the online offerings alongside the physical books themselves.

If some had an artistic background, many did not but were perhaps simply interested in drawing, spending time considering the theme for each day and putting down their response on paper and experiencing the joys of “success”, the quiet, reflective seascapes of Hannah Mooney, a recent graduate of Glasgow School of Art and perhaps the youngest artist in the exhibition.

Elsewhere, there are the industrial bridgescapes of Kate Downie, the idiosyncratic visions of Pat Douthwaite and her female forms and the trees and reflective studies of Victoria Crowe. Barnes-Graham, whose modernist output evolved throughout her lifetime, is represented here by an early St Ives oil and the later, ongoing abstractions, geometries and forms that would define her career.

On, again, to the ink-wash drawings, pastel cats and distinctive botanical watercolours of Elizabeth Blackadder, the vitality and humour of the watercolours and prints of Emily Sutton’s still lives and the elegant observation of Angie Lewin.

There are works from Barbara Balmer, Anne Redpath, Bet Low, Frances Walker, Mardi Barrie, and many more recent – some to discover, some to rediscover, some to meet in online zoom chats, or hear discussed in the substantial series of 10-minute online lectures.

This exhibition is, of course, the view from one gallery, and has no pretensions to being a thorough survey, but it is no less interesting for that.

The figures and stories of the artists behind many of these works, particularly those of the mid-century, provide the interest here: artists working in an environment where women still did not hold equal footing with men in society, yet triumphed artistically in spite of this, even if those triumphs were not, in many cases, recognised until much later in – or after – life.

In this sense, too, there wasn’t really a need to qualify the title of the exhibition, which somehow makes it seem an adjunct to a male series, and the exact opposite of the intention. Masters will do.

Modern Masters Women, The Scottish Galllery, 16 Dundas St, Edinburgh, 0131 558 1200, www.scottish-gallery.co.uk Until Aug 29, Tues-Fri, 10am-6pm (by appointment only); Sat, 11am-1pm (walk-ins welcome)

even if a response didn’t quite live up to the ideas behind it. Most enjoyed the challenge, the frustrations, the inspiration, the absorption in something that took them out of the challenges of lockdown. As such, these fascinating sketchbooks are a diverse and joyful snapshot of an island at a very unique time.