Unseen Bellany paintings on show
UNSEEN paintings by the late great Scottish painter John Bellany will be unveiled this week in an exhibition which honours the Scottish Women’s Hospitals.
Several works by Bellany, who died in 2013, that have not been seen in public will be shown at the Scottish Parliament exhibition.
The show, John Bellany and the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, will look at the impact of the hospitals and their role across Europe in the First World War, the experiences of the soldiers in the hospital and the women who cared for them.
Scottish Women’s Hospitals were in allied countries, including France, Serbia and Russia during the war. Dr Elsie Inglis, the pioneering Scottish doctor (1864-1917), was instrumental in establishing the hospitals, in which 1,500 women served.
The hospitals were staffed almost entirely by female doctors, surgeons, nurses and support staff.
Dr Inglis was told to “go home and sit still” by the War Office when she initially offered a hospital to the British Army.
The Scottish Women’s Hospitals were partly funded by the women’s Suffragette movement as well as by donations from across the UK and beyond.
The paintings and drawings explore the subject of war, field hospitals, nursing and the experiences of the injured soldiers.
The subject of the hospitals often inspired the painter. Some of his most personal and acclaimed work was inspired by his own time in hospital.
His candid and affecting Addenbrooke Hospital series were made after a successful liver transplant at the Cambridge hospital in 1988.
Bellany’s paintings will be accompanied by a specially commissioned poem by Scotland’s Makar, Liz Lochhead.
The free exhibition is in the Scottish Parliament’s Main Hall and will run from Wednesday until April 16.