Full Description
'This is the book I've eagerly awaited for almost a half century .Andrew McPherson's study of Gillies is nothing less than a game-changer, presenting a new and very different story about one of Scotland's greatest 20th-century painters' - Alexander Moffat
Shows how European modernism inspired Gillies to engage with universal issues of purpose, meaning and fate to produce idiomatic and unique works
Reveals an artist who informs and challenges the constitutive narratives of modernism in Britain
Shows how competition between Scottish and English nationalisms has shrouded Gillies in myth
Combines social, political, cultural, and art history to explain the emergence of Gillies as artist and modernist
Examines new biographical evidence on questions of sexuality, gender, mental and physical health, scepticism and faith
Providing new evidence on the life and times of this Scottish painter, Andrew McPherson shows Gillies to be a modernist thinker. Presenting paintings never seen before, he reappraises his creative output, including the relationship of portraiture to still life, placing him firmly within not only a Scottish context but a British and European one too.
McPherson has been researching the life, times and works of William Gillies for over twenty years. He has rethought the formative influence of his art of two World Wars, gender inequalities and the modernist crisis of meaning and belief.
Contents
Foreword & Preview
Life and Death, Violence, Irony, Sanity and Sex
The Countryman: Political Context
Kailyard and Kin
The Theatre of War
College
A Charter of Liberty: Early Years
Bohemian Edinburgh
Portraits
Still Lifes of the 1930s
Landscapes of the 1930s
Nie Wieder Krieg: Wartime Landscapes
Still Lifes 1939 - c1960
Oil Landscapes
Last Years
Politics, Patronage and later Landscapes on Paper
