Anne Redpath

There are two letters from Anne Redpath to Ruth Borchard, both in June 1964, from her home in Edinburgh. In the first, she writes: 'I am submitting to the charm of your scheme (or your letter) and am sending you next week [...] a self portrait in oil of me about 20-odd years ago, but it isn't bad (I think) either as a picture or as a likeness to me then.

'I have always vaguely liked the idea of keeping it as I don't do myself or anyone close nowadays being always exceedingly busy on other pictures but your collection seems interesting + I should quite like to belong to it. Hope you like the picture.' On the side of the letter is a crucial afterthought: 'The date would have to be clearly marked as I shouldn't like anyone to think I paint myself 20 years younger.' The second letter consists of details regarding the delivery of the picture by carrier to London, but contains a critical point: 'Have marked the date on it!' Ruth paid twenty guineas for the work - now inscribed as having been painted in 1943.

Anne Redpath is not especially known as a portraitist; her still lifes, landscapes, Mediterranean village-scapes and church interiors are more renowned. The human figure occurs relatively infrequently in her oeuvre, but when she chose to portray people she did so, characteristically, with great sensitivity. Yet it could be said that each of her still-life interiors - without people but showing, for example, flowers, ceramics, folk objets d'artcollected on travels or in Edinburgh antique shops, arrayed on flat tabletops, against textiles patterned with floral and geometric motifs – is a form of intimate self-portrait, evoking aspects of herself. In 1961, she spoke about her predilection for still-life as a form of subtly revelatory autobiography, saying that her still-life ingredients 'are a mixture, but they have all been chosen by me, and therefore they live together, I think, quite happily and, well, they all have memories, too, you see. Memories of places that I have been, and also of my life. I read once, long ago, that you can't have art without memories, and you can't have memories without experiences, and I feel that all the things that I have, that I lie amongst, have both memories and experiences, and are part of my painting.'

There is a description of Anne by a friend, Bill Garrard, from 1951 when they went together on what he called 'an exploratory visit to Spain'. He recalled her being besieged by curious local onlookers as she drew and painted outdoors. 'There were always social difficulties – Anne looked like Queen Victoria, black hair correctly parted in the centre and bun behind, but she wore colours! In the cafés on the pavements, the waiters had to defend her with the soda-water siphon.' In the 1943 picture, we see Anne looking indeed rather like Queen Victoria, appearing somewhat austerely sensitive (the linear down-turn at the corner of the mouth accentuating the strained impression). The blue and pink tones of the scarf help lighten and joyously refresh what otherwise might seem on first inspection a somewhat severe self-image.

Close observation dispels any initial impression of severity. The glossy, flattened black hair actually contains around the parting and to the right some hints of blue and pink paint, as though even its dark sobriety was shot through with 'colours'. The eyes themselves, steady in their gaze are disquietingly dissimilar: her right eye appears slightly milky in tone, her left eye darker and more penetrating. Perhaps one reason Redpath did not paint so many portraits (relatively speaking) is that at Edinburgh College of Art (where she studied from 1913-17) she had reacted against the overly academic draughtsman's skills promulgated and encouraged there (she later recalled her teacher ruthlessly insisting – when a girl model fainted from lack of rest - 'Give her a drink and stick her up again!') But the fine draughtsmanship underlying her 1943 self-portrait, delineating the contours of her nose, cheekbones and jawline, is tersely elegant.

The beauty of the figure - her mottled black-brown top having a massive, almost mountainous quality - in sharp relief against the scumbled beige and white background (suggestive rather of chill wintry light and flurries of snowflakes) and above all the subject's concentrated, unsmiling repose, may bring to mind the subtle tonality and enigmatic reserve of Gwen John's portraits. Yet there is an additional element here, one of robustly approaching the world, meeting it head on. By all accounts, as well as being an explorer of interior reality, Redpath was an outgoing personality, as a sociable hostess in her Edinburgh flat, and among family and friends, including many painters, notably William Crozier (1893-1930) , William Gillies (1898-1973), John Maxwell (1905-1962) and William MacTaggart (1903-1981). She has been described as 'not just a painter, but as someone infinitely kind and humorous, and an hilarious raconteur'. Her self-portrait brings together seemingly disparate but inextricable parts of herself, her love of colour and liveliness as well as an air of contemplative serenity and dignified forebearance, against a background of rare sensitivity.

The National Galleries Scotland Collection contains a chalk on paper self-portrait (c.1940) by Redpath with a condensed palette of blacks and greys– her hair scraped back, forehead creased with melancholy strain, it seems, her jacket buttoned up to the neck – in which the impression of gravity is accentuated even further. The dating of this self-portrait – at a time early on in the war when Redpath's colourful life in France (in Pas-de-Calais from 1920-24, and then for another ten years in the south of France) would likely have seemed a distant memory tragically cut off by world events – perhaps accounts for the uncharacteristically bleak air of this drawing.

This self-portrait was illustrated in Art News & Review (22^nd March  1952). The text explains that here 'Anne [looks] like Queen Victoria; black hair correctly parted in the centre' – but the gaze of her large, dark eyes and the set of her unsmiling lips are mysteriously compelling.

Redpath was born in 1895 at Galashiels, Selkirk. Her father, a pattern maker, was renowned for designing sober tweeds with threads of vivid colour running through them. She said years later, 'I do with a spot of red or yellow in harmony of grey what my father did in his tweeds.' As a student at Edinburgh College of Art, she won a travelling scholarship; staying in a pensione in Florence, where 'the walls were […] rough white plaster', on which was hung 'a gay orange and red rug', she intensely admired 'the lovely bit of colour which had far more intensity because it was against white'. On this trip, she was also greatly inspired by fourteenth-century Sienese frescoes.

In 1920, Redpath married the young architect James Michie and they settled first in St Omer in the Pas de Calais region of France, where Michie was an architect for the War Graves Commission, and where she painted many landscape watercolours. As such, she was following in the quite recent paths of the Scottish Colourists, notably F.C.B. Cadell (1883-1937), whom she admired especially, but also J.D. Fergusson (1874-1961) and S.J. Peploe (1871-1935). Yet, for most of the fifteen years she lived in France, her time was devoted to bringing up her three children – her first two sons were born in St Omer: Alistair Michie (1921-2008) – who went on to become a talented painter and sculptor - and Lindsay Michie; her third son David Michie (1928-2015) – later to become renowned as a Scottish Colourist artist – was born in St Raphael in Provence. From 1925 James Michie was employed as private architect to Charles Thomson, a wealthy American inventor (the Michie family resided in the boathouse of his villa at Cap Ferrat).

It was only when the Michie family returned to live in Scotland in 1934 (following Thomson's decline in fortunes after suffering losses in the financial Crash of 1929), by which time her marriage was effectively over, that Redpath was able to return to painting full-time. She started painting the Scottish Border villages, and in 1942 and 1946 the Isle of Skye inspired many works. She later spoke about the period spent in France: 'Whatever I did for my home was creative but I never ceased to be a painter – I have a painter's mind. Were the choice to be made again, there would not be any division in my mind: my family would come first. However, I always had a rather guilty conscience. I always knew I would come back to painting.'

Patrick Bourne, her biographer, has written: 'It was not until 1942 that her painting found the confidence and brio that her brilliant student days had promised.' Her 1943 self-portrait can thus be seen partly as a self-reckoning at a time when she was coming again creatively into her own, and had already embarked upon painting many marvellous still-lifes. These included several masterpieces of domestic intimacy and informality conjured up with a distinctive colourism – notably The Red Slippers (c.1942), Still Life with Orange Chair (c.1944) and The Pink Table (c.1948).

In such pictures, the vivid subjects of the titles co-exist in medieval fresco-like perspective alongside such details as a vibrant Oriental rug, a wooden chest painted by Redpath herself in folk art style, even a copy of the contemporary Studio art magazine, its green, avant-garde-styled cover coolly depicted on a deliciously pink tabletop.

When the human figure occasionally appears in her pictures, its presence is quite often subtly and obliquely evoked: a friend with the back of her head to us looking out at an opulent landscape in Window in Menton (1938), for example.

In his Foreword to the catalogue of 'Anne Redpath. Fifty. A Celebratory Exhibition' (marking the fiftieth anniversary of her death at the age of sixty-nine) at the Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh in the summer of 2015, Patrick Bourne noted that 'Redpath painted occasional portraits throughout her career but they are always of people close to her and she never appears to have considered portrait painting as a source of income.' Her c.1920 portrait of her husband James Michie (Fleming Collection) is notable for its acuity of observation - the subject's handsome, enigmatic-appearing visage seen  at a slight tilt, rendered with a supple realism that contrasts with the rougher, more spontaneous manner in which his upper body is portrayed.

Her 1944 portrait of her then sixteen-year old son David (Collection: Hawick Museum, Wilton Lodge), in a pale Fair Isle sweater whose opalescence is matched by the chill, slightly pinkish light of the sky beyond pale bluish, distant hills above an Edinburgh city view, is a fine colourist study of both the wiry resilience and agitated yearning of adolescence; the boy's face is remarkable for its striking yet subtle greenish-yellow hues. The c.1947-48 portrait of her son Lindsay Michie (Fleming Collection) shows a relaxed young man in his early twenties with lowered countenance – thoughtful rather than morose in this case. The simple red and black, criss-cross design of his shirt's open collar against his greyish jacket (with light mauvish undertones) is characteristic of Redpath's gift of doing 'with a spot of red or yellow in harmony of grey what my father did in his tweeds'.

In colourist terms, her portrait of Eileen in a White Chair (c.1949; Collection Ferens Art Gallery, Hull), a girl possibly in her late teens, is quite daring, even experimental – but it an 'experiment' that works well. In monochrome painting in shades of grey (partly suffused with light pink accents, especially for the girl's flesh tones), it depicts the black-haired girl's softened features, her bare arms and crossed legs (as she sits in a big, comfortable winged armchair reading a book) as well as an adjoining small round tabletop still life of teapot, cup and saucer and little jug with one or two flowers visible, all arrayed on a white cloth. The only strong colours used are the reddish pink for the book cover and a similar tone along with yellow as part of the dazzlingly tasteful design of the girl's long summer dress. The picture's predominant grisaille palette conveys an impression of the subject's imaginative retreat; the book’s vivid colour - as well the tones of the patterned dress - helps evoke something of the vibrancy of the girl's interior life at that moment.

The 1996 'Anne Redpath' exhibition catalogue by Philip Long (published by National Galleries of Scotland) reproduces several fine black-and-white photographs of the artist, ranging from one from c.1915 – Redpath in the life class at Edinburgh College of Art – her dark hair scraped back - to several of her in her Edinburgh studio in the mid-1950s. In one multi-faceted example, c.1956, we see her looking rather austere and detached, her grey hair swept back, her face reflected in the glass of a picture on the wall, below which stands the 1944 portrait of her son, David. Another photograph (c.1957) shows her at work on a canvas, her hair catching the light, her face gravely absorbed. A further photograph from the same period, depicts her by the side of – and also reflected in – a richly ornate Venetian mirror. Her corresponding painting, Self Portrait in a Venetian Mirror (c.1956; Collection Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, mima) contains many aesthetically alluring details: two lemons in a turquoise dish on a small round table; flowers in an opalescent vase alongside a delicate pink tea cup and plain yellow ceramic pot on the mantelpiece; and, above all, the mirror's pearly opulence complemented by the nearby description of Anne's scraped-back grey hair gleaming in daylight. The artist’s tranquil presence here – in a simple, stylish, pale blue-grey top with several pearly buttons up to the neck – with her partly shadowed head at a slight tilt as she contemplates the tabletop still life (which she is clearly painting - as she stands with a paintbrush in her left hand) – is dispassionately presented in this  exquisitely mirrored portrayal.

By the mid-1950s, Redpath was painting Mediterranean landscapes and village-scapes. Her final works depicted, notably, tabletop still lifes, Corsican hillsides, what she called 'black and white and grey, and really quite sinister' Spanish villages 'with little bleak figures [...] and white buildings', and Portuguese church interiors. These pictures shows intensifying tendencies towards abstraction (as Patrick Bourne has pointed out, 'the Action Painting of Jackson Pollock and the Tachsime of Antoni Tàpies were strong influences in her final years. Both artists had rejected subject for complete abstraction which Redpath never did.') and vibrantly impastoed, multi-layered, palette knife-scoured surfaces. In 1961, she wrote that in Lisbon she was 'overwhelmed by the church of St Roque [built in the late 16^th century, with a number of chapels  sumptuously decorated in the ensuing years, it was the first Portuguese Jesuit church]. After this – in painting still life I couldn't paint it smooth any more. I had to paint it as if it were some kind of encrusted jewel [But] I don't think they will ever be completely lost in abstraction because I do feel so concerned about the things I paint whether they are houses or altars or just objects in a still life. When I paint cups on a table [...] they are now something more than cups [...] they are just like the houses in a landscape. They have a kind of strength about them which they didn't used to have. They are not so charming, but they are stronger, better, I think.'

She was elected a Royal Scottish Academician in 1952. There was a retrospective of her work at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh in 1996-97. Her paintings are in many public collections, including those of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and the Tate.

Ill health in her last years forced her to retire from a busy, enjoyable social life, and to concentrate on painting. Her final work seems to reconcile the outward and innermost parts of her nature – like a thread of wild colour running inextricably through white, darks and greys – in a wondrous new synthesis. Anne Redpath died in 1965.

- Text by Philip Vann, updated and revised from the first edition of Face to Face: British Self-Portraits in the Twentieth Century, 2004