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Item Description

ARTIST: Beatrice Huntington (1889-1988) Scottish
TITLE: "Portrait Of A Red Haired Lady
SIGNED: lower left
MEDIUM: oil on canvas
SIZE: 68cm x 60cm inc frame
CONDITION: very good
DETAIL: The Scottish artist Beatrice M. L. Huntington (1889–1988) enjoyed a long and varied career as a painter and is best known for her insightful portraits, characterised by a strong sense of design and an intuitive use of colour.
Her approach to painting was ever-evolving: throughout her long and fascinating life, which spanned a century and bore witness to the advent of the modern era, she remained indefatigably committed to her development as an artist and to 'containing and realising the big-ness of it all', as she herself described it in a letter to a friend in 1977, when at the age of 88 she was still refining her approach to form and colour.
The daughter of an eminent St Andrews doctor, Beatrice grew up in affluent surroundings – an imposing townhouse on St Andrews South Street both her father's surgery and the family home. A precocious talent for both music and art led her, perhaps unusually for a girl at that time, to pursue her studies abroad. In 1906, the year she turned 17, she went to Paris to study drawing and painting and in 1911, after an evidently successful formative period in Paris, she continued her studies in Munich, attending a private art school where she apparently flourished.
By the 1920s, Beatrice's own identity and path as an artist were clearly defined. Her marriage to the painter William Macdonald in 1925 created a unique artistic partnership and cemented her place within the Scottish art scene of the 1920s and 1930s, particularly in Edinburgh where Macdonald was already well established and a close friend of Scottish Colourists F. C. B. Cadell and Samuel Peploe. This is illustrated by surviving correspondence and in particular by a characterful portrait of a debonair William Macdonald by Cadell, dating from the mid-1920s.
Macdonald's particular affinity for the arid landscapes of southern Spain had earned him the nickname William 'Spanish' Macdonald. Beatrice shared his love of travel and together they explored the Continent, returning frequently to the French Riviera and to southern Spain, taking as their base, for a time at least, the picturesque Mediterranean fishing village of Cassis in the South of France, a favoured haunt of the Colourists.
The couple moved in artistic milieux both at home and abroad, also spending time in Kirkcudbright in Galloway. Their time painting together in Spain culminated with a joint exhibition in 1928 at Messrs Watt and Sons, Dundee, entitled 'Pictures of Spain'.
Sometime after the First World War, Beatrice returned to Scotland, taking a studio near her family home in St Andrews. She became an active member of the Dundee Art Society and in 1920, joined the Society of Scottish Artists. Whether influenced by her experience in Paris and perhaps her continued connections there, or through her association with Macdonald, Beatrice's style shifted significantly in the early 1920s to show a clear Modernist influence and her most intense period of experimentation. Moving away from her impressionistic approach of the previous decade, she explored a starker stylisation and an austerity of design which was apparently informed by her understanding of Cubism.

BUYER NOTIFICATION:
Glass & Glazing: As per our Shipping Terms (found in the shipping tab below) we do not post glass to prevent the high likelihood of transit damage and also for handlers safety- replacement glass costs just a few pounds and can be easily slipped into the picture on arrival where applicable (i.e. prints & watercolours).
Frames: Because of the fragile nature of picture frames, all frames are offered free with the painting. You are welcome to ask questions about the frame condition before buying but we cannot accept returns or requests for 'part refunds' because a frame arrives with some existing damage not sustained in transit.