Victoria Crowe

This is the first complete monograph on Victoria Crowe's work to date, and is written by the award-winning writer and art critic Duncan Macmillan. With great depth and perception, the author considers the work of one of Scotland's leading painters from her earliest days at Kingston School of Art, through to her most recent commissions, setting it in the wider context of artistic thought. Her full range of work is covered, including still lifes, portraits, self-portraits, landscapes and interiors. The insightful writing, accompanied by lavish illustrations of Victoria Crowe's work, gives readers access to the paintings as they relate to the different eras of her life. The artist's studies at the Royal College of Art, her move to Scotland, the Kittleyknowe years and A Shepherd's Life exhibition are all discussed, as are Plant Memory (a series resulting from her visiting scholarship at St Catharine's College, Cambridge) and the impact of her travels abroad, particularly her time in Italy. In the latter part of the book, the focus moves to the artist's most recent work, including a reflective series of Venetian pictures and a significant group of luminous winter landscapes. We also learn about a unique commission for a series of paintings specifically designed for a Scottish house, and a current project with Dovecot Studios for a tapestry based on a painting from A Shepherd's Life', thus a testament to the enduring quality of her work. Victoria Crowe studied at Kingston School of Art from 1961-65 and then at the Royal College of Art, London, from 1965-68. She worked as a part-time lecturer in the School of Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art for thirty years while developing her own artistic practice. She is a member of the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) and the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolours (RSW). She has shown widely throughout the UK and undertaken many important portrait commissions. Her work can be seen in university and government collections, national galleries, and a large number of private collections worldwide. She is represented in Edinburgh by the Scottish Gallery and in London by Browse and Darby. Victoria was awarded an OBE for Services to Art in 2004, and from 2004-07 was a senior visiting scholar at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. In 2009 she received an Honorary Degree from the University of Aberdeen and in 2010 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. AUTHOR: Duncan Macmillan, HRSA, FRSE, is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Fine Art at the University of Edinburgh. He was Director of the Talbot Rice Gallery (1979-2004), Curator of the University of Edinburgh Galleries and Collections (1988-2002), and has been an art critic for The Scotsman since 1994. He is an award-winning author and his previous publications include: Painting in Scotland - The Golden Age (1986); Scottish Art 1460-1990 (1990); Symbols of Survival - The Art of Will MacLean (1992); The Paintings of Stephen Campbell (1993), Scottish Art in the Twentieth Century (1994); Elizabeth Blackadder (1999); and F.C.B. Cadell: The Life and Works of a Scottish Colourist 1883-1937 (2011). ILLUSTRATIONS: 181 colour