Forthcoming
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Avigdor Arikha
13 Sep - 1 Nov 2025 -
British Art Fair
Stand 19, Saatchi Gallery 25 - 28 Sep 2025 -
Shaun Fraser and Harry Morgan
Home 8 Nov - 23 Dec 2025
Past
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Spring
26 Apr - 7 Jun 2025 Read more -
Wartime
26 Apr - 7 Jun 2025 Read more -
Timorous Beasties x The Fine Art Society
14 - 22 Mar 2025 Join us for a week of art and design in collaboration with designers Timorous Beasties . This week-long event brings together wallpaper and art, featuring a curated selection of pictures from The Fine Art Society displayed on Timorous Beasties wallpaper—showcasing the exciting possibilities of blending art and design. The collaboration... Read more -
Works on Paper
1795 to the Present 21 Feb - 5 Apr 2025 Read more -
Vernal
21 Feb - 5 Apr 2025 Read more -
The Print Show
14 Jan - 15 Feb 2025 Read more -
Scottish Landscapes
14 Jan - 15 Feb 2025 Read more -
John Byrne
In the Studio 16 Nov - 23 Dec 2024 The Fine Art Society presents John Byrne: In the Studio at 6 Dundas Street, Edinburgh from 15 November to 23 December, with paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture by the inimitable John Byrne (1940-2023). Included in the exhibition are personal effects from the artist's studio with costumes, character designs and works... Read more -
Twentieth Century
16 Nov - 23 Dec 2024 Modern paintings, drawings, ceramics and textiles from the 20th century: Maxwell Armfield Robert Henderson Blyth RSA RSW William Crosbie RSA Pat Douthwaite Ian Fleming RSA RSW William Gillies RA RSA PRSW Gerald Laing Jennifer McRae RSA Austin Osman Spare Keith Vaughan Betty Blandino Robin Welch Althea McNish, and more. Read more -
The Extinction Collection
with Explorers Against Extinction 20 Sep - 19 Oct 2024 Daniel Beltrá, Bigert & Bergström, Richard Deacon, Jon Foreman, Andy Goldsworthy, Beverly Joubert, Michael Kenna, Eleanor Lakelin, Richard Mosse, David Nash, Michael Pinsky, Peter Randall-Page, Sebastião Salgado, Conrad Shawcross, Julian Stair, Emily Young Explorers Against Extinction has partnered with The Fine Art Society to exhibit a remarkable collection of work... Read more -
John McLean
Pleasure Garden 20 Sep - 9 Nov 2024 I work towards such an interdependence of parts that nothing could be added or taken away: a kind of absolute. When it happens, the eye and the spirit join up, just as the ear and soul do when you listen to a fine song. The Fine Art Society presents an... Read more -
Karen Lamond
Rubbish 20 Sep - 9 Nov 2024 Read more -
The Glasgow Boys
20 Sep - 9 Nov 2024 Read more -
Gerald Laing: Myth & Muse
The Cult of Celebrity 6 Jun - 31 Aug 2024 Over five decades Gerald Laing explored the cult of celebrity. He made the myth and mystery of stars his subject, elevating them to become his muse. Enigmatic and depersonalised through dot art and abstraction, their public image – disseminated through mass imagery – often belies tales of tragedy. Laing’s first... Read more -
Scottish Impressions
6 Jun - 31 Aug 2024 Our summer exhibition opens with an exquisite example of Pre-Raphaelite painting by Waller Hugh Paton. Sublime evening light suffuses the scene which takes in a moored boat on a loch in the Trossachs. Loch Achray, the subject of this painting, is only a couple of miles from Glen Finglas, the... Read more -
Art & Design
1950 - 2000 26 Apr - 1 Jun 2024 The Fine Art Society presents an exhibition of paintings, prints textiles and objects from 1950 to 2000 including a group of textiles by Trinidad-born designer Althea McNish, produced by Heal's and Hull Traders Ltd in 1958-1960. Artists include Edward Bawden, John Byrne, Waistel Cooper, Pat Douthwaite, Ian Fleming, John Houston,... Read more -
Art & Design
1890 - 1950 22 Mar - 1 Jun 2024 Read more -
Works on Paper
18th & 19th century 22 Mar - 20 Apr 2024 Read more -
Derek Clarke RSA RSW
Watercolours of Donegal and Connemara, 1938-1946 22 Mar - 20 Apr 2024 1912 Born Longthorpe, Peterborough, England 1927-1931 Educated at Ampleforth College, Yorkshire 1931-1935 Studied at Slade School of Art, London University 1937 Portrait painting in the Republic of Ireland 1938-1939 Lived and painted in Connemara 1939-1945 Served in Durham Light Infantry (commissioned) 1943-1944 Wounded in Tunisia and spend a year’s sick... Read more -
20th Century Printmaking
1 Feb - 16 Mar 2024 Read more -
Fine Shadings
250 Years of Painting in Scotland 1 Feb - 16 Mar 2024 The definition of Scottish Art is wide and draws in artworks and artists with many kinds of association with Scotland. The pictures in this show illustrate not just topography, for which Scottish art is best known, but culture too: daily life, farming, fishing and religion. Within them are observations of... Read more -
Frederick Burrows
Textile Designs 10 Nov - 22 Dec 2023 In their final year of training, students at design schools in the early 20th century made their own original designs having previously copied those of others. These designs for textiles and wallpaper by Frederick Burrows include studies of past masters such as William Morris and also his own prize winning... Read more -
Tim Pomeroy
Metamorphosis 10 Nov - 22 Dec 2023 The rhythm and patterns of nature form the core of our new exhibition of sculpture by Arran-based artist Tim Pomeroy. Pomeroy’s work heightens the organic geometries of the natural world, picking out and amplifying features. There is also a human element to Pomeroy’s sculptures, in which ideas of ceremony and... Read more -
Ron Sandford
The Everyday, Every Day 10 Nov - 22 Dec 2023 Personal vignettes from a life in Hong Kong, Shetland, and travels in Italy. Ron Sandford’s paintings communicate his lived experience of these culturally and geographically distinct environments through commonplace items, often before deftly captured backdrops. For 30 years, Ron illustrated books and newspapers and undertook large scale architectural commissions such... Read more -
George Jamesone
Painter of Kings 22 Sep - 4 Nov 2023 Charles I’s royal visit to Edinburgh in 1633 was met with an extravagant procession through the streets of the city, capped with a series of triumphal arches showing portraits of more than one hundred of the past kings of Scotland. George Jamesone (c.1587-1644) , who had established himself as a... Read more -
John Byrne
Blowin' Wild 22 Sep - 4 Nov 2023 Read more -
David Eustace: Thereafter
at the Signet Library 31 Jul - 13 Aug 2023 THEREAFTER at the Signet Library Parliament Square, Edinburgh EH1 1RF 10am - 4pm daily Free admission 'The only constant is change' -Heraclitus, Greek philosopher, c.500 BC Nothing remains as it was; the wind, a river flowing, a snowfall, the downpour of rain, sunlight on a landscape, the landscape itself. Likewise,... Read more -
History of the New
1 Jun - 29 Jul 2023 Our summer show brings together artists who found themselves working at the threshold of the modern. It was this self-awareness and urge to make it new that motivated them as individuals and, for some, brought them into movements. They rejected the received wisdom of their day in favour of forging... Read more -
Portrait Mode
1 Jun - 29 Jul 2023 To mark the reopening of the National Portrait Gallery this June, we're joining their celebration of all things portraiture in Portrait Mode . Galleries across the UK will be supporting the NPG by getting into Portrait Mode this summer to mark the reopening of the National Portrait Gallery on 22... Read more -
John McLean
Momentino 20 Apr - 18 May 2023 John was a truly lyrical abstract artist. He spoke of his work as like singing and dancing. To walk into a room of large-scale canvases by him is to be uplifted. In these small works on paper, the work is no less lyrical. Indeed, the media used lends the abstraction... Read more -
John Knox
The Light Sublime 23 Mar - 10 May 2023 An exhibition on the landscape and people of the West of Scotland will accompany the paintings by John Knox (1776-1845) Whether on a grand or diminutive scale, John Knox’s work depicts the epic spectacle of areas that, until the late 18th century, were not much visited. His subject was Loch... Read more -
From the Window
Online Exhibition 23 Mar - 6 May 2023 Artists have often depicted windows as portals between two realms: the real and the imagined, the intimate and the unfamiliar. It is a divide between a private place and a public space. With work by: Sir David Wilkie Walter Geikie Sir James Lawton Wingate Gerald Leslie Brockhurst Iain MacNab Sir... Read more -
Master Drawings New York
at Robert Simon Fine Art 20 - 28 Jan 2023 An exhibition of British and Scottish pictures from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and decorative art and furniture from the late nineteenth century: prints by James Whistler; a group of Glasgow Boys including Joseph Crawhall, Sir James Guthrie, and Arthur Melville; Scottish Colourists FCB Cadell and SJ Peploe; and an... Read more -
The Print Show
12 Jan - 17 Feb 2023 Read more -
The Wonderful World of James McBey
The Fine Art Society and Fettes Fine Art 18 Nov - 23 Dec 2022 Over a period of 50 years James McBey (1883-1959) would have studios in London, the US and Morocco. From the north-east of Scotland, where he was born and raised, he went on to travel extensively through Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, the States and central America. He produced a... Read more -
Waistel Cooper 1921-2003
Part Two 29 Sep - 18 Nov 2022 Read more -
True to Nature
Trees in Scottish Art 23 Sep - 12 Nov 2022 Trees, as an extension of the natural landscape, have been weighted with meaning throughout the history of art. Over time allegory gave way to the decorative and picturesque. The broader meanings and metaphors, however, remained. Our exhibition, starting with Alexander Nasmyth (1758- 1840), looks at paintings by Scottish artists and... Read more -
David Eustace: Memento Mori
at Gleneagles Townhouse 15 Sep - 9 Oct 2022 Following the exhibition in our gallery at 25 Carnaby Street, The Fine Art Society presents Scottish photographer and director David Eustace's Memento Mori at Gleneagles Townhouse in Edinburgh, from 15 September to 9 October 2022. The works are selected from Eustace’s most recent work responding to the perception and inevitability... Read more -
John McLean
Flare 22 Jul - 15 Sep 2022 We have produced an online viewing room for this exhibition. Please click here to visit. All works are available to purchase, for prices click 'Enquire' on the relevant artwork or contact us at edinburgh@thefineartsociety.com , +44 (0)131 557 4050. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2022, The Fine Art Society presents... Read more -
David Eustace
Memento Mori 30 Jun - 26 Aug 2022 “Many celebrate the cherry tree blossom in full bloom, while others grow disappointed when its flowers last only a few weeks, having waited so long to witness such splendour. Many celebrate not the bloom but the fragility and impermanence, so splendid, with anticipation and longing. They savour the moment, knowing... Read more -
The Glasgow Boys
30 Jun - 26 Aug 2022 When the Glasgow Boys rose to prominence in the 1880s, there was a sense of wonder at how a group of Scottish painters could hold such sway in the academies, salons and secessions of western Europe and North America. The group’s firm grasp on modernity brought a new lease of... Read more -
Will Maclean
Time and Tides 22 Jun - 16 Jul 2022 Concurrent with a major retrospective at Edinburgh’s City Art Centre, The Fine Art Society presents an exhibition of work by Will Maclean RSA. Maclean’s art serves as a tangible record and reference to culture, tradition, history and identity. A proponent of box construction art and the examination of found objects,... Read more -
John Byrne
Ceci n'est pas une rétrospective 25 May - 16 Jul 2022 “Paisley ‘buddies’ are, to a man and a woman, total oddballs. I should know, I’m one of them,” said John once. John’s formal life as an artist began aged 18 when he entered Glasgow School of Art. His mother said he started drawing in his pram. A year before entering... Read more -
Peter de Francia 1921-2012
4 Mar - 2 Apr 2022 Peter de Francia’s vibrant palette, dynamic compositions and evocative subjects reflect a style of painting that developed out of Picassos’ modernism. Some are dark and others funny. Best known for large-scale, sometimes violent depictions of combat and struggle, de Francia also gave attention to bucolic scenes of industry and recreation.... Read more -
Waistel Cooper 1921-2003
Part one 14 Jan - 25 Feb 2022 2021 marked the centenary year of artist-potter Waistel Cooper's birth. It seemed fitting that this was the moment The Fine Art Society, with its long history of dealing in decorative and applied arts, acquired a large single owner collection of Waistel's ceramics, with over one hundred pieces dating from the... Read more -
Norman McBeath and Edmund de Waal
Perdendosi 14 Jan - 26 Feb 2022 Perdendosi is a limited edition set of twelve hand-printed original black and white photographs by Norman McBeath RSA together with a direct and personal response to the photographs by Edmund de Waal. The title, Perdendosi, is a musical term meaning to gradually die away. The photographs are a study of... Read more -
Scotland
2 - 22 Dec 2021 For a small country, and one whose nation school was late in developing, the history of Scotland’s visual arts is particularly rich and diverse. After The Act of Union in 1707, the newly founded image of Great Britain provoked Scotland into defining its own identity. For many Scots, The Act... Read more -
Rituals
New sculpture by Tim Pomeroy 18 Nov - 23 Dec 2021 For Tim, ritual is a multi-layered term. On one level, the process of sculpting with its repeated, meditative motions of carving, smoothing, refining forms a sort of ritual, paying reverence to the material being worked. On another, notions of ceremony and mysticism are embedded in the forms these works take... Read more -
Barbara Balmer
18 Nov - 23 Dec 2021 Barbara Balmer’s pictures have a curious, even surreal, edge. In her instantly recognisable style, she took the everyday and simplified it into shapes and patterns filled with subtle gradations of colour. Balmer produced work over five decades. Her quiet, often large-scale oils, belie a poetry of mood. Their stillness gives... Read more -
James McBey
Etchings and Watercolours 11 - 26 Nov 2021 'He began at dawn; he spent hours at the end of the Rialto or at a table under the shady colonnade of the Chioggia Cafe in the Piazzetta making pen and ink notes of figures; or in a gondola on the canals or the Giudecca, making studies of shipping, of... Read more -
Through the Eyes of Anthony Whishaw RA
4 Oct - 26 Nov 2021 This Autumn, The Fine Art Society in London will be holding a large retrospective show of nonagenarian Royal Academician, Anthony Whishaw, with works from the 1950s through to the present day. They will map the artist's unique and mercurial vision across his long career, and recreate a sense of his... Read more -
Twenty Twenty One
30 Sep - 13 Nov 2021 The Fine Art Society presents an exhibition of work by Scottish artists, including: Allan Ramsay, Sir Henry Raeburn, John Knox, Sir David Wilkie, Patrick Nasmyth, David Roberts, Alexander Johnston, Sam Bough, Robert Herdman, Phoebe Traquair, Sir James Guthrie, Charles Hodge Mackie, Sir D Y Cameron, John Maclauchlin Milne, Sir James... Read more -
Nicola Tassie
Sweet Dreams 1 - 24 Sep 2021 Nicola Tassie is a ceramicist who initially studied painting at the Central School of Art. The crossover between the painted image and mark making in clay is a continuing preoccupation in her practice. Her wall-mounted ‘slip pillows’ playfully evoke a painted canvas on the wall, and present us with a... Read more -
The Glasgow Boys & Galloway Pictures
Harbour Cottage Gallery, Kirkcudbright 14 - 29 Aug 2021 Harbour Cottage Gallery Castle Bank, Kirkcudbright DG6 4LB Open 11am to 5pm Monday through Saturday 12pm to 5pm on Sundays In this, our 6th exhibition at Harbour Cottage Gallery and 43rd in Galloway, The Fine Art Society presents an exhibition of work by The Glasgow Boys, alongside pictures by 19th... Read more -
Summer
The Fine Art Society in London 1 Aug - 1 Sep 2021 'The Fine Art Society...where beautiful things are as plentiful as blackberries in September' In 1896, not twenty-five years after the company had opened, the arts editor of The Sketch penned this lovely phrase, describing our galleries as he was guided around admiring 'the many prints, curios and pictures there enshrined.'... Read more -
Owners of the Soil
Will Maclean and Shaun Fraser 29 Jul - 18 Sep 2021 The Fine Art Society presents Owners of the Soil , an exhibition of work by Will Maclean and Shaun Fraser, examining ties between land, identity and ownership through the early Scottish diaspora’s dual identity of colonised and coloniser. Maclean’s boxed constructions, collages and drawings recount the experiences of six residents... Read more -
Hylton Nel at Eighty
17 Jun - 30 Jul 2021 For the London Art Week 2021, displayed in our gallery on Soho's Carnaby Street, we are thrilled to present Hylton Nel at Eighty. Celebrating Hylton's 80th birthday year and over five decades working as an 'artist-potter', this exhibition is also significant as it marks his relationship with The Fine Art... Read more -
John Armstrong
An Artist's Themes 17 Jun - 31 Jul 2021 John Armstrong was an artist on the peripheries: unlabelled, and unallied to any artistic movement. His career is a peculiar, rich and varied one devoted to surface texture, allegory and symbolism. This small collection of works does not seek to demonstrate the breadth of Armstrong's career, but provides an insight... Read more -
The Glasgow Boys
10 Jun - 24 Jul 2021 When the Glasgow Boys rose to prominence in the 1880s, there was a sense of wonder at how a group of Scottish painters could hold such sway in the academies, salons and secessions of western Europe and North America. The group’s firm grasp on modernity brought a new lease of... Read more -
Disegno
17th to 21st century drawings by Scottish artists 10 Jun - 24 Jul 2021 The Fine Art Society in Edinburgh presents Disegno , an exhibition of drawings by Scottish artists from the 17th through 21st centuries. Draughtsmanship and linework are at the forefront of this exhibition, bringing together portraiture, landscape and historical subjects. With work by: David Allan, John Byrne, John Clerk of Eldin,... Read more -
Anthony Whishaw RA: Downstream Flood
4 - 6 Jun 2021 Anthony Whishaw RA claims no association with any particular art movement, stating instead that ‘each painting and work on paper makes its own separate demands’ . His work deals with explorations of memory and experience. On the edge of representation, varying in intent, scale and depiction, it seeks to reconcile... Read more -
Joan Eardley
6 - 29 May 2021 Unafraid to step outside societal conventions, from the outset, Joan Eardley developed a practice that challenged the norms of her time. The result was a defining Scottish style and a visceral account of people and place from Townhead in Glasgow to Catterline in Angus. To mark a centenary since her... Read more -
New Works
6 - 29 May 2021 The Fine Art Society presents an exhibition of newly acquired work from 19th and 20th century Scottish artists, including: Patrick William Adam, Cosmo Alexander, Phyllis Bone, Sam Bough, John Boyd, John Byrne, George Paul Chalmers, James Cowie, William Gouw Ferguson, William Miller Frazer, Jack Knox, Charles Hodge Mackie, John MacWhirter,... Read more -
Spring '21
12 Apr - 31 May 2021 Celebrating our return to the gallery on Carnaby Street, Spring '21 also revisits a grand old Fine Art Society tradition of holding mixed shows comprised of decorative arts and furniture alongside paintings, prints and sculpture. Held across two floors of our new Georgian townhouse gallery, Spring '21 represents the diversity of artwork that pass through the gallery from late nineteenth century artworks from James Whistler and Walter Greaves, to early twentieth century pictures by Walter Sickert the British Post-Impressiosnts Clare Atwood and Spencer Gore. Eric Ravilious' 1937 lithograph, Newhaven Harbour, leads our print offering, alongside other works on paper by Modern British Artists including Maxwell Ashby Armfield, Edward Bawden, Augustus Edwin John, Richard Eurich, and David Bomberg. Keith Coventry tops the bill with his Hertford Estate, 1996, which originates from a series of works that nod to late-twentieth century experiences of the modernist utopian approach to architecture of post-war Britain. Read more -
Coast
1 Apr - 1 May 2021 Find the online viewing room for Coast here. Scotland’s coastline is one which naturally inspires in its dramatic geography. Coast presents a journey around the shores of the Scottish homeland, from Shetland to Galloway, uncovering the artists and works which have helped shape Scottish artistic identity through the centuries. The... Read more -
Stuart Franklin
Narcissus 6 Mar - 17 Apr 2021 Find the online viewing room for Stuart Franklin: Narcissus here . Stuart Franklin (born 1956), member of Magnum Photos since 1989, has photographed some of the most important news events of the 21st Century – from the massacre at Tiananmen Square to the Intifada – as well as producing many... Read more -
Modern
18 Feb - 27 Mar 2021 20th century Scottish works of art, including Barbara Balmer, Robert Henderson Blyth, John Boyd, John Byrne, FCB Cadell, Ian Fleming, William Gillies, Jack Knox, William McCance, and John McLean. Read more -
Looking Out
18 Feb - 27 Mar 2021 Read more -
John McLean
Forza: works on paper 14 Jan - 13 Feb 2021 As a gallery whose offering spans the centuries, the radical shift in the way our spaces look with John’s work always gives us an uplifting and refreshing surprise. The Boston Pictures, our penultimate show with John, felt as if the marks were dancing along the walls; the effect on visitors... Read more -
John McLean
Forza: prints 14 Jan - 27 Mar 2021 As a gallery whose offering spans the centuries, the radical shift in the way our spaces look with John’s work always gives us an uplifting and refreshing surprise. The Boston Pictures, our penultimate show with John, felt as if the marks were dancing along the walls; the effect on visitors... Read more -
Printmaking
1920-1940 14 Jan - 13 Feb 2021 Read more -
Christmas
at The Fine Art Society 4 - 23 Dec 2020 Read more -
Victoria Orr Ewing
The Light Between 20 Nov - 23 Dec 2020 The light between charts the ever changing skies over Harris and South Uist. Churning, luminescent clouds dwarf empty land and seascapes. Painted last autumn, the glowing machair and heatherclad hillsides inject colour into otherwise dream like scenes. Large scale oils and smaller, quickly worked acrylics on paper make up Victoria... Read more -
Nicole Farhi
Couples 20 Nov - 23 Dec 2020 The Fine Art Society in London is delighted to announce Couples , an exhibition of miniature busts of the leading voices of 20th century female liberation that guide us through the history of women’s sexual emancipation, sculpted and painted over the last seven months by Nicole Farhi MRSS. These couples... Read more -
Robert Powell
Phantom Things 30 Oct - 28 Nov 2020 A highly scholarly body of work, Phantom Things both intellectually and visually identifies the oddly dystopian future we face as a result of our constant need to collect and consume. In this, Robert’s second solo exhibition with The Fine Art Society, his singular voice draws attention towards our obsessions with... Read more -
Twenty Twenty
2 Oct - 14 Nov 2020 The Fine Art Society is now almost 145 years old and has survived two world wars, depressions, a financial crash and, most recently, a global pandemic. The decision to relinquish our original building on New Bond Street was a sad one, but necessary. With the slate wiped clean, we have... Read more -
The Wilkie Tradition
25 Sep - 24 Oct 2020 Scottish pastoral life became a literary focus at the close of the 18th century in the poetry of Burns, Ramsay and Fergusson. This, combined with an emerging availability of engravings after the Dutch and Fleming masters, encouraged artists in Scotland to look closer to home for their subject matter and... Read more -
Twenty Twenty
25 Sep - 14 Nov 2020 Fra Giovanni Giocondo, a late 15th, early 16th century priest and scholar who designed the bridge at Notre Dame said, 'The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness could we but see -... Read more -
Simple Forms
The language of British Abstraction 3 - 25 Sep 2020 'The creative spirit is one, indivisible goal, and the greatness of a civilization rests on achieving a creative unit. Unity does not mean, however, uniformity as each artist should be the expression not only of a common spirit but also of a personality... so much more meaningfully the more unconsciously.'... Read more -
Hang 4 //
Modern Scottish Pictures 1 - 19 Sep 2020 Celebrating the variety of 20th century Scottish Art, this selection of works captures modern perspectives of Scottish identity. In the face of global societal and technological change, the artists’ focus on the natural is evident, from Marzaroli’s photographic captures of traditional Scottish pastoral life, to Jennifer McRae’s latest work West... Read more
