Christmas

at The Fine Art Society 4 - 23 Dec 2020 Edinburgh Read more

Nicole Farhi

Couples 20 Nov - 23 Dec 2020 London 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 were... Read more

Victoria Orr Ewing

The Light Between 20 Nov - 23 Dec 2020 Edinburgh 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

Robert Powell

Phantom Things 30 Oct - 28 Nov 2020 Edinburgh 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 London 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

Twenty Twenty

25 Sep - 14 Nov 2020 Edinburgh 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

The Wilkie Tradition

25 Sep - 24 Oct 2020 Edinburgh 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

Simple Forms

The language of British Abstraction 3 - 25 Sep 2020 London '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 Edinburgh 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

A History in Small Pictures

31 Jul - 29 Aug 2020 Edinburgh A survey of Scottish art over three centuries. Diminutive paintings by, amongst others, John Clerk of Eldin, Sir David Wilkie, Alexander Nasmyth, Sir Henry Raeburn, Sam Bough, John MacWhirter, E A Walton, Anne Redpath, William Crosbie and John Houston. Together they bring together aspects of Scottish culture, geography and identity.... Read more

British Realism

1900-1935 30 Jul - 1 Sep 2020 London 'Realism is a fine, manly, practical word that appeals to everyone as safe and satisfactory' -- Wyndam Lewis Since the emergence of Post-War abstraction realism in art, particularly in Britain, has often been written off as retrograde and the anthethis to Modernism. Yet the Realist movement itself, which started in... Read more

John Byrne

Welcome To My World 19 Jun - 25 Jul 2020 Edinburgh John is an epiphany baby, born 6th January 1940. 2020 began, then, with a notable birthday and an unreasonably busy calendar that included a new theatre production, in conversations, a television profile, a legion of requests that are patiently accepted and a gallery show. Much of it to celebrate him... Read more

James McNeill Whistler

The Original Printmaker 19 Jun - 25 Jul 2020 London James McNeill Whistler was one of the first and most illustrious artists to show in our gallery’s history. The Fine Art Society was the scene of one of his greatest triumphs, the exhibition he called Arrangement in White and Yellow held in 1883. It was a revolutionary show conceived by... Read more

Ron Sandford

114°E / 1°W Hong Kong to Shetland 14 May - 13 Jun 2020 Edinburgh Hong Kong and Yell: two halves of The Fine Art Society’s first exhibition of drawings by Ron Sandford (b.1937). Island life from two geographically and culturally distinct and distant places are united in Ron’s appreciation of the commonplace – or common place – both richly detailed microcosms. In the mid... Read more

Hang 3 //

Scottish Painting 1950-1980 19 Mar - 25 Apr 2020 Edinburgh The decades following WW2 saw artists take new forms of artistic expression. The order and rationalism that had preceded was rejected. Painting became more gestural and instinctive; this was achieved through the application of paint not just from brushes but palette knives and any other means that gave the artist... Read more

John Halliday

The Monkey Palace 6 - 28 Mar 2020 Edinburgh Now in his late 80s, John Halliday lives two doors away from where he was born in Kirkcudbright. Life and travels have taken him far and wide to complete this circle. His childhood in the town brought him in contact with the likes of Jessie M King, her husband, EA... Read more

Hang 2 //

Scottish Painting 1900-1940 13 Feb - 14 Mar 2020 Edinburgh The years 1900 to 1939 saw Britain move from a period of relative innocence and comfort to the trauma of war. After World War 1, artists retreated to more traditional, figurative art. The brutality of war encouraged them to step away from the radical. Amongst the artists whose pictures have... Read more

John Clerk of Eldin

1728-1812 13 - 29 Feb 2020 Edinburgh A prominent figure in Enlightenment circles, John Clerk began producing prints in his 40s with the encouragement of English landscape painter Paul Sandby and architect Robert Adam. The three took drawing trips together having met through the business dealings of their families. Clerk produced sets of etchings that were sold... Read more

The Print Show

13 Jan - 8 Feb 2020 Edinburgh The Print Show presented an annual exhibition of Scottish printmaking, featuring three centuries of etchings, drypoint, woodcuts and lithography. Exhibited artists included: Sir Muirhead Bone, James Mcbey, Gerald Brockhurst, Robert Sargent Austin, Charles Tunnicliffe, William Wilson, Ian Fleming, James Mcintosh Patrick Read more