2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Work by one of Scotland's best loved contemporary artists on show
The exhibition, Elizabeth Blackadder and the Poetry of Memory, is on show by appointment at Lyon & Turnbull's Glasgow showroom on Bath Street until Friday, June 20.
Gillian Raffles was one of the few women to own and run her own gallery in London's hugely competitive 'art strip' of Cork Street in Mayfair. She set up the Mercury Gallery in 1964 as a space for both emerging artists and for the more established.
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The gallery also championed overlooked figurative artists, helping to establish the art world positions of figures including Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Alfred Wallis.
Raffles' most enduring professional relationship was with Blackadder, who was the first Scottish woman artist to be a fully elected member of both the Royal Scottish Academy and Royal Academy, London, and the first woman, to be made Her Majesty's Painter and Limner in Scotland.
Mercury Gallery held 14 solo shows of the artist's work every two years, from 1965 to 1998, with the two women carefully avoided inflating prices, ensuring accessibility for collectors.
Raffles once said of her quietly famous client: "You never read about Elizabeth in the gossip columns or hear her work is selling for record prices... but I don't think she has any regrets."
Katie Hannah, of Lyon & Turnbull Glasgow, with works by Elizabeth Blackadder (Image: Julie Howden) The new exhibition also includes the work of Blackadder's husband, John Houston, a successful and much-loved artist in his own right, exploring the impact travel had on their work; most notably showcasing their passion for Japan.
Although the Mercury Gallery was one of London's most significant and enduring private galleries of the second half of the twentieth century, Raffles expanded to Edinburgh in August 1982, opening a branch on The Mound in the heart of the Capital.
The Edinburgh gallery provided a vital platform for Scottish artists and reinforced Raffles' commitment to supporting figurative art beyond the London art scene by showcasing a diverse range of works, including paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, with a particular emphasis on Scottish artists.
Gillian Raffles closed the Mercury Gallery in 2001, but continued to work with artists on selling and promoting their work from her home in Essex. Her Mercury Gallery archive is now in the safekeeping of the Tate archive.
Gillian Raffles died, aged 90, in November 2021. Elizabeth Blackadder died in August 2021, aged 89.
