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I often wondered whether the fact that he rode a fast powerful motorbike, accounted for the strong rhythmic lines of walls and fields in his paintings. At other times one sensed an inner stillness in the artist, enabling him to take insignificant bits of landscape detail – a scree slope, a winding hedgerow, village gable-ends – and turn them into pictorial magic. Other Scottish artists of his generation seem to receive more than their fair share of fashionable acclaim south of the Border. In Scotland, Gillies’ paintings need no hype to recommend them. He made us see his beloved Lothian and Border landscape through his eyes and heart, and enriched our lives accordingly.
John Busby RSA RSW SWLA (1928-2015)
Sir William Gillies is still highly underrated in Modern British terms. Born in Haddington, he trained and taught at Edinburgh College of Art, and did the latter as principal. He was a great influence on many of the next generation of the Edinburgh School. He himself studied in Paris with Andre Lhote and absorbed, variously, the work of Munch, Matisse, Braque and Bonnard. Still life and landscape oils tend to be composed studio pieces of subtle complexity. Watercolours are lyrically observed renderings of the Scottish Borders based on decisive pencil or pen drawings or for larger works, executed alla prima. Gillies had a long and fruitful relationship with The Scottish Gallery which continues in the secondary market.
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