WILLIAM JOHNSTONE | RETROSPECTIVE

William Johnstone: Foreboding. Courtesy of Duncan R Miller Fine Arts

In his 1967 book The Company I Have Kept, the poet and author Hugh McDairmid called his friend William Johnstone (1897-1981) ‘the bad boy of Scottish art’ and ‘not only the most important but the only important living Scottish artist’.

While the latter sentiment might seem a little harsh on some of his compatriot counterparts, Johnstone was certainly an important force in the rise of Modern British art, an early adopter of Modernism after coming under the spell of Picasso and co in Paris after WW1.

He moved further into abstraction after WW2, following a year in the United States (1949-50), during which he was influenced by the Abstract Impressionists, his work becoming largely about the materiality of paint. Although he lived much of his working life in London, Johnstone’s work was largely inspired by the Scottish Lowlands (where he was brought up, in a farming community) and particularly the tension between humanity and nature. 

His influence spread far beyond the art he produced. Johnston was the principal of the Central School of Arts and Crafts between 1945 and 1960 (after a spell at Camberwell) and he instilled a policy of hiring artists – the likes of Eduardo Paolozzi and Alan Davie – as teachers. He was also the author of Creative Art in England (1936), which did much to spark a revival of interest in Anglo-Saxon and Celtic art.

There is a retrospective of Johnstone’s art, including 35 oil paintings and works on paper, composed between 1925 and 1980, on the Second Floor of Saatchi Gallery throughout British Art Fair, curated by Duncan R Miller Fine Arts.