Girl in Red

Born Galashiels and brought up in Hawick in the Scottish Borders, Anne Redpath studied at Edinburgh College of Art under Robert Burns and Henry Lintott. She won a travelling scholarship in 1919 and spent a year in Florence and Siena via Bruges and Paris and then returned to Hawick.   In 1920 she married the architect James Michie and from 1920-1934 they lived in Cap Ferrat, France, where their three sons grew up and Anne painted infrequently. On her return to Hawick in 1934 she started to paint intensively and she remained an extremely had working and committed artist until her death thirty years later.   Throughout the 1930s and 1940s she painted Border landscapes and studio interiors the latter mainly in oil and showing a debt to the French artists Bonnard and Matisse.   In 1949 moved to Edinburgh and in 1953 she bought a flat in London Street, which became an important meeting place for her artist friends. Sir Robin Philipson painted a fascinating record of one of these gatherings, which graphically illustrates her central position in artistic life of the day. Her reputation was by now firmly established: she was exhibiting regularly at Aitken Dott’s gallery in Edinburgh and at Reid and Lefevre in London. In 1952 she became the first woman painter to become a full member of the Royal Scottish Academy.   She travelled extensively throughout Europe during the 1950s, painting in Spain, Portugal, Corsica, the South of France, Venice and on Grand Canary. As a result her repertoire of subjects was widened to include hilltop villages and richly ornate altars. These late works are considered amongst her best. Together with Gillies and Maxwell, she was a central figure of the Edinburgh School.