We’ve been to the New Era exhibition of Scottish Modern Art 1900-1950 at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern Two.)

It’s not quite as good as the previous exhibition True to Life (for which I see some of the links to the paintings are no longer working) but there is still some good stuff there.

More so in the first two galleries. The pictures became darker both in tone and appearance as the galleries wore on.

Stanley Cursiter’s “The Regatta” is particularly striking with its bold slabs of colour:-

Cursiter’s “Rain on Princes Street”:-

J D Fergusson is more usually reckoned a colourist but though not an official war artist he was allowed to paint Portsmouth Docks during the Great War.

Another evocation of war is in Eric Robertson’s “Shellburst”:-

So too does Keith Henderson’s “Camouflage Hangars and Gas Gong”:-

The caption for Edward Baird’s “Unidentified Aircraft over Montrose” is odd as it says the bridge at the lower left has since been replaced by a suspension bridge but the one depicted is clearly exactly of that type:-

William McCance’s “Study for a Colossal Steel Head” is very modernistic:-

A couple of weeks age we revisited the True to Life Exhibition at Modern Two, (Scottish National Gallery Of Modern Art,) Edinburgh.

I’ve left this a bit late as the exhibition is only on for a few more days now. Its full title is True to Life, British Realist Painting in the 1920s and 1930s.

I found this to be much more enjoyable than the Beyond Caravaggio exhibition recently finished at the Scottish National Gallery (see also here.)

The first picture in True to Life, though, David Jagger’s “Conscientious Objector”, would not have looked out of place at that Beyond Caravaggio exhibition. It exploits light in much the same way as those did. This is apparently a self-portrait:-

“By the Hills” by Gerald Leslie Brockhurst features on the True to Life Exhibition catalogue cover though for me it’s a bit too sharply delineated. The artist was said to have used lipstick to paint the lips here:-

Another such too sharp picture was Meredith Frampton’s “A Game of Patience”:-

As with the David Jagger painting above Edward Baird’s “Dan Cross” also looks as if it could leap off the canvas. I feel as if I know this person:-

Keith Henderson’s The Harbour Crowd is another fine example of the capture of light. As I recall this painting was one of the exhibits in the Palace of Arts at the Empire Exhibition, Scotland, 1938. There was a black and white reproduction in the relevant souvenir booklet.

Some of the paintings in “True to Life” stretched the definition of realist somewhat.

Though it does contain figures (including the artist) “The Deluge” by Winifred Knights seemed to me to be at least influenced by Vorticism:-

Nora Russell by John Downton captures the impatient aspect of the early adolescent schoolgirl very well. I get the impression she didn’t really want to be painted:-