Elizabeth Blackadder

Dame Elizabeth Blackadder
Flowers on an Indian Cloth
Birth name	Elizabeth Violet Blackadder
Born	1931 Falkirk, Scotland, United Kingdom
Nationality	Scottish
Field	Painting; printmaking

Dame Elizabeth Violet Blackadder, DBE, RA, RSA (born 1931, Falkirk)^[1] is a Scottish painter and printmaker. She is the first woman to be elected to both the Royal Scottish Academy and the Royal Academy.

In 1962 she began teaching at Edinburgh College of Art where she continued until her retirement in 1986. Blackadder worked in a variety of media such as oil paints, watercolour, drawing and print making. She attended Glasgow Print Studio where she worked with print makers to produce etchings and screen prints of flowers. In her still life paintings and drawings, she considers space between objects carefully. She also paints portraits and landscapes but her later work contains mainly her cats and flowers with extreme detail.

Her work can be seen at the Tate Gallery, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York,^[2] and has appeared on a series of Royal Mail stamps.^[1]

Education

A former pupil of Falkirk High School, she donated one of her paintings to the school on the occasion of its centenary in 1986. She studied at both the Edinburgh College of Art^[1] and Edinburgh University where she graduated with first class honours in 1954. Blackadder studied early Byzantine art while at university, where she was influenced by William Gillies, Penelope Beaton and Robert Henderson Blyth, as well as by her lecturers.

Influence and inspiration

During the 1950s she was awarded many travelling scholarships and travelled widely on the Continent. She painted landscapes in Italy, Greece and Yugoslavia. She also showed more experimental work in the 50’s which showed the influence of American artists Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.

In the 1960s she developed her interests in still life while continuing with her love of landscape by painting landscapes in France, Spain, Portugal and Scotland. During her travels to France she became more aware of the artist Henri Matisse and because of this influence she ended up lightening up her palette. In the 60’s Blackadder acquired a growing reputation for her paintings of flowers, Flowers on an Indian Cloth being a notable example.

In the 70’s she gained an interest in Japan and Japanese artistic traditions and she started using Japanese paper for her water colour paintings with the background being left blank.

In the 1980s she visited Japan on a number of occasions and many of her paintings at the time showed the influence of these trips.^[2]

Elizabeth Blackadder also travelled to the America. Souvenirs of her travels would appear in many of her paintings.

Honours

She was appointed an OBE in 1982, promoted to DBE in 2003. In 2001 she was appointed Her Majesty’s Painter and Limner in Scotland.

She has been awarded honorary doctorates by four universities.^[1]

Family

In 1956 she married painter John Houston. He died in 2008 .^[3]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d} "Elizabeth Blackadder DBE, RWA, RA, RSA, RSW". Royal West of England Academy. http://www.rwa.org.uk/eblkadd.htm. Retrieved 24 December 2010. 
2. ^ ^{a b} "Elizabeth Blackadder". Gazetteer for Scotland. http://www.scottish-places.info/people/famousfirst877.html. Retrieved 24 December 2010. 
3. ^ Packer, William (2008-10-03). "John Houston: Painter of the postwar Scottish school who found his truest subject in the landscape". The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/oct/03/art.scotland. Retrieved 2008-10-07. 

External links

• Glasgow Print Studio, Elizabeth Blackadder. Works for sale.

Persondata
Name	Blackadder, Elizabeth Violet
Alternative names	Elizebeth
Short description	Dame Elizabeth Violet Blackadder
Date of birth	1931
Place of birth	Falkirk
Date of death
Place of death