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On first sight it may appear rather surprising that arguably the finest collection of Scottish art in private hands used to be located in the offices of a London merchant bank rather than in Scotland. Visitors to the company had the impression that they are walking into an art gallery as every available wall space was hung with paintings. Today the collection comprises of oils, watercolours and sculpture, with paintings dating from 1770 to the present day, although the bulk is 20th Century art.

In 1968 Flemings, the former merchant bank, moved into new London offices and David Donald, one of the directors, suggested that it would be a good idea to purchase a few paintings in order to brighten up the many bare walls. The only guidelines he was given by the Board were that, in view of the company’s Scottish origins - Robert Fleming was born in Dundee in 1845 - the paintings should be by Scottish artists or of Scottish scenes by any artist.

Until about 1980 Scottish art was very under-rated in terms of British art. Collectors outside Scotland were relatively few and prices reflected this. David Donald was able to buy quality paintings by artists such as the Scottish impressionist William McTaggart, the Glasgow Boys, and the Scottish Colourists for sums which today seem very low. He was also able to buy two paintings, Lochaber No More by John Watson Nicol (1856-1926) and The Last of the Clan by Thomas Faed (1826-1900), which have become the most famous images of the Highland Clearances.

By the 1980s Scottish painting was becoming better known beyond the boundaries of Scotland. Prices increased rapidly, particularly for the works by the Scottish Colourists. In the late 1970s a good Peploe could be purchased for under £5000. In 1988 Peploe’s Girl in White sold at Christie’s in Glasgow for £506,000, a world record for the artist. The Fleming Collection is noted for it outstanding examples of work by the Colourists, many of which were loaned to the Scottish Colourist exhibition at the Royal Academy, London and Dean Gallery, Edinburgh in 2000.

The Collection was never regarded as an investment, but rather as a means of promoting a pleasant, stimulating and sometimes challenging environment for both staff and visitors alike. At the same time the Collection aimed to foster Scottish art and encourage young Scottish artists. Undoubtedly, much of the success of the Collection stems from the fact that it has been built up, at any one time, by one person, or two at the most, not by a committee; committees rarely agree on what should be bought and end up buying everyone’s second or third choices!

Following the announcement of the sale of the bank, the Fleming Collection was sold in April 2000 to a new charitable foundation, endowed by the Fleming Family, called The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation. The Foundation acquired premises in Berkeley Street , London where it converted an empty retail space into a gallery named The Fleming Collection. The gallery opened to the public in January 2002 and holds four exhibitions of Scottish art annually. Over the years the gallery has brought public collections to a London audience, exhibitions have been held from the Fergusson Gallery, Perth and Kinross Council; City Art Centre, Edinburgh; McManus Galleries and Museum, Dundee; The National Galleries of Scotland; Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow. Exhibitions surveying the work of artists such as DY Cameron, William McTaggart, Edward Baird and James Pryde have taken place and new research on these artists has been published by the Foundation. Annually an exhibition will be drawn from the permanent collection focusing on a single theme, genre or period. Often exhibitions curated by The Fleming Collection tour to other museums and galleries.

The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century

Three major figures dominated Scottish painting in the opening decades of the 19th century. Henry Raeburn (1756-1823) established himself as the leading portrait painter in Edinburgh soon after his return from study in Rome in 1786. Alexander Nasmyth (1758-1840) was the leading landscape painter. David Wilkie (1785-1841) was an outstanding exponent of domestic and, later, historical genre, with an exceptional gift for observation of character.

However, it was not until well into the 19th century that there emerged a Scottish school of painting in terms of an identifiable Scottish style. Until then Scottish painters were influenced by art in Rome or London rather than by a native style. All too often they felt that to be successful they had to move to London, which was the principal source of patronage. It was not until 1852, when Robert Scott Lauder was appointed as co-Director of the Trustees Academy, the Government school of art and design in Edinburgh, that the first genuine school of Scottish painters began to emerge. Scott Lauder's inspiring personality and teaching were powerful influences on his students and his nine years at the Trustees Academy mark a watershed in Scottish painting. One of his most outstanding and original pupils was William McTaggart (1835-1910). McTaggart was an exceptional painter of landscape and seascape. His early work was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites, but gradually his technique became looser and he developed an impressionistic style, apparently unaware of similar trends on the Continent. His later painting can be described as almost expressionistic.

The Fleming Collection contains five small watercolour sketches by Wilkie; a number of oils by McTaggart including The Village, Whitehouse; A Stormy Highland Scene by Nasmyth and Dr. Alexander Lindsay of Pinkieburn by Raeburn. In addition, Flemings have fine oil paintings by John Watson Nicol (1856-1926) Lochaber No More and Thomas Faed (1826-1900) The Last of the Clan, scenes depicting the Highland Clearances, as well as a number of fine watercolours and oils by other Victorian artists.

The Glasgow School

During the final two decades of the 19th century Glasgow was nearing the peak of its industrial and commercial prosperity and confidence, culminating in two International Exhibitions in 1888 and 1901. During the same period there was a remarkable flowering of painting in Glasgow, which became the base for a group of young artists who later gained renown throughout Europe and North America as the Glasgow Boys. They were a loose-knit band of artists, congregating in the winter at the Glasgow studio of one of their number, which bore the nearest resemblance to a Paris atelier to be found in Scotland. In the summer they travelled widely, painting in groups at various locations in Scotland and England and abroad in France, Spain, the Mediterranean, the Middle East and Japan. They were stimulated by the painting of Jules Bastien-Lepage, Courbet and the Barbizon artists in France and the Hague School artists in Holland. The young Scottish artists shared an enthusiasm for realism and painting in plein air. Their work was characterised by a vigorous handling of paint and a bold use of colour. They rejected the academic values of the artistic Establishment in Edinburgh and its highly finished sentimental and anecdotal paintings.

International recognition came in 1890, when the groups work was shown in London and in Munich. Successful exhibitions followed in a number of overseas cities, including Berlin, Vienna, Chicago, Philadelphia and New York and their work was purchased by a growing number of art galleries abroad.

The Fleming collection owns a number of fine examples of leading artists of the Glasgow School, including George Henry (1858-1943), John Lavery (1856-1941), Edward Atkinson Hornel (1864-1933), William York Macgregor (1855-1923), Arthur Melville (1855-1904), James Paterson (1854-1932) and Edward Arthur Walton (1860-1922).

The Colourist Tradition

During the last quarter of the 19th and the first quarter of the 20th century Scottish artists looked to Paris, not London, for inspiration. The work of the French Impressionists and of Cezanne, Matisse and the Fauves was a great influence on them, much more so than their English contemporaries. This was particularly true of four painters - Samuel John Peploe (1871-1935), Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell (1883-1937), George Leslie Hunter (1877-1931) and John Duncan Fergusson (1874-1961) - who later became known as the Scottish Colourists. They inherited their painterly style from William McTaggart and the Glasgow Boys, all four having a great feeling for the qualities and possibilities of paint. All were attracted by the lively artistic life of Paris, spending various periods in that city. Manet was an early influence. Later, they developed a love of colour, adopting the gestural, highly-coloured style of Matisse and the Fauves. Unlike the majority of the Glasgow Boys however, the later works of the Colourists are as good or better than their early paintings. Their art had a significant influence on succeeding generations of Scottish painters.

The successors to the Colourists were the artists now known as the Edinburgh School, although they regarded themselves as individuals rather than a group. The leading members were William Gillies (1898-1973), Sir William McTaggart (1903-1980) - the grandson of the earlier McTaggart - John Maxwell (1905-1962) and Anne Redpath (1895-1965). All had been students together at Edinburgh College of Art and all, with the exception of Crozier who died at an early age, later joined the College's teaching staff. They all spent varying periods in France, assimilating to a greater or lesser extent what was going on in French painting at that time. Their subjects were mostly landscape and still-life, executed in the painterly style of the Colourists, characterised by their use of rich colour and the free handling of paint. Sir Robin Philipson (1916-1993), as a painter and teacher, was a link between the Edinburgh School and the younger Edinburgh artists of today.

The Present Day

Scottish art today is a complex blend of native and external influence. It is made up of a number of distinctive, but interrelated strains.

The tradition of painterly style and decorative colour, exemplified by the landscapes and still lifes of the Edinburgh School, provided the next generation of artists with a strong base from which to develop, albeit modified from time to time by outside influences such as American abstract expressionism or oriental art in a number of individual instances. This particular strain of Scottish art is seen in the painting of artists such as David McClure (1926-1998), John Houston (b.1930) and Elizabeth Blackadder (b.1931).

However, the Edinburgh tradition also provided artists with something to rebel against. Early in his career John Bellany (b.1942) rejected the tradition of belle peinture in favour of the realism and expressionism of North European art. He sought subject matter of more consequence than the landscapes and still-lifes of the Edinburgh School and turned to figure painting.

A further strain lies in the work of older painters such as William Gear (b.1915), Allan Davie (b.1920) and Eduardo Paolozzi (b.1924). Although all of them studied at Edinburgh College of Art, the major influences on them have been contemporary French and American art. Concerned with abstraction, their art is international in outlook and any 20th century Scottish influence or association is minimal.

In recent years a number of young painters have come to prominence. In 1985 Alexander Moffat brought together in the exhibition New Image Glasgow the work of six painters, all of whom had trained at Glasgow School of Art. In the work of Stephan Barclay (b.1961), Steven Campbell (b.1953), Ken Currie (b.1960), Peter Howson (b.1958), Mario Rossi (b.1958) and Adrian Wiszniewski (b.1958) strong drawing is combined with a fertile imagination and a generally extrovert approach. The human figure is central, but it fulfils differing roles in the painting of each artist. In the major 1987 exhibition The Vigorous Imagination all but Barclay were joined by a number of other young artists, including Stephan Conroy (b.1964). Again, the human figure predominated.

The Fleming Collection continues to grow. The main thrust is currently directed towards buying the work of young Scottish artists, but opportunities are also taken when appropriate to fill the gaps in our holdings of 19th and early 20th century art.

The Fleming Collection is noted for it outstanding examples of work by the Colourists, many of which were lent to the Scottish Colourist exhibition at the Royal Academy Summer 2000. The collection also includes some fine examples of the work of the Edinburgh Group, particularly Anne Redpath.