John Bellany CBE HRSA RA LL (1942-2013) was one of the most influential and prolific Scottish painters of his generation. Trained at Edinburgh College of Art and the Royal College of Art, London, he was a figurative painter at a time when abstract art was on the rise. He broke from traditional Scottish landscape painting and developed a bold expressive and distinctive style, typically using large compositions.
Bellany was born in Port Seton, near Edinburgh, to a long line of strict Calvinist fishermen and boat builders. He derived much of his imagery from fishing village life and religion, from the social realism of his early career to the more characteristically symbolic and allegorical work. Paintings included Christian iconography, skeletons, hybrid animal and human forms and other creatures. The image of the boat would become a metaphor for an inner voyage. The flawed nature of humanity was also a central theme and he and his family often featured as themselves or as characters in the paintings.
Bellany was influenced by German Expressionist Max Beckmann and he revered Rembrandt and Titian, among other old Masters he pitted himself against. He was also a portrait painter and his portrait of cricketer Ian Botham hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, London. In the 1980s he became very ill and following a liver transplant in 1988, his work became more optimistic in mood.
A retrospective of his work was held at the Scottish National Gallery and at the Serpentine Gallery London in 1986. He was elected a member of the Royal Academy in 1991 and appointed a CBE in 1994.
His work is held in major public collections including the Tate Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Galleries of Scotland, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
A major exhibition of his autobiographical work, John Bellany: A Life in Self-Portraiture, is presented at the City Art Centre, Edinburgh in summer 2025.