Art review: The Michie Family, The Scottish gallery, Edinburgh

NATURE or nurture, what makes an artist? When you have artists who are children of artists, the conundrum is even more insoluble.

NATURE or nurture, what makes an artist? When you have artists who are children of artists, the conundrum is even more insoluble.

The Michie Family

***

The Scottish gallery, Edinburgh

There is nurture in an artistic household to point you towards an artistic career, but if you are then a success, is your talent genetic or learned? For if genes do have anything to do with it, that is where it will show. Four members of the Michie family brought together in an exhibition at the Scottish Gallery are a good example of this mystery. James Michie was an architect who was also a painter. He married the painter Anne Redpath and two of their sons, Alistair and David, also became artists. (Just to add a further dimension, Lindy Michie, Alistair’s daughter, is an artist currently exhibiting in Victoria, Canada.) After living and working in France, where the children spent their early years, James Michie brought his family back to Scotland. He eventually moved south, leaving his family in the Borders. As they grew up, Anne Redpath resumed her career as a painter, which she had put on hold for her children, and became one of the best loved of her generation of Scottish artists. David has, of course, been a familiar figure in Scottish art for many years. Alastair made his career in the south, but he did show in Scotland occasionally. In consequence, it is James Michie’s work that is the least familiar here. A big drawing of construction work in Bristol shows his architect’s eye, but Landscape Northern France and Still Life with Chinese Figures both show an affinity with his wife’s work. Windmills in Northern France is vivid with colour reminiscent of Cadell, but the same palette is seen in Anne Redpath’s painting, Spring Trees, undated, but perhaps from the years in France. She is also represented by several other early works like this. French landscape (Byrrh) is a masterpiece of understated delicacy, for instance. There is also a fine portrait of her husband as a young man and a charming pastel of David as a baby. There are pictures in her more familiar, later style, too, such as the beautiful Yellow Painted Chest, or a spectacular gouache of Flowers in a Basket.