Memorial Works | RSA Annual Online

For 2022, memorials for the late Iain Redford McIntosh and Dame Elizabeth Blackadder will once again feature within the 196th Annual Exhibition.
Iain McIntosh RSA
1945 - 2021
The Mermaid, c. 1976-82, Portsoy marble. Image credit Julie Howden

Iain Redford McIntosh was born in Peterhead in 1945. He attended Peterhead Academy and then studied for a Fine Art diploma at Gray’s School of Art between 1962 and 1966. His student weekends were taken up with working at the family business in Peterhead, where his cabinet-maker father and uncle had their flagship furniture store - McIntosh Brothers.

After leaving Gray’s, Iain opted for teacher training at Teacher Training College in Aberdeen and this led to a job teaching art at Mearns Academy. He remained there for seventeen years, becoming principal teacher of art.

A promising student and graduate, Iain attained awards which encouraged him to travel and continue his art practice. In 1965, whilst still a student, he secured the Queen’s Award for Art & Design and, upon graduation in 1966, he was awarded a George Davidson Travelling Scholarship which enabled him a period of travel and research in Greece.
Iain came to the attention of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1967 where he was the recipient of the RSA Andrew Carnegie Award and, in 1968, he won the RSA Benno Schotz Prize for Sculpture at the 142nd Annual Exhibition. In 1971, he won the RSA Latimer Award and in 1992 was a recipient of an RSA Gillies Award which enabled him a further period of travel and research.

As a sculptor, Iain produced studio items for exhibition and also took on significant commissions. Producing works in both stone and wood, his commission Iain R McIntosh RSA pieces included sculptures for St Machar’s Cathedral in Aberdeen, Kinnaird Castle in Angus and the Glenfiddich Distillery in Moray. His work is also part of the Collection of the P&O cruise liner Arcadia. Inspired by his young daughters, and with a nod to his father’s business, Iain turned his hand to designing and making rocking horses which were sold via Harrods department store in London.
Clown , 1976, Granite

Much of Iain’s later works were inspired by his roots in the Northeast of Scotland and, in particular, the fishing industry of his native Peterhead. Examples of these can be found in private and public collections in Scotland and beyond – most notably at Mintlaw Discovery Centre; NHS Collection at Edinburgh and Lothian Healthcare Foundation and the Wallace Museum, St Andrews University.

Iain was a lifelong exhibitor with the Royal Scottish Academy from his student days through to his later career. In 2016 he presented Port to Port, a solo exhibition in The Academicians Gallery which took the sea and the fishing industry as its primary theme. Iain was a great supporter of young talent and served on numerous committees at the Academy with specific interest in awards, scholarships and bursaries to assist emerging and early-career artists. He also served as Secretary of the (then separately constituted) Friends of the RSA.

Ian Redford McIntosh was elected Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1981 and was elected to Royal Scottish Academician status in 2005.
Dame Elizabeth Blackadder RSA
1931 - 2021
Self Portrait with Cat, 1976, oil on canvas. RSA Diploma Collection Deposit, 1997

Elizabeth Violet Blackadder was born in Falkirk on 24th September 1921, daughter of Thomas and Violet Isabella Blackadder. Her father, an engineer, died when she was young, and her mother worked as a domestic science teacher to keep her family. During the first years of the war Elizabeth stayed with her grandmother in the west and went to school in Dunoon, but she finished her schooling at Falkirk High and went from there to the University of Edinburgh. There, under David Talbot Rice, she completed the five-year Fine Art degree taught jointly with Edinburgh College of Art where William Gillies was head of painting. She graduated in 1954 and was awarded a Carnegie Travelling Scholarship which took her to Italy, Greece and Yugoslavia. She then did a postgraduate year at the College of Art and spent the winter of 1955-6 in Italy with an Andrew Grant travelling scholarship. Magnificent drawings of the cathedrals of Florence and Pisa are a record of that time. Back in Edinburgh, she married her fellow student John Houston. In the first years of their marriage, they lived in London Street, Edinburgh, in the flat above Anne Redpath whose work and range of subject matter certainly inspired Elizabeth, but they also had Joan Eardley as a house guest on at least one occasion. Until John’s untimely death in 2008, their marriage was a unique artistic partnership, but she also told me how much she relied on him, especially I think because of his wide understanding of contemporary art. As her career began to outshine his, however, far from any jealousy, he simply radiated pride at her success.
Grey Table, 1970 -71, oil on canvas, NFS. Courtesy of the Blackadder/Houston Trust

After teaching part-time at Edinburgh College of Art for two years, in 1958 Elizabeth enrolled at Moray House to do a teacher training course and in 1962 was appointed to a full-time post at the College of Art where she worked alongside John till 1986. Meanwhile however, they took every opportunity to travel to paint, first around Scotland, then regularly to France, Italy and elsewhere in Europe, to the US in 1969 and in 1985 they made the first of several visits to Japan. Thereafter, Japan, Japanese art and art objects, gardens, and indeed fishponds, were a major source of subject matter for Elizabeth. She painted beautiful pictures of Japanese temples with their slatted screens and of brightly coloured fish in fishponds. But Japan was also a major influence on her work more subtly. Especially in her later semi-abstract still-lifes, the sense of the importance of the space between things, of the open ground in her pictures as well as the placed objects, surely echoes the way these things function in Japanese calligraphy, scroll painting and Zen gardens and, as with the gardens especially, it gives a deeply contemplative beauty to her painting.

She still painted more directly, however, especially working alongside John in Venice and elsewhere, or painting her familiar cats. The latter, too, as they move in and out of her compositions seem to reflect the fluency of the exchange between her pictures and the familiar world around her.
Temple Façade, Nara, 1994, oil on canvas

She was also a superb print-maker and began making prints in the 1950s with the pioneering lithographers, the Harley Brothers. In 1962, her work with them included a commission from the Post Office. In 1985, she began a relationship with Glasgow Print Studio that continued for the rest of her working life.

Commissions she received included portraits, several tapestries, stained glass, and two sets of stamps for the Royal Mail, one of orchids in 1993 and another of cats in 1995. Her exhibition history is very extensive and her work is represented in public collections throughout the UK and beyond.

Her many honours and awards include the RSA Guthrie Award, 1962, elected ARSA 1963, ARA 1971, RSA 1972, RA 1976, RGI 1984. She was appointed OBE in 1982, Her Majesty’s Painter and Limner in 2002 and DBE in 2003. She was awarded honorary degrees by Heriot-Watt University, 1988, University of Edinburgh 1990, University of Aberdeen 1990, University of Strathclyde 1998, University of Glasgow 2001, University of Stirling 2002, University of St. Andrews 2003.

Elizabeth Violet Blackadder born 24th September 1931, died 24th August 2021.

By Duncan Macmillan HRSA

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