UNSEEN works by one of Scotland’s most celebrated artists is on show in a new digital exhibition.
John Bellany’s colourful works earned him critical and popular acclaim before his death in 2013.
Now his family is revealing previously unseen pieces by the East Lothian artist.
Edinburgh’s Open Eye Gallery, which is presenting the show on its website due to coronavirus closures, says the artworks have been “specifically chosen to reflect Bellany’s celebration of Scotland”.
They include pieces completed during his studies at Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) during the 1960s as well as later works from the 2000s.
All of the works are held by his estate and are be available for purchase.
Announcing the exhibition, the gallery said: “The exhibition includes some of the most archetypal examples of the ideas and iconography that preoccupied his work throughout his prolific career.”
Born in Port Seton, Bellany came from a fishing background and grew up in a Presbyterian household.
The superstitions and traditions of this community were “indelibly marked on Bellany’s imagination throughout his career”, the gallery said.
He enrolled in college in 1960 where he eschewed traditional styles and developed a new viewpoint influenced by the ideas of Scottish Renaissance poet and writer Hugh MacDiarmid.
In the 1970s and 80s, Bellany produced symbolic and confessional pieces during the period known as his “wild days”.
His work took a new direction again after he underwent a liver transplant in 1987 and returned to classical subject matter, and also took in landscapes and seascapes for the first time, while time in Italy, Mexico and China brought about a further explosion of colour and saw him return to the themes of his early work.
On that later period, the gallery commented: “A sense of serenity prevailed in this late period and Bellany looked once again to the fishing communities of his childhood, Port Seton and Eyemouth.
“This exhibition will pay homage to Bellany’s celebration of Scotland throughout his career throughout his early days at ECA to his later output before his death in 2013.”
Bellany’s son Paul revealed how his father had a bed moved into his studio in Cambridgeshire four months before his death. Relatives were with him when he died there and tributes came from around the world and across cultural spheres.
Writer Ian Rankin was amongst his fans, as was then-First Minister Alex Salmond, who chose a Bellany piece for his official Christmas card.
Paying its respects, national agency Creative Scotland said his work “occupies a unique position in the history of Scottish art”.
The exhibition is available to view at www.openeyegallery.co.uk/exhibitions/john-bellany-scotland
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