John Bellany was born in the fishing village of Port Seton, near Edinburgh. His father and both grandfathers were fishermen. He attended Edinburgh College of Art from 1960–5. His work has continually drawn inspiration from Port Seton’s fishing industry but also reflects his strong interest in German expressionist art, for example that of Max Beckmann and Otto Dix.

 A major figure in British art since the 1970s, Bellany has influenced a whole generation of younger Scottish artists. Bellany always used his immediate surroundings and his own experiences as raw material for his art. They provide the depth of feeling and sense of immediacy that give life to his allegories and symbols.

In 1988, when he was in his mid-forties, Bellany underwent liver transplant surgery. As soon as he came out of the intensive care unit at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, Bellany set to work. Over the next few weeks he charted the course of his hospitalisation and convalescence. They reflect the inevitable ups and downs of the patient: the intense physical pain, the discomfort and fears that he might not pull through, and then the optimism about a new lease of life. He produced some thirty of these self-portraits, together with portraits of the hospital staff and members of his own family. His surgeon, Sir Roy Calne, recalled: ‘The day he came out of the intensive care unit he asked not for analgesics but for paper and paint. And lying on his back with a shaving mirror he produced a series of paintings which I thought were very remarkable ... I’ve never come across anybody who the day they came out of the intensive care ward started resuming their profession.’ Sir Roy believed that Bellany’s sustained ‘will to draw’ greatly contributed to the speed of recovery from one of the longest and most complicated operations a person can have.

The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art exhibited more than forty works from The Addenbrooke’s Hospital Series in 1989, and acquired eight works for the permanent collection.

This text was first published in Facing the World: Self Portraits from Rembrandt to Ai Weiwei (2016)