On completing his war service, Philipson returned to Edinburgh and in 1947 began teaching at Edinburgh College of Art. At the start of his professional career he produced several figure compositions, such as ‘A Family Dispute’, in which he experimented with different, and on this occasion unsettling, subject-matter. Philipson commented: “The immediate post-war paintings were in thicker paint where one naturally continued a student habit of working away at the painting until one thought one had got it right. When difficulties were encountered the paint could very easily become more coagulated, thicker, and occasionally this produced an interesting surface and satisfactory result. The sheer struggle could produce a heavy, rich, leathery surface which had a certain quality.”