“His paintings are astonishing”.
The Times

Raqib Shaw’s imagery is inspired by the Old Masters, but he paints with enamels, using a needle-sharp porcupine quill. Breathtaking in their intricacy, complexity and flamboyant colour, they are the product of months, often years of intense work. 

Eight works by Raqib Shaw are on display alongside two paintings which have long obsessed him: Joseph Noel Paton’s The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania, 1849 and Lucas Cranach’s An Allegory of Melancholy, 1528. In 2016, Shaw painted a loose variant of Paton’s extraordinary fairy picture and his version after the Cranach painting has been in progress for some months and was finished just in time for the display. This is the first time Shaw’s work has been exhibited in Scotland.