National Galleries of Scotland

“The exhibition of the season… Immaculate, highly detailed and luminously beautiful.”
The Times

Bringing together more than 80 paintings by an almost forgotten generation of artists, this exhibition explores the realist tradition in British art between the two World Wars. It focuses on scrupulously detailed realist painting, part of a world-wide trend at the time.

“Enthralling… This ambitious and timely exhibition does more than pull out the unexpected. It recovers realism’s distinct and relevant voice in a short period of rapid change.”
★★★★ The Guardian

When abstract art became fashionable after the Second World War, these artists became side-lined and largely forgotten. Many artists of the period opted for a new kind of hard-edged, sharp-focussed realist painting, and found new subjects in modern life. This exhibition, showing only in Edinburgh, includes some 80 paintings, of astonishing technical accomplishment and stunning beauty, by more than fifty artists - including Gerald Leslie Brockhurst, Meredith Frampton, Laura Knight, James Cowie and Winifred Knights. Borrowed from public and private collections throughout Britain, this is a unique chance to rediscover a remarkable, but little known period in British Art.

“This show is full of beautiful things... It is a delight to see them back in their place.”
★★★★★ The Scotsman

Part of the Edinburgh Art Festival 2017.

Image: Harold Williamson, Spray, 1939 © Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum. Photo credit: Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum.