JOHN Houston was one of the outstanding painters of his generation, but he could have been one of the outstanding footballers. Born in Buckhaven and educated at Buckhaven High School, he was encouraged by the art teacher there, Robert Morris, but his
talent on the field was also spotted. He played for the Scottish under-21s and for Dundee United as a part-time professional while studying at Edinburgh College of Art where he went in 1948.
A serious knee injury eventually ended his footballing career, though he remained a sportsman. He took up golf, which he played well, and he was a keen fisherman.
At Edinburgh he studied under Sir William Gillies, whose dedication to his art remained an example to him throughout his life. He also remembered with gratitude the teaching of Robert Henderson Blyth, who remained a personal friend, and the encouragement offered by Penelope Beaton.
He graduated in 1953 then spent a year on a travelling scholarship in Italy in the company of fellow student David Michie. The painters of the Italian Renaissance made a lasting impression on him and the drawings he did of winter landscapes in Italy are particularly beautifu
On his return he went to Moray House, then briefly taught at a primary school in Fife before being invited to return to Edinburgh College of Art by Gillies as a part-time teacher in 1955. He became full-time at the college in 1960 and remained there until his retirement in 1989, serving latterly as deputy head of painting.
In 1956, he married Elizabeth Blackadder. They lived first in London Street in a flat above artist Anne Redpath. Then moved to the south side of Edinburgh and, both keen gardeners, they settled finally in 1975 in a house with a large garden in Newington.
In 1957, Houston was a founder member of the 57 Gallery, the first artist-run gallery in Edinburgh, and held his first one-man show there the following year.
The social-realist character of his early work is suggested by his participation in an exhibition called Artists' View of Industry in 1955, but his work soon became more poetic, in part under the influence of contemporary American painting, but also through the nearer example of Redpath, Robin Philipson and Sir William MacTaggart. He is represented in the National Galleries of Scotland by a fine picture from this period called Village under the Cliffs, though it was a matter of some chagrin to him that this was the only one of his works in that collection.
In 1963, he shared the Guthrie Award, the RSA's highest award for painting, with David Michie and in 1972 he was elected to the RSA. In 1960, he held his first-one man show at the Scottish Gallery. He showed there regularly thereafter, 12 times in all, later counterpointing his Edinburgh shows with exhibitions in London, first at the Mercury Gallery then at Browse and Delbanco. In 1990, he was awarded an OBE for his services to art.
Although his work was always diverse, including portraits – among them, exceptionally, a major commissioned portrait of Sir Alexander Gibson in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery – and some fine still-lifes, landscape remained central to what he did.
He was very much a northern painter, and the scale and grandeur of Turner and Munch are often echoed in his work. Throughout his career he stuck firmly to the idea that art deals with the world around us: its landscapes, the people in it and our feelings for these things. It was not an easy position to hold at a time when almost anything in art was fashionable except painting.
Always well-informed with a prodigious memory and a sharp critical eye, he knew all about the contemporary art world, but he held his own position and determinedly met the challenges that brought him. In this the mutual support he shared with his wife, in a remarkable artistic partnership, was of the greatest importance to both artists.
Twenty years ago, I put on an exhibition of a remarkable series of large watercolours he had begun following a visit to Harris in 1975. He told me that with the rise of conceptual art, he had felt the swing of fashion against painting so acutely that he had found it difficult to continue to paint. In the watercolours that followed, however, he worked out his relationship with abstract painting.
Typically, he held his own ground while learning from what others had done. The results were so good and so original that many artists would have turned them into a formula and stuck with it. But in his long career, Houston always rode the rapids. He never allowed himself to be washed into any comfortable backwater along the way, however tempting it might seem. It was a struggle and we see it in his art. It is often turbulent and sometimes awkward, even in its strength. The storms over the Bass Rock – a motif he made his own – perhaps recorded internal artistic struggles as much as actual meteorological events out there over the Firth of Forth.
From Gillies especially Houston learned that art is a demanding vocation. If Gillies's dedication was almost monastic, however, his was not. He travelled widely in the company of Elizabeth. He loved good wine, a taste he developed in Italy along with his love of Italian art. He loved good food too, though somehow, for all his love of Italy he always loathed pasta.
As an artist he never took it easy, but eventually there was resolution; his courage and determination won through. His art flowered remarkably after he retired from teaching. In particular a series of large paintings of nothing but light on water have true grandeur and wonderful, luminous authority.
In those pictures he spoke and he will always speak as an equal among the great artists of our time about the things that concerned him throughout his long and fruitful career: the rendering in two dimensions of our sense of light and space and our sense of ourselves as part of the wonder and vibrant energy that we see in the world around us.
DUNCAN MacMILLAN
The full article contains 1052 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
