Gallery gains portrait of celebrated Scots artist

AFTER years of trying to secure a work by Alison Watt, one of Scotland’s most admired contemporary painters, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery added a striking picture by the artist to its collection yesterday.

The Self-Portrait, painted in of 1986-7 when Watt was a 20-year-old art student, was bought from the artist’s own collection for £17,500 by the Art Fund and donated to the gallery. It has been shown only once before, at Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery more than 20 years ago.

It was painted after a period of illness and shows the artist with her hand to her head. “It’s one that I always kept. I’m very fond of it, but I will still be able to see it,” Watt said yesterday.

“It was one of the first paintings that I actually completed, because even in my third year [of art college] I hadn’t made very much work, because I was struggling to learn how to paint.”

The acting director of the portrait gallery, Nicola Kalinsky, said: “It shows that history continues, and that a contemporary portrait of an important living artist enters the gallery. She is joining the greats but it shows we really are a gallery about the contemporary, as well.”

Watt became a star of the Scottish art scene as a student at the Glasgow School of Art, winning a major UK portrait prize and being commissioned to paint the Queen Mother.

In 2000, she was the youngest artist ever to hold a solo exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, and was later an artist in residence at the National Gallery in London.

Watt has not painted a formal portrait since 1988, shifting from the human form to concentrate on swirling images of fabric.