Dumfries and Galloway Fine Art Society

The Society was founded in 1922 with the aim of educating people in the local environs about the trends in modern art. Early members included Christine Jane Fergusson, Dumfries born artist Nan Fergusson, who much later became President of the Society of Scottish Women Artists, and artist and teacher James Henderson, E.A. Hornel Charles Oppenheimer and Jessie King with her husband Ernest Taylor. Dorothy Johnstone and her husband D M Sutherland, Anna Hotchkis, Robert Sivell, Phyliss Bone, Alick Riddell Sturrock, Adam Bruce Thomson, Cecile Walton, Hugh Banner, David Sassoon played a significant role in the early running of the Society. One should also mention the English book illustrator and wildlife artist Warwick Reynolds and Robert Cairns. His watercolours graced the society’s early exhibitions and he briefly became the Society’s President in 1926 before he moved away to take up a teaching post in Glasgow. Cairns was succeeded by the equally overlooked but talented and unusually named William Ednie Rough as art master. Rough became a member of the council and hanging committee. Until his untimely death, he exhibited oils and watercolours of views in Brittany and the Highlands of Scotland. After Samuel Peploe’s death at 43 years of age and in his memory, the 1936 annual show included five of his oils.

The list of other artists involved, all well-known in the history of Scottish art, makes impressive reading. They include Francis Newbery, Stanley Cursiter, (the then director of the National Gallery of Scotland) and Pilkington Jackson the sculptor who created the Robert the Bruce statue at Bannockburn. After World War II other significant artists, including William Gillies, Anne Redpath, Sir Robin Philipson, Penelope Beaton and John Maxwell, began to exhibit in the society exhibitions. Also, must be mentioned are Cyril Wilson, an important President of the Society in the 1950’s and his wife Jane Fyfe and Donald Watson, the gifted bird artist from and Archie Sutter Watt. From unassuming beginnings, the membership has grown to more than 300 members