Ten Paintings By A. R. Sturrock RSA (1885-1953)

Alick Riddell Sturrock RSA (1885-1953), brought together ten works depicting scenes across Scotland and England.

Sturrock had great affinity with rural and country locales; a love reflected in his art. The ten exhibited paintings represent the breadth of Sturrock’s depictions – from farmhouses and cottages to lochs, coastal scenes and villages. Across all is his characteristic portrayal of soft light and shadow, and in later works like Challow Farm, Dorset his wartime work in camouflage design is incorporated into the brushwork. Sturrock worked mostly in oil and many of his pictures are of the Scottish Borders and the Dorset countryside which he visited regularly. His landscapes are close in feeling to those of John Nash.

Sturrock was born in Edinburgh and studied at Edinburgh College of Art following his apprenticeship to a firm of lithographers. He was an original member of the Edinburgh Group, alongside like-minded artists including Eric Robertson, Cecile Walton and D. M. Sutherland. In 1912 Sturrock married fellow artist Mary Newbery, the daughter of Glasgow School of Art Director Fra Newbery, and the couple settled for a number of years in Gatehouse of Fleet, Galloway. He was elected a member of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1937, later serving as their Treasurer and Secretary. He exhibited at the Royal Academy, Royal Scottish Academy, Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolours, and at societies and institutes in Aberdeen, Glasgow and Liverpool.