John Bellany

Art Brokerage: John Bellany Scottish Artist: b. 1942-2013. John Bellany, CBE, RA, (18 June 1942 – 28 August 2013) was a Scottish painter. Bellany was born in Port Seton. During the early 1960s, he studied at Edinburgh College of Art, here he met with other young Scottish artists to begin lifelong friendships and share ideals for a renaissance in Scottish arts. His contemporaries included Alan Bold and Alexander Moffat. Bellany and Moffat studied under Robin Phillipson. Their initial interest was in impressionism but with their common Scottish ancestry they looked toward Alan Davie as a connection to a greater but more accessible artistic world. In 1968 Bellany graduated and his diploma show was hailed as great success. Many of the paintings from this and the earlier periods are now in public institutions as well as various national galleries. After graduation, Bellany was offered a teaching position at the Edinburgh College of Art but he carried on as a working artist and flit between various teaching jobs at different art colleges. He was elected to The London Group in 1973. When in 1974 he separated from his wife his art appears to take on a darker tone. The symbolism increases and it seems as though each picture can have a whole narrative of symbols within it, increasingly the pictures become wilder and wilder tending more to expressionism, at this point he suffered a nervous breakdown and returned to Port Seton for recuperation. Between 1973-78 Bellany had been head of faculty of painting at Croydon College of Art and had met Juliet Lister who he later married. In 1982 he was offered a show in New York which exhibited some of his earlier work. He lectured at Goldsmith's College from 1978 to 1984. In 1984, following an impromptu holiday in France with his first wife and family he was diagnosed with liver disease, an consequence of his alcoholism. He abstained for the rest of his life but the damage had been done. A retrospective was arranged for the National Gallery of Modern Art. The exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery included a portrait of the cricketer Sir Ian Botham. This portrait attracted more publicity for Bellany than he had ever previously achieved. In 1986, he re-married his first wife Helen. The liver disease was becoming unmanageable and by the end of 1987 it was clear death was near. In 1988 Bellany was operated on for a then relatively new liver transplant procedure, this also inspired works.Carried out at Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge by Sir Roy Calne, Bellany not only survived but started to paint within hours of the operation - first producing a portrait of the nurse caring for him, then going on to produce a set of pictures known as the Addenbrooke's series. In 2005 he suffered a heart attack. He died in 2013. Listings wanted.