Beatrice Huntington: St Andrews’ Own
By Natascha Watt
I recently came across a picture of Beatrice M. L. Huntington’s A Cellist (c. 1925), which reminded me of the time I saw it in Dovecot Studios’ Scottish Women Artists: 250 Years of Challenging Perceptions (28 July 2023 – 6 January 2024) exhibition. I decided to look into Huntington and discovered that she was from St Andrews.
Born in 1889, she was the daughter of a prominent doctor and lived in a townhouse at 43 South Street. Having a talent for both music and art, she moved abroad in 1906 to study painting and drawing in Paris before attending a private school in Munich. In 1914 she moved to London and began exhibiting there, before coming back to St Andrews after WWI and studying in Dundee under the artist William Macdonald, whom she married in 1925. She was elected a member of the Society of Scottish Artists in 1920 and moved to a flat on Hanover Street in Edinburgh with her husband at the end of the decade.
Beatrice Huntington, Mediterranean Landscape, c. 1928, Watercolour on Paper, 24.5 x 32 cm. Image courtesy of Artmag.
Macdonald was already well-established in the Edinburgh art scene, the couple holidaying with Samuel Peploe and Francis Caddell (both Scottish Colourists). He was an afficionado of Spain’s arid landscapes, which earned him the name William ‘Spanish’ Macdonald. They spent a considerable amount of time travelling through France and Spain. Mediterranean Landscape (1928) was probably realised while on these travels. Experimentation with colour being something that permeates her oeuvre, explored here through the juxtaposition of intensified tones.
Beatrice Huntington, A Cellist, c. 1925, Oil on Canvas, 60 x 46 cm, Fleming Collection. Image courtesy of Art UK.
Huntington painted A Cellist in a Modernist style, having moved away from a looser Impressionist brushstrokes, swapping subdued colours and tones for bolder ones. She lends her subject an angular shape by making her shoulders disappear in their downwards slope. This sharpness is contrasted by the sense of calmness emanating from the sitter’s eyes. The title of the work is a reference to Huntington’s personal penchant for music: she travelled to Leipzig in 1924 where she was accepted into a prestigious cellist’s class. Her friend William Syson created the annual Beatrice Huntington Award in her honour, awarding a sum of money to rising cellists.
Beatrice Huntington, The Student, 1927, Oil on Canvas, 194 x 109 cm, St Andrews University. Image courtesy of Art UK
She continuously explored and changed her style throughout her extensive career. Indeed, by the end of the 1920s she had turned to a more traditional style of portraiture as demonstrated by The Student (1927). Craig, a St Andrews student, is depicted wearing his red gown (did his parents convince him to buy one, only for him to rarely wear it I wonder?). He stands where two converging streets form a Saltire (or St Andrews) cross. He towers above the town in the background, adopting a confident stance. Behind him, on a low horizon, stand three St Andrews landmarks: St Salvator’s Chapel, the West Port and the ruins of the Cathedral. Huntington’s treatment of proportion and colour make him stand out.
Beatrice Huntington, Principal Galloway (d. 1933), 1928, Oil on Canvas, 74 x 99.5 cm, University of St Andrews. Image courtesy of Art UK.
Huntington also painted another St Andrews portrait: Principal Galloway (d. 1933) (1928). The St Mary’s College Principal sits in front of a window and, like Craig, dons his academic robe. Although he seems rather imposing, taking up most of the composition, he does appear as somewhat detached from the space. Indeed, his gaze does not meet the viewer’s eye and his bulbous robe almost makes it look as though he is floating. It is this more traditional type of portraiture that she was most famous for, her career reaching its apogee in the 1930s and 1940s.
Huntington cared for her husband until his death in 1960. She subsequently returned to painting, once again changing her style. This time she left the features of her subjects unfinished. These unresolved paintings could be read as a sign of optimism. Indeed, Huntington creates as space in which things can evolve, indicating that there is always something left to discover.
Beatrice Huntington died in 1988 and in 1990 the Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh held a joint exhibition of her and her husband’s work.
Bibliography
Art UK. “A Dozen Modern Scottish Women Painters You Should Know!” Accessed November 19, 2024. https://artuk.org/discover/curations/a-dozen-modern-scottish-women-painters-you-should-know.
Art UK. “Beatrice M. L. Huntington.” Accessed November 19, 2024. https://artuk.org/discover/artists/huntington-beatrice-m-l-18891988
Art UK. “Insightful portraits and intuitive use of colour: the works of Scottish artist Beatrice M. L. Huntington.” 17 June 2022. https://artuk.org/discover/stories/insightful-portraits-and-intuitive-use-of-colour-the-works-of-scottish-artist-beatrice-m-l-huntington.
Devlin, Vivien. “Two Artists on a Private Journey at Harvey & Woodd.” Artmag, 21 June 2022. https://artmag.co.uk/old-edinburgh-at-harvey-woodd/.
National Galleries of Scotland. “Beatrice Huntington.” Accessed November 19, 2024. https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/artists/beatrice-huntington.