Art and Heritage Online Database

Collection: Gray's School of Art Collection
Object Type: Painting: Landscape
Artist/Maker: Maclean, William James
Date: 1965
Media/Materials: oil on canvas
Dimensions: overall: 51 cm x 81 cm

Description:

A North East winter scene depicting desolate snow covered fields with trees in the distance. Suggestion of trees in the foreground.
An early student example of work by the artist.

Born in Inverness in 1941, Maclean was a midshipman (1957-59) before attending Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen (1961-65). He was awarded a Gray's Travelling Scholarship in 1966, which allowed him to travel to the British School in Rome. He returned to the sea in 1968 as a ring net fisherman, which led to a major bursary in 1973 to study ring net herring fishing.

The critic and writer Duncan Macmillan writes in his introduction to the monograph on Maclean 'Symbols of Survival':
"Will Maclean is one of the outstanding artists of his generation in Scotland... his art is rooted in his knowledge of the Highlands, the Highland people, their history, and his own early associations with sailors and the sea."
Object Number: ABDRG040