One of Scotland’s most outstanding contemporary artists
To coincide with a major exhibition by John Bellany this summer,
at the City Arts Centre Edinburgh:
John Bellany: A Life in Self-Portraiture 31 May - 28 September 2025,

We are delighted and honoured to host an important collection of paintings
from the Bellany Estate currently on show at:
The Richmond Hill Gallery ltd (Est.1996)

BECHE DE MER , 1990
oil on canvas 121 x 91cm
£16,000

Excerpt from The National Galleries Scotland:

The 1960s

When Bellany first entered Edinburgh College of Art in 1960, the Scottish Colourist tradition was still the dominant strand in Scottish painting, although internationally abstraction was very much in vogue. Bellany rejected both. He wanted to create an art that was firmly based on the achievements - in drawing as well as painting - of the Old Masters, but brought up to date by the great modern Realists, such as Gustave Courbet (1819-1877)and Fernand Léger (1881-1955).

SEAMAIDEN WITH PUFFIN
Oil on canvas 120 x 100cm
£16,000

He wanted his art to focus on the everyday life he knew, especially the fisherfolk and boats from Port Seton, Cockenzie and Eyemouth, the ports on the Firth of Forth where he grew up.

PORT SETON, 1990
oil on canvas 76 x 61 cm
£13,500

It was the heroism of ordinary people that he wanted to celebrate in large, monumental paintings, some of which he displayed on the railings outside this very building on the Mound: a direct challenge to the Establishment.

UNTITLED
Oil on canvas 152.5 x 152.5cm
£30,000

The1970s

Hand in hand with Bellany’s development of asymbolic repertoire (the puffin, gull, fish, monkey etc.) went a never-increasing dissolution of the image. The gestural brushwork seen in previous works became increasingly expressionistic and there was a distinct loosening of forms. In 1974 Bellany introduced the idea of two framing strips sat the side of the canvas, containing the blurred images of former voyagers, of ancestral voices. Gradually such images became predominant, almost to the point of illegibility, and Bellany began increasingly to use the triptych format. Underlying all was Bellany’s concern to explore the interplay of human relationships and central to this was the artist himself.

CAT AND SKULL 1991
Oil on canvas 122 x 91cm
£14,000

PAX
Oil on canvas 121 x 91cm
£14,000

The 1980s

By the mid-1980's Bellany had given up drink and his paintings became quieter and more measured. Even the works that he made as requiems for the deaths of his wife Juliet and his father in 1985 are restrained and elegiac.

TRISTE,1990
oil on canvas 91 x 76 cm
£15,000

He remarried his first wife and a more serene period in his art seemed set fair

In 1987 and early 1988, however, it became clear that, despite having given up alcohol, Bellany was not going to get better unless he had a liver transplant. He managed to get through all the tests and in the Spring of 1988 he had the transplant operation. It was successful. Spurred on by new hope for the future, Bellany drew himself, his doctors and nurses as he recovered from the operation. These remarkably honest and occasionally searing depictions make up a rare record of art overcoming physical disability.

UNTITLED
Oil on canvas 152 x 152cm
£26,000

The effect of his restored health was to give Bellany new ambition. He painted a number of homages to some of his revered Old Masters—Titian, Rembrandt and Delacroix, in particular. Courtesy of the British Council he travelled in Central Europe for three months in 1992, visiting Prague, Dresden, Vienna and Budapest, drawing inspiration from the resilience of the people in the former communist countries, as they struggled to make a living. In 1996 he went to Mexico, and was astonished not only by the vibrancy and colour of the country, but also by the way the Mexicans smiled in the face of adversity and death. Bellany’s experience of seeing the celebrations of the Day of the Dead made him question his whole Calvinist outlook on life and death.

WAITING 1990’s
Oil on canvas 121.5 x 91cm
£14,000

In 1998 Bellany bought a house in Tuscany. Living the Italian way of life for several months a year, reinforced a more life-affirming, optimistic view of things.

SEAFARERS WIFE , 1990
oil on canvas
51 x 61cm
£13,500

His paintings became brighter and more colourful; the sense of guilt and personal doom was lifted. He began to paint more and more landscapes, town scapes and harbour scenes. This was no doubt triggered by his frequent travels to other countries (such as China in 2003), but also by his feeling more at home in Italy, surrounded by glorious countryside and charming old towns, and by his frequent visits to Scotland.
In a way, this was Bellany coming home, both in terms of subject matter and in terms of voluptuous use of paint and a new joy in colour. Bellany’s late paintings of port scenes in Scotland, Italy and France come full circle, with the artist painting what he knew best.

Press release forthcoming exhibition at City Arts Centre Edinburgh:
John Bellany: A Life in Self-Portraiture
31 May - 28 September 2025

John Bellany was one of the most significant Scottish painters of the modern era. A Life in Self-Portraiture brings together over 80 autobiographical drawings, paintings, prints and sketchbooks, spanning from the early 1960s until the artist’s death in 2013.
John Bellany was one of the most prolific self-portraitists in history, obsessively documenting his own image throughout his lifetime. This exhibition captures the wide range of works created across different mediums, from carefully observed student studies, to his epic pictorial narratives where he disguised himself in different roles and fantastical characters. The exhibition contains works on loan from public and private collections across the country, including the artist’s estate, many of which have never been seen publicly before.
An accompanying publication includes a foreword by Helen Bellany, plus an essay and interview from exhibition curators’ Bill Hareand Sandy Moffat. Moffat’s account charts his long-term friendship and collaboration with Bellany, from their time at art school up until the latter’s death.
John Bellany: A Life in Self-Portraiture captures the span of an extraordinary life and career, told through the lens of the artist’s own eyes and the words of the people who knew him best.