The Edinburgh School

Edinburgh College of Art was opened in 1909 and has nurtured some of Scotland's finest artists, who as well as pursuing their exhibiting and selling careers, became renown and respected teachers at the College. The group of artists most commonly thought of as the Edinburgh School spanned several generations and the period before and after the Second World War. Many of its leading figures served in the Armed Forces before returning to train as artists. The Head of the Painting in 1946 was William Gillies who helped to take new approaches to teaching in the post-war period alongside William MacTaggart (who was to become President of the Royal Scottish Academy) and younger artists such as Philipson, Donald Moodie, John Maxwell and Adam Bruce Thomason. When. By the 1950s Elizabeth Blackadder and John Houston arrived, this mixture of experience and youth had already given the Edinburgh School its distinctive character.