In 2023, Peter Howson (b.1958) was celebrated with a retrospective at City Arts Centre, Edinburgh – 'When The Apple Ripens: Peter Howson at 65'. In its catalogue, the career of one of his generation's leading figurative painters was described as a 'rollercoaster'.

During the 1980s, the Scottish artist found immediate success after leaving Glasgow School of Art, followed in the next decade by fame as a war artist in Bosnia. The emotional turmoil caused by witnessing suffering saw him withdraw from public life for several years. Through fighting addiction and other demons, however, Howson has returned to create work as powerful as ever.

His style has long been characterised by stark imagery and confident draughtsmanship. This has enabled him to create strong characterisations and dynamic scenes of male-dominated, working-class life, often on large canvases. Almost as regularly, these have featured acts of violence, though the roles of victims and victimisers can often be unclear.

In Saturday Night at Glencorse (1985) he gives his brutish subjects a trademark exaggerated and distorted musculature, yet this doesn't spill over into caricature. Howson rarely painted from life, though was a keen observer of anatomy, having spent long periods in gyms himself.

Born in London, his family moved to Prestwick, Ayrshire, while he was still young, for his father's work with an airline. An introspective, anxious child, Howson suffered bullying at school, a period that he believes laid the foundations for the violence that runs through much of his oeuvre.

However, Howson's talent for drawing was noticed early on, with encouragement from an art teacher to pursue this skill further. He first attended art school between 1975 and 1977, though was frustrated by the restrictions of its traditional methods. Howson left early to travel and try various, mostly mundane, jobs (including nightclub bouncer). He did, though, briefly join the army – an impulsive decision he swiftly regretted.

This was a difficult period in his life, though along with his experience of working-class life as a child, it provided him with much material that appeared in later paintings: Regimental Bath (1985) emerged early in the artist's career as a disturbing image of sadistic bullying from his military days.

Two years after he left GSA, he returned for a more rewarding experience, encouraged to use narrative painting as a vehicle to explore social and political issues. Howson was introduced to German Expressionism and the more realist work of Max Beckmann, a particular influence on his own style. He graduated in 1981 at a time when figurative art had come back into vogue, within a few years finding his work acquired by major institutions, alongside contemporaries such as Ken Currie.

Based in Glasgow's tough East End, he was surrounded by alcoholics, gangsters and sex workers – the sort of characters that populated his paintings. Howson, though, often imbued them with a hard-worn nobility, such as the self-reliant homeless character seen in The Heroic Dosser (1987).

The artist found himself represented in key exhibitions of the time, notably 'New Image Glasgow' in 1985, along with Currie, Adrian Wiszniewski and Steven Campbell – fellow GSA graduates who became known as the New Glasgow Boys, in recognition of a previous generation of Scottish painters interested in working-class life.

That show, which included Howson's The Boxer (1985), transferred to London and two years later a similar line-up featured in 'The Vigorous Imagination' at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh.

On the back of this publicity, he received international attention and the backing of influential collectors, becoming a minor celebrity himself. Having found his artistic voice, violence remained a key theme, both energising and repelling him – as with the criminals he depicts in The Fleet (1992), its constrained palette heightening its nightmarish depiction of brutality, similar in feel to Goya's visions of war, an important art historical reference alongside Bruegel and Hieronymus Bosch.

In 1993, then, Howson would have appeared a good fit when the Imperial War Museum appointed him as Official War Artist for the Bosnian War. Between 1992 and 1995, this civil conflict following the break-up of Yugoslavia was waged within Bosnia and Herzegovina between Bosnian Croatian Catholics, Bosniak Muslims and Serbian Orthodox forces, with atrocities carried out by all sides. The artist spent time embedded within a British contingent of the United Nations peacekeeping force.

The next year, the Imperial War Museum put on an exhibition of Howson's war work, selecting pieces that reflected the miserable reality of the conflict, such as Bosnian Harvest (1994).

This work shows two women collecting body parts while surrounded by piles of mutilated corpses. Howson seemed especially drawn to the suffering of civilians with soldiers, especially peacekeepers, usually relegated to the background.

Much of what Howson depicted he had heard from others' accounts, though the experience still took a major toll, leading him to suffer a breakdown. For several months after his return from the Balkans, the previously productive artist could not paint at all. His marriage ended and he moved to London, later recognising he had suffered from depression. The opening of the Bosnia show lifted his mood, allowing him to return to work.

One means of moving on from this period was for Howson to take up classic portraiture, including his depiction of Lord Macfarlane, a successful businessman and supporter of the arts, commissioned by National Galleries of Scotland.

Norman Macfarlane (1926–2021), Lord Macfarlane of Bearsden, Businessman

Norman Macfarlane (1999), shows its subject as a Knight of the Order of the Thistle, one of Scotland's highest honours, his imposing robes taking up much of the canvas.

However, there were more breakdowns to come and in 2000 a spell in rehab to treat drug and alcohol addiction (also key to greater stability was a 2009 diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome, now referred to as Autistic Spectrum Disorder). Having joined Alcoholics Anonymous, he also converted to Christianity, leading to an increase in religious themes in his work.

There had long been a spiritual aspect in Howson's style, with subjects such as his 'Heroic Dosser' appearing almost saintlike in their bearing. Now, though, he approached this area with increased vigour and deliberation. While he continued to focus partly on single figures, these often became explicitly biblical characters, such as in his Judas, the apostle who betrayed Jesus in the gospels.

It is part of a series of paintings that conveyed the artist's own decline and recovery, the subject here marked out by strong light, suggesting the figure continues to receive God's love, so can still find redemption. In the background, Howson adds a crucifixion scene, with Christ taunted by a gang of thugs that refer back to the painter's earlier work.

Elsewhere, such imagery takes centre stage in his familiar more chaotic crowd scenes, as in his Backstreet Crucifixion (2006), again showing Howson's mastery of a limited palette, this time on a panel prepared with gesso – a traditional surface for oil paintings.

In secular times, such subject matter certainly feels out of fashion, though Howson's background and life experiences give it a rarely found visceral quality. A more subtle depiction, of the Roman Catholic martyr Saint John Ogilvie, hangs in St Andrew's Cathedral, Glasgow.

Tuesday is the Feast of St John Ogilvie who was martyred for his faith on 10th March 1615 at Glasgow Cross. We pray to our own martyr in these times of trial. St John Ogilvie pray for your people pic.twitter.com/yJ3FLvtTv2
— Archdiocese of Glasgow (@ArchdiocGlasgow) March 9, 2020

This artist, though, is more regularly drawn to apocalyptic themes, drawn more to hellish vistas than the comforts of a paradise.

Holocaust Crowd Scene II (2011) seems to distil much of his worldview, learning and past travails: this depiction of Jewish prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp (at least one wears a Star of David symbol) shows empathy for their suffering, while drawing on classical themes and Christian imagery.

In its lower left corner, one pairing of a mourning figure leaning over a dead body recalls the classical pietà depiction of Christ and Mary, while a child held aloft could have been inspired by Rubens' Massacre of the Innocents. Like his boxers, Howson rarely pulls his punches, yet continues to provide a sense that even while being intimately aware of the dark reality of human existence, hope exists for us all.

Chris Mugan, freelance writer

This content was funded by the PF Charitable Trust

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