During the early twentieth century, Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) came to be recognised as a hotbed of creative talent, so much so that one particular, though loosely associated, group of painters connected to the institution became known as the Edinburgh School. Passionate about their use of colour, this set was recognised at the time as cutting-edge practitioners in the traditional genres of landscape, interiors and still life.
Duddingston Kirk and Arthur's Seat
c.1935
William George Gillies (1898–1973) 
Some members such as leading light William Gillies (1898–1973) both studied and taught at the college, while Anne Redpath (1896–1965) joined later as a tutor.
Landscape with Houses and Ancient Bridge
c.1934
John Maxwell (1905–1962) 
John Maxwell (1905–1962) was another key member of the school, both through his links to ECA and as a close friend of Gillies. Along with another important painter, William McTaggart (1903–1981), this pair held studios and practised their craft within the college while teaching there.
John Maxwell was born in Dalbeattie on the Dumfries and Galloway coast, where his parents owned the local cinema. He maintained links with the area throughout his life, its gentle landscape remaining a huge creative inspiration, whether he was living there or based in Edinburgh. Maxwell studied at the college from 1921 to 1926, presumably first meeting Gillies as the latter completed his studies and the former was embarking on them. The older painter was more introverted than the gregarious Maxwell, though they started a friendship and collaboration that lasted throughout the latter's life.
At ECA, Maxwell distinguished himself for his sensibility as a painter and as an outstanding draughtsman, a skill he would go on to apply with an expressive manner. In the year after his studies, the young artist took advantage of a scholarship to travel to France where he studied under the pioneering Cubists Fernand Léger and Amédée Ozenfant at their free Paris-based art school, the Académie Moderne. From there, he continued to Spain and Italy, where he imbibed primitive art.
Ultimately, though, the painter rejected Cubism's confrontational experimentalism for a more conventional style, inspired in part by the Scottish Renaissance led by the poet Hugh MacDiarmid.
Instead, Maxwell gravitated towards French symbolist art, especially the drawings and lithographs of Odilon Redon, as well as the vivid, dreamlike creations of Russian emigre Marc Chagall.
Above all, though, he found himself drawn to the playfulness of Paul Klee, whose work he viewed in 1933. A year later, Maxwell was involved in organising an exhibition dedicated to the Swiss-German artist in the Scottish capital. Following Klee's example, Maxwell disregarded perspective, instead focusing and amplifying selective details, all with a direct gaze, as in Harbour with Three Boats (1934), which apparently depicts a Fife fishing village.
Elsewhere, his work showed a more fantastic, symbolist quality. Even while painting what was around him, whether still lifes or panoramas, Maxwell often added creatures, flowers and nudes, as in Still Life with Stuffed Birds (1934).
Throughout the 1930s, Maxwell and his close friend William Gillies went on painting trips around their native land, where they would camp in rural locations, beginning in the lowlands of Kirkcudbrightshire, as well as the East Neuk of Fife, before heading to wilder vistas such as Ardnamurchan and the Kyle of Lochalsh, sometimes accompanied by Gillies' younger sister Emma (portrayed in Maxwell's earliest dated painting in a public collection, shown above).
View From a Tent (1933), meanwhile, depicts the Sands of Morar, painted during a trip the pair made to the Scottish Highlands. While both Gillies and Maxwell were inspired by nature, Maxwell worked in a careful, considered manner at odds with Gillies' speedier approach. In its obituary of the former, the Royal Scottish Academy, of which the artist was a member, noted: 'It was in his nature to be fastidious and a perfectionist and his output was small'. He was also known for destroying works that failed to meet his exacting standards.
Maxwell had joined the ECA's teaching staff in 1929. There, he brought a distinctly modern sensibility that proved influential on students such as Alan Davie (1920–2014), who studied there from 1937 to 1941.
During the same period, Maxwell was commissioned to create several notable murals, including one titled Children at Play conceived as a huge painting in the dining room of Craigmillar Primary School, south Edinburgh. Another was for the restaurant of the Scottish Pavilion at the 1938 Glasgow Exhibition. City Art Centre, Edinburgh, owns a set of sketches for such commissions, including a gouache on paper of a circus scene.
John Maxwell (1905–1962) 
Following the death of his parents, Maxwell resigned from ECA in 1947, returning to his childhood home where he was supported by a small private income provided by his share in the family cinema. There he could focus full-time on painting and in 1950, along with Gillies, he was invited to participate in the Festival of Britain's '60 Paintings for '51' exhibition, a high-profile initiative showcasing the best of British contemporary art. He was celebrated for what the RSA described as 'an exquisite choice of colours and forms in the lyrical poetry of his work, which was admirably fused with the authentic and firmly established structural elements of his art'.
Maxwell also maintained a garden, which, according to the RSA, 'he cultivated with great love'. Although the artist rejoined the college a few years later, invited back by Gillies, Dalbeattie remained his main home. A watercolour, Church and Trees (1952) is believed to depict its parish church, sited a few yards from his house.
In later life, he moved away from landscapes and also worked more with oils, using a thick impasto technique and glowing colours that created bold decorative effects, as with the dreamlike Butterflies and Roses (1958). This is one of a series of four works inspired by a flowering bush in his garden, one of which is in the Tate collection. The juxtaposition of landscape with an object seen close-up (here a butterfly) is a notable Chagall technique.
By the mid-1950s, Maxwell had embarked on a series of semi-abstract still lifes, among them Corner Table (1954), that bring to mind the creations of another Cubist pioneer, Georges Braque. In 1954, Maxwell held a joint exhibition in London with Gillies, the last time during the friends' careers that their version of Scottish modernism was given exposure south of the border.
In 1961, Maxwell retired again to Dalbeattie, where he died prematurely a year later, aged 57, after a long period of ill health. He leaves works in collections that include the National Galleries of Scotland, alongside those of Glasgow and Aberdeen.
Over the ensuing decades, the styles of Maxwell and his peers came to be dismissed as tame compared with the more revolutionary French masters. Yet in recent years, the Edinburgh School's place in Scotland's art history has come to be reassessed, with exhibitions held recently focusing on the careers of Redpath and Gillies in particular. Now we can appreciate this group as among the first Scots to see themselves as modern European artists, providing a confident example for successive generations.
John Maxwell's 1928 mural 'Children at Play', at SPACE Craigmillar
Furthermore, one of Maxwell's murals has provided a legacy of a different kind, where the former Craigmillar Primary School has been saved from demolition and redeveloped as a community hub, thanks in part to his much-loved mural, Children at Play.
Chris Mugan, freelance writer
This content was funded by the PF Charitable Trust
