John Bellany valuation
Scottish painter of fishing villages, the sea and its symbols, in a dark and then radiant expressionism.
John Bellany was born in Port Seton, East Lothian, in 1942; his father and grandfather were fishermen there and at Eyemouth.
What a work by John Bellany is worth
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Bio
John Bellany was born in Port Seton, East Lothian, in 1942; his father and grandfather were fishermen there and at Eyemouth. He studied at Edinburgh College of Art under Robin Philipson in the early 1960s, where with Alexander Moffat and the poet Alan Bold he argued for a return to the figure in Scottish painting, and then at the Royal College of Art in London, graduating in 1968. A visit to East Germany in 1967, where he saw Otto Dix's War triptych in Dresden, confirmed his direction. His paintings of the fishing communities of his childhood, the sea, boats, fish and the strict religion around them, became increasingly expressionist and symbolic, and darker after the breakdown of his first marriage. A liver transplant in 1988 brought a burst of brighter painting. He died in 2013.
Bellany was prolific, and paintings, watercolours and prints of every period come up regularly; the large works of the 1960s and 1970s are the most important and the rarest. A provenance through his galleries or his family is usual.
Port Seton, Addenbrooke's and the Scottish National Gallery
After the transplant at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge he began painting within hours of the operation, starting with a portrait of the nurse caring for him, and the Addenbrooke's series followed.
The Scottish National Gallery held a major exhibition, A Passion for Life, in 2012 and 2013, and his work is in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Tate.
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