Anne Redpath

Who was Anne Redpath?

Anne Redpath OBE was a Scottish artist whose vivid domestic still lifes are among her best-known works.

Redpath's father was a tweed designer in the Scottish Borders. She saw a connection between his use of colour and her own. "I do with a spot of red or yellow in a harmony of grey, what my father did in his tweed." The Redpaths moved from Galashiels to Hawick when Anne was about six. After Hawick High School, she went to Edinburgh College of Art in 1913. Post-graduate study led to a scholarship which allowed her to travel on the Continent in 1919, visiting Bruges, Paris, Florence and Siena.

The following year, 1920, she married James Michie, an architect, and they went to live in Pas-de-Calais where her first two sons were born; the eldest of whom is the painter and sculptor Alastair Michie. In 1924, they moved to the South of France, and in 1928, had a third son: now David Michie the artist.

In 1934, she returned to Hawick. Redpath was soon exhibiting in Edinburgh, and was president of the Scottish Society of Women Artists from 1944 to 1947. The Royal Scottish Academy admitted her as an associate in 1947, and in 1952, she became the first woman Academician. In 1955, she was made an OBE for her work as "Artist" and "Member of the Board of Management of the Edinburgh College of Art".