Dame Elizabeth Blackadder, RA, RSA, RSW, RGI

Scottish 1951 – 2021

Dame Elizabeth Blackadder was born and raised in Falkirk, her mother, Violet, ensured Blackadder benefited from a series of promising educational opportunities and, determined to spare her daughter the struggles she had been through, convinced her own father to support Blackadder’s training as a domestic science teacher. Blackadder’s father died when she was 10, and she spent a substantial part of her childhood alone, due in part to a keen appetite for reading. During her teenage years Blackadder began meticulously collecting local flowers, compiling the specimens by pressing and labelling them with their full Latin names, a fascination that was to surface much later in her paintings of plants and flowers.

Blackadder attended Falkirk High School, and recalled the pleasure she derived from her art classes in particular, having spent the majority of her sixth year in the art room. She arrived in Edinburgh in September 1949 to start on the nearly approved Fine Art degree. She studied early Byzantine art while at university, and one of the most enduring influences on her work was her tutor and prolific painter William Gillies. During her final year, Blackadder met Scottish artist John Houston who became her husband two years later. Blackadder graduated with first class honours in 1954, and for her dissertation on William MacTaggart, Blackadder was awarded both a Carnegie travelling scholarship by the Royal Scottish Academy and an Andrew Grant Postgraduate Scholarship by Edinburgh College of Art. Blackadder put the money from her Carnegie scholarship towards spending three months travelling through Yugoslavia, Greece, and Italy, where she focused on classical and Byzantine art. In 1962 her painting, White Still Life, Easter was given the Gurtrie Award for best work by a young artist at the Royal Scottish Academy.

During the 1960s she developed her interests in still life while continuing with her love of landscape by painting landscapes in France, Spain, Portugal, and Scotland and acquired a growing reputation for her paintings of flowers, notably Flowers on an Indian Cloth. During her travels to France she became more aware of the artist Henri Matisse, and lightened her palette from this influence.

In the 1980s she visited Japan on a number of occasions and many of her paintings at the time showed the influence of these trips. First visiting in 1985 and returning the following year, Blackadder’s interest in Eastern techniques and subject matter was realised in a series of vibrant oils and watercolours shown at the Mercury Gallery in 1991. Her desire to avoid the technical vibrancy of Tokyo took Blackadder to the Zen gardens of Kyoto; in many ways, her work depicts the principles of Zen which give paramount importance to the idea of empty space. Blackadder also traveled to the United States of America. Souvenirs of her travels would appear in many of her paintings.

Blackadder began working at Glasgow Print Studio in 1985, after being invited to make prints there. She worked with master print makers from that time until around 2014, working predominantly to produce etchings and screenprints with some lithographs and woodcuts. Her subject matter was dominated by cats and flowers but also included images from travels in Europe and Japan.

Blackadder was the first woman to be an academician of both the Royal Academy of Arts in London and the Royal Scottish Academy; in 1982 she was awarded the OBE for her contribution to art which was promoted to a DBE in 2003.

As a former pupil of Falkirk High School, Blackadder donated one of her paintings to the school on the occasion of its centenary in 1986.

In 2001, she was appointed Her Majesty’s Painter and Limner in Scotland. Along with an Honorary degree from Heriot-Watt University in 1989, Blackadder has been awarded honorary doctorates by at least three other universities.

After their marriage, Blackadder and Houston, the couple took up residence in a large villa in The Grange district of Edinburgh, which she continued to occupy until her death in 2021, aged 89.

Exhibitions and Bibliography / References

Selected Solo Shows
Quiet Observations, Landscapes and Interiors 1955 to 1975, runs from 4 June to 4 July 2026at the Jenna Burlingham Gallery in Kingsclere.
Paintings, Prints and Watercolours 1955-2000, Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh 28 July 2000 – 15 September 2000
Elizabeth Blackadder, Mercury Gallery, London, 20 October 1999 – 20 November 1999
Elizabeth Blackadder, Aberystwth Arts Centre,
New Paintings, Mercury Gallery, London, 14 October 1988 – 19 November 1988
Theo Waddington Gallery, Toronto, Canada, 1982
Scottish Arts Council Retrospective Touring Exhibition; Edinburgh, Sheffield, Aberdeen, Liverpool, Cardiff, London, 1981–82
Vaccarino Gallery, Florence, 1970
Thames Gallery, Eton, 1966
The Scottish Gallery, Aitken Dott, Edinburgh 1966
Mercury Gallery, London, 1965
The Scottish Gallery, Aitken Dott, Edinburgh, 1961
57 Gallery, Edinburgh, 1959

Selected Public Collections
Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal
Carlisle Museum and Art Gallery
Contemporary Art Society
Dunfermline, Carnegie Trust
Edinburgh City Art Gallery
Eastbourne, Tower Art Gallery
Glasgow Museum and Art Gallery
Government Art Collection
Greater London Council
Heriot Watt University
Museum of Modern Art, New York
National Portrait Gallery, London
Scottish Arts Council
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
Scottish National Portrait Gallery
Tate Gallery, London
University of Cambridge, Kettle’s Yard
University of Edinburgh
University of Glasgow, Hunterian Art Gallery
Wustun Museum, Racine, Wisconsin, USA