* FYFFE CHRISTIE (BRITISH 1918 - 1979)

watercolour on paper, signed and dated 1978
mounted, framed and under glass
Note: offered without reserve.

image size 48cm x 38cm, overall size 68cm x 57cm

Note: A Graduate of Glasgow School of Art, Christie was born in Hertfordshire and came to Glasgow in 1930 aged 12. On leaving school he became an apprentice lithographic draughtsman, having inherited a gift for drawing from his father, George William Fyffe, creator of the then popular Scottikins character in the Bulletin newspaper. At the outbreak of war he joined the Scottish Rifles 9th Cameronians, serving as a piper in Holland and Germany. Throughout his army service he made many drawings and watercolours, returning in 1946 having decided to become an artist. He studied murals at GSA under Walter Pritchard, later collaborating with him on a mural in St. Francis in The East Church. Winner of the Newbery Medal for the most distinguished student of the year, his postgraduate travelling scholarship took him to France, Germany and Italy. He completed numerous murals in the Iona Community House, the Glasgow College of Piping, Crossmyloof Ice Rink, Hillhead Primary School and Glasgow University Men’s Union. Christie taught evening classes at Glasgow School of Art. He married Eleanor Munro (later Eleanor Christie-Chatterley) and moved to London permanently, where he completed commissions for murals in churches and public buildings around Ilford and Farnborough. Attending life classes he began to concentrate on painting and drawing, producing many fine life studies and portraits of his students. Christie’s influences were early Italian painting in his drawings, composition and designs. His nude studies, with purity of colour and simple flowing line have echoes of Matisse. The oils have strong gestural and physical character and a different kind of assertive assurance owing much to the influence of Kokoschka. His landscapes are in the Scottish Colourist and younger MacTaggart tradition – vibrantly coloured, animated surfaces. But it is perhaps the drawings that are the outstanding aspect of Christie’s work, for there is no doubt he was a draughtsman of rare ability. The selection we have made we hope will reveal something of his sensitivity, evident rapport with his sitters and easy spontaneity. Cyril Gerber said of Christie who died in 1979 “Except for his mural work he had scarcely ever exhibited in his lifetime. The experience of looking through his life’s work brings two thoughts to mind. First, that our attention at any one period tends to focus on a quite small number of artists who, by a fortunate combination of ability, chance, historical timing and personality, have come to our notice. We see only what we are allowed to see in art – perhaps only the tip of the iceberg. How many other highly gifted artists may be going un-noticed by the same laws of chance? Second, with such an ability to draw coupled with his obvious joy in handling oil paint or manipulating the flow of watercolour, what kind of impact might he have been making in today’s more appreciative world of contemporary figurative art? We can only speculate on this.” In October 2022 it was announced: A famous Glasgow work of art, thought lost after decades of searching failed to find any trace of it, has been rediscovered and brought back to the city of its birth where it goes on display today for the first time in 40 years. It will be exhibited at Govan Old until Sunday 19 June. ‘Christ Feeding the People’ is a remarkable painting on many fronts. While deeply religious in character, it is unmistakably a Glasgow painting about Glasgow people and Glasgow life. Remarkable too on account of its size — a virtual cinema screen, 32 feet wide x 8 feet high onto which Glasgow School of Art–trained Fyffe Christie projects a variety of cameos celebrating the lives of ordinary people – a woman bathing a baby, another in the process of baking, people doing household chores, a labourer returning from work – as the figure of Christ stands among them offering bread. It was commissioned in 1951 by George MacLeod, leader of the Iona Community (IC), a movement he founded in the field of social justice when minister at Govan Old in the 1930s and which took members of Govan’s unemployed to Iona to work alongside trainee ministers rebuilding the living quarters of the island’s Abbey. For more than 25 years the mural hung at Community House, the IC headquarters in Clyde Street, in the busy canteen which was open to the public and frequented by the city’s homeless. It was said to represent the essence of the organisation’s work in the field of social justice. When Community House was demolished in 1977, the painting went into storage. It then mysteriously disappeared entirely for decades and was thought lost. Rumour had it that it had been bought and exported to America. It was finally traced in 2017 to an art dealer living in Canada who had purchased it at a London art auction. Following negotiations and the intervention of a generous benefactor, the painting was purchased by Govan Heritage Trust and returned to Glasgow and to a new home at Govan Old.