* LILIAN NEILSON (BRITISH 1938 - 1998),
A BEACHED BOAT
oil on board, signed, titled and dated 1964 labels verso
image size 43cm x 92cm, overall size 54cm x 103cm
Framed.
Handwritten artist's labels verso.
Exhibition label verso: Into the Light, Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums.
Provenance: Acquired by the vendor direct from the artist in 1964 when he and Lil Neilson both lived in the Lawnmarket (Edinburgh). Lil was sharing digs with Reet (Rita) Guenigault and both were employed as set designers for The Traverse Theatre. "A Beached Boat" has been held in the same private collection since 1964 and has only been publicly exhibited when the vendor agreed to loan the picture to Aberdeen Gallery & Museums for Neilson's "Into The Light" exhibition.
Note: Lil Neilson was a member of the quartet who became known as 'The Catterline School' along with Joan Eardley, Annette Stephen and Angus Neil. Lil Neilson studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art from 1956-60, including a summer school at Hospitalfield House, Arbroath. She completed a post-diploma year tutored by Hugh Crawford and Alberto Morroco in 1960-61 and was awarded a travelling scholarship to France and Italy in 1961-62. On her return she joined Joan Eardley in Catterline: they had become friends in 1960 at Hospitalfield House and Eardley invited Lil to paint in the studio she and Annette Stephen shared in Catterline. Like many other painters and visitors, Lil became enthralled with the place. At this time Lil also worked backstage with Reet Guenigault in theatres including the Traverse in Edinburgh and also in England, returning to Catterline to nurse Eardley when her illness was diagnosed in the new year of 1963. Reet joined them three months later to take over and give Lil a rest, and after Eardley's death in August of that year, Lil bought No 2 South Side, Catterline, to make her home in one half and studio at the other end. Some pictures of this period show Catterline views which Eardley famously painted, especially with the great round moons low in the summer sky. Neilson's foregrounds are less detailed and the viewer's eyes are led upwards towards the sky. Lil continued to work in theatres until 1969, when she returned to Catterline to try to work through the Eardley influences which had been made more than a bitter cup. She felt that she must paint that problem out in Catterline. She spent some time in Norfolk with Gaydon Phillips, but not many paintings of Norfolk exist and she returned to paint in Catterline regularly over the next nine years. She moved permanently to Catterline in 1986 and, once there, Joyce Laing's Pittenweem gallery exhibited some of Lil's work which showed new directions. In 1989, at the influential 369 Gallery, Edinburgh, an exhibition shared with Annette Stephen showed a two-room retrospective of Lil's work. Her last show was 'Certain Days and Other Seasons' (1997) at both Seagate and Aberdeen Art Galleries. Lil pronounced this to be ''the end of my life's work'', prophetically as it turned out, for by August 1997 it became apparent that this private and reticent woman had been working under duress for the past two years as the extent of her disease was discovered. Lil's good friends and neighbours loved and nursed her, enabling her to be in her beloved Catterline until she needed the services of Roxburgh House. Lil Neilson's paintings rarely appear at auction and those which have in recent years have often been small studies and sketches which perhaps explains why her UK auction record price remains the £4600 (hammer) for "Catterline" achieved for lot 1744 in The Scottish Contemporary Art Auction on 15.12.2013. Several recent examples have threatened to set a new mark, but we consider "A Beached Boat" to be the finest example of Lil Neilson's work to appear at auction anywhere.