Born in Haddington in 1898, Sir William Gillies RSA studied at the Edinburgh College of Art. He travelled widely, returning to the college after the First World War as an accomplished artist and tutor, where he taught for more than forty years until his retirement as Principal in 1966. He was a hugely influential and inspired countless artists to follow his lead and passion for painting.
Throughout his career, Gillies explored and developed different approaches to his painting, absorbing European modernism and redirecting it through an art that was intimately connected to his life. Experimenting with Cubism after studying in Paris in 1923, the revelatory discovery of Edvard Munch in a Society of Scottish Artists exhibition in 1931 opened further doors to Expressionism, abstraction, symbolism, the art of Paul Klee, the naiveties of child art, and the latter-day French belle peinture. The results emerged over the following thirty years and across the full range of his painting – in portraiture, still life and landscape – as he attempted to find a voice for his isolation.
On his death in 1973, Gillies left his entire estate, including the contents of his studio, to the Royal Scottish Academy. This monumental gift, known as the RSA William Gillies Bequest, makes the RSA's permanent collection the most significant holding of Gillies' work.