William Littlejohn

William Hunter Littlejohn RSA (1929-2006) was an acclaimed Scottish artist known for his evocative still lifes relating to the landscape of north-east Scotland.

Littlejohn was born in Arbroath and studied art at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee, from 1946 to 1950. He served in the Royal Air Force for his National Service and taught at Arbroath High School from 1953 to 1966. He was appointed to the Department of Drawing and Painting at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen, in 1966 and was promoted to Head of Fine Art in 1970, a position which he held until his retirement in 1986.

During the 1970s Littlejohn's work was characterised by a cool, minimal abstraction showing the influence of post-war American painters and mid-century British Modernists like Ben Nicholson. Upon receiving the RSA Gillies Award in 1984, Littlejohn travelled to Japan, immersing himself in the culture and researching the traditional art practices in which he saw ‘extreme refinement co-existing with almost brutal boldness’. Littlejohn’s interest in ‘Japonisme’ was shared by his contemporaries Dame Elizabeth Blackadder RSA, John Houston RSA and Ian McKenzie Smith PPRSA.

Littlejohn’s later paintings are executed nearly entirely in watercolour and feature recurring objects, often collected during his travels, or images sourced from books. As well as various species of Atlantic fish, there are finely observed origami birds, plates, Japanese screens, fruit, vessels, windmills, kites, dragonflies and mirrors.

Littlejohn was elected an Associate Member of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1966 and an Academician in 1973. In 2006, he gifted the contents of his studio to the RSA. This consisted of over 300 watercolours, oils, drawings and prints along with studio objects, sketch books and research documents. The RSA has since accessioned key works and the studio objects into its permanent collection to form the William Littlejohn Studio Collection. Works from the gift have been exhibited in Edinburgh, Stonehaven, Forfar and Arbroath and 25 paintings have been placed in public collections.

The proceeds from sales of artwork contribute to the RSA William Littlejohn Award, an annually disbursed fund for research, development and creation of new work in water-based media.