In this early painting, produced shortly before the artist moved from her native

Borders home to live in Edinburgh, Redpath's familiarity with her subject is evident

in the relaxed and unfussy style in which it is painted. Her light palette and thinly

applied paint would change in the coming years as her brush would become dramatically

more heavily loaded with paint. The optimism of the landscapes of this period,

painted in the countryside around Hawick, belie the difficulties in Redpath's family

life bringing up three sons on her own.

Though by her own acknowledgment '… someone who is very interested in colour,

and by that I mean bright colour, gay colour,' Redpath also enjoyed working with a

limited palette - '… if you are a colourist,' she explained in 1961, 'you like quiet colour

as well, and I think this love of gay colour contrasted in my mind with this love of

whites, and greys, and as far back as I can remember I have loved painting white'. She

would credit her sense of colour harmony and contrast as an inheritance from her

father, a tweed designer: 'I do with a spot of red or yellow in a harmony of grey, what

my father did in his tweed.'

Born in 1895, Redpath is a major figure in twentieth century Scottish painting - a

pivotal member of the group of painters now referred to as The Edinburgh School.

Individual, adventurous and independent - her art was an extension of her personality

and she became, in 1952, the first woman painter to be elected a member of the

Royal Scottish Academy.