Mary Nicol Neill Armour, R.S.A., R.S.W.

Purchased from the Royal Scottish Academy exhibition in 1971 by Sir David Scott

Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, 1971, no. 78

STRUCTURE Original canvas in good overall condition. PAINT SURFACE There is a small spot of paint loss in the upper left corner. Otherwise the paint surface is in good overall condition. ULTRAVIOLET There is no sign of retouching under UV light. FRAME Held in a gilded frame.
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Born in 1902 in Blantyre, Mary Nicol Steel  attended the Hamilton Academy under Penelope Beaton then studied at the Glasgow School of Art (1920-1925) with Maurice Greiffenhagen and David Forrester Wilson. Throughout these years she painted landscapes, flowers and still-lifes, defiantly developing her own style and maintaining an ingenuity and independent spirit which instils her work with creative integrity. This defiance probably cost her First Prize for painting at The Glasgow School of Art in 1925, but won her the admiration of her future husband, William Armour, a fellow student to whom she was married in 1927. In 1958 she became the second woman, after Anne Redpath in 1952, to be elected to the RSA, and between the years 1951 and 1962 she lectured on still life at the Glasgow School of Art. Her work became ever more colourful. The deterioration of her eyesight caused her to give up painting in 1988.  

Still Life with Peonies was executed at the height of Armour's career and is a fine example of the boldly coloured painterly style that was prominent in Scottish Art of this period. Ironically it was her move away from Glasgow to Renfrewshire in 1953 that was to bring her closer to more mainstream Scottish art. From here she developed close friendships with a number of leading Edinburgh artists, including William Gillies, Anne Redpath and William MacTaggart. It was probably through these friendships that she also found herself strongly influenced by this group both in style and subject. By the time of her death in 2000 Armour was one of the most prominent figures in Scottish art, as a member both of the Royal Scottish Academy and Royal Scottish Watercolour Society and from 1983 as President of the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts.