Biography

HUGH BUCHANAN was born in Edinburgh in 1958 and educated at Edinburgh College of Art. Since completing post-graduate studies 'with distinction' in1981, he was awarded travel scholarships to the Middle East and, later, North Italy and the Balkans and he has travelled regularly throughout Europe to visit and paint in watercolour buildings and interiors from the Renaissance to the Baroque. Over several years he worked on commissions for the National Trust and in 1987 was invited by the Prince of Wales to paint a series of interiors of Balmoral, subsequently completing a further sequence at Highgrove in 1994. In 1988 he was commissioned by the House of Commons to paint four interiors in the Palace of Westminster.

Hugh Buchanan's paintings are in the Collections of HM The Queen, HRH Queen Elizabeth the late Queen Mother, HRH The Prince of Wales, the Palace of Westminster, the University of Edinburgh, the Bank of Scotland, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Flemings Bank, Deutsche Bank, the National Trust for Scotland, the National Trust for England and the House of Lords. In 1987 he was one of Ten British Watercolourists shown at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao, Spain. In 1991 he exhibited at the Lincoln Centre, New York. In 1998 five works by Hugh Buchanan were included in the exhibition Princes as Patrons: The Art Collections of the Princes of Wales from the Renaissance to the Present Day shown at the National Museum and Gallery, Cardiff. In 2005/6 his paintings featured in Watercolours and Drawings from the Collection of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh and Queen's Gallery, London.

In 1994 The Eloquence of Shadows, a volume of architectural meditations by Hugh Buchanan with text and verses by Peter Davidson, was published and in the same year he was given a major Retrospective by the National Trust at Petworth House. Hugh Buchanan has been represented since 1985 by Francis Kyle Gallery where he has held eleven one-man exhibitions between 1986 and 2006. In spring 2000 he was a major participant in The Art of Memory: Contemporary Painters in search of Marcel Proust, a theme exhibition which with new contributions by the artists participating travelled to the National Theatre on the South Bank in January 2001. He took part in the theme exhibitions Roma in 2003, Lair of the Leopard (2005) and Everyone Sang: A View of Siegfried Sassoon and his World (2006). In 2002 he was commissioned by the House of Lords to paint the lying in state of the Queen Mother at the Palace of Westminster.

Hugh Buchanan

In Hugh Buchanan's paintings, it may be a sense of drama expressed through movement that first strikes the viewer as he follows the fall of light leading up staircases, along galleries lined with classical busts, pausing here and there to dwell on eloquent detail: a feline-footed chair, a table caught in light filtering through a high window. Among the broad range of these watercolours, objects emerge into light or disappear into shadows where their presence can still be felt.

As Hugh Buchanan's most characteristic work in watercolour is animated by his virtuoso handling of light, the inclusion of figures would with few exceptions distract from the mood of his compositions. Instead, an equally strong but less direct indication of human presence is provided by half-open documents or books (sometimes seen fluttering in currents of air), a device gracefully employed in his interiors. At times, the evidence of human presence is provided by a series of portraits which peer from the shadows.

Copyright © Francis Kyle Gallery. All Rights Reserved