Peter Howson

Mr. and Mrs. Winthrop;
Flowers East, London;
Private Collection

Glasgow, McLellan Galleries, Peter Howson: A Retrospective, 2 July - 5 September 1993, no. 515

Robert Heller, Peter Howson, London, 2003, illus. p. 61

The canvas is original. The work is in good original condition, clean and ready to hang. Ultraviolet light reveals no sign of retouching. Held in a simple black painted wooden frame in fair condition.
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'Howson's aggressive, bold style and forceful, exaggerated subject matter had achieved that rare, seductive combination of popularity and artistic excellence.' (Robert Heller, Peter Howson, p. 76). The current work which was painted in 1991 is the third painting in a ten part series entitled Blind Leading the Blind I-X, is an outstanding example of his aggressive and bold style of painting. Life's journey from adolescence through adulthood and into old age was, at times, not an easy one for Howson and especially in his formative years he was well accustomed to bullying and violence. Howson was at this time suffering from violent depression only exacerbated by his drug and alcohol addiction which left him battling multiple demons for many years. However, as one often finds, periods of extreme struggle can lead an artist towards a single-minded creativity that cannot be constrained, thus providing a very personal means of communication and sometimes therapy. This is certainly one of the earliest paintings in which Howson depicts a drummers parade, a motif which is repeated in other later works such as The Lodge (1993), Drum (1995) in the collection of Gary Kurfirst, Nassau and Drum II (1998) in the collection of Steven Berkoff.

Blind Leading the Blind III is a rare work in which Howson displays an overtly Scottish theme, evident in the tartan worn by members of the parade, the traditional Scottish cap work by the figure to the left of the composition and most notably the figure of Robbie Coltrane in the centre right of the composition. Coltrane, whose real name is Anthony Robert McMillan, is one of Scotland's best-loved actors and Howson's identification with this Scottish icon, and indeed with his own sense of 'home', is significant. Coltrane attended Glasgow School of Art, majoring in drawing, painting and film a generation before Peter Howson prior to studying art at Edinburgh's Moray House College of Education for a year. In 1973 he made a documentary titled 'Young Mental Health' which was voted Film of the Year by the Scottish Education Council and it was at this time Robbie took the name Coltrane, due to his love of jazz. The scale of Howson's series has an affinity with the old master paintings tradition which adds an additional sense of gravity to the work above and beyond the subject matter and aggressive style in which it is painted. Howson dynamically combines elements taken from the work of Francisco Goya, Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, Otto Dix and Stanley Spencer in an image which is powerful in the extreme. Howson and other members of the New Glasgow Boys set out to make social statements in their art and to paint the power of brutality and reality in a way which achieves the great impact and enduring pathos evident in Blind Leading the Blind III.