Exhibitions

The Scottish Colourists: Radical Perspectives

The creation of a new language of colour in European art. 

The four artists known as the Scottish Colourists: SJ Peploe, JD Fergusson, Leslie Hunter, and FCB Cadell, are acknowledged as one of the most talented, experimental, and distinctive groups in 20th-century British art. 100 years after their first exhibition in London, we celebrate their monumental achievements in The Scottish Colourists: Radical Perspectives.  

Loan

COLOUR: The Palette of S.J. Peploe

This summer in Kirkcudbright Galleries, one of Scotland’s most important and best loved artists Samuel J. Peploe: COLOUR: The Palette of S.J. Peploe. Over 60 paintings by this wonderful artist, who took such immense pleasure in the use of colour, who observed with such care and painted with such fluent talent, will be gathered for Kirkcudbright Galleries 2026 Summer Exhibition, entrance free. S.J. Peploe  (1871-1935), celebrated worldwide as one of the leading Scottish Colourists, was as skilled at portraits and landscapes as his much admired and hugely popular still life paintings. His use of colour was breath-taking. His intense personal response to place, to form, is clear in every painting. Like all great artists he absorbed from his peers and developed his own unique touch. His life and work will be examined in this exceptional exhibition, which brings together works from national collections and a great many from private collections never before seen in public. The Fleming Collection is lending two artworks for the show: S. J. Peploe's Still life (1928) and his A Vase of Pink Roses (1925). 

Exhibitions

Joan Eardley: The Sea at Catterline

This summer, The Maltings presents Joan Eardley: The Sea at Catterline, an exhibition exploring the dramatic seascapes created by one of the most distinctive British artists of the twentieth century.

Joan Eardley: The Sea at Catterline has been curated in partnership with The Fleming Collection and is part of RSA200: Celebrating Together. In 2026 the Royal Scottish Academy celebrates its 200th anniversary with RSA200: Celebrating Together. This partnership project will bring hundreds of artists, partners, galleries and institutions together for an extraordinary year of exhibitions, events and performances.

Joan Eardley (1921–1963) is widely recognised for her portraits of street children in Glasgow, but alongside these works she developed an extraordinary body of landscape painting inspired by the fishing village of Catterline on Scotland’s north-east coast. Eardley first visited the village in 1951 and was captivated by its rugged coastline and the ever-changing North Sea, returning regularly before eventually making it her home.

Working outdoors in challenging conditions, often on the cliff edge overlooking the sea, Eardley created expressive, richly textured paintings that capture the energy, movement and atmosphere of the landscape. Using materials such as thick paint, sand and grasses, she built surfaces that evoke the physical force of wind and waves.

Focusing on works made between 1958 and 1963, when Eardley was at the height of her creative powers, the exhibition brings together loans from the Royal Scottish Academy, The Fleming Collection, Aberdeen Art Gallery and private collections.

The exhibition also includes work by artists who were part of Eardley’s creative community including Lil Neilson and Margot Sandeman.

Loan

The Sun and The Moon: Art Inspired by the Celestial

The Sun and The Moon: Art Inspired by the Celestial is a major exhibition exploring how the two most powerful phenomena in the sky have inspired creativity, curiosity, and belief throughout human history and across different cultures. Occupying two floors of the Saatchi Gallery and spanning nine major exhibition spaces, the show presents artworks, installations, and objects that reveal how artists have responded to the Sun and the Moon. The Fleming Collection is lending two artworks for the show: Sun Sang (1969) by Ian Fleming and Deep Divine Sky 2 (2021) by Sekai Machache.

Loan

Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun: Artists, Lovers, Outsiders

Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery is proud to host the exclusive new temporary exhibition Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun: Artists, Lovers, Outsiders, on tour from Charleston, celebrating the lives and works of Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun.

Thanks to public response and passion for Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun’s work, over 100 works from the exhibition, many works never before seen by the public, have been transported across the UK and arrive in Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery for Saturday 2 May 2026. The Fleming Collection has loaned the following three artworks: Robert Colquhoun's Head Study (c. 1953), Robert MacBryde's Still Life I (1960) and Robert Colquhoun's Head of Absalom (1960).

Curator and award-winning author Damian Barr says:

“Robert and Bobby were, briefly, two of the most famous artists in the world: photographed in Vogue magazine, filmed by Ken Russel and collected by the Tate, Nottingham Castle, and many others.  Now they are almost forgotten and more remembered for their tragically short lives, if at all.  It has been a joy and a responsibility reappraising teh work of this pioneering couple, once nicknamed ‘MacBraque and McPicasso’.”

Loan

Relative Ties: Mabel Nicholson, Nancy Nicholson, EQ Nicholson and Louisa Creed

Relative Ties celebrates over a century of artistic innovation and inheritance, tracing the work of four women from the celebrated Nicholson family — Mabel Nicholson, Nancy Nicholson, EQ Nicholson and Louisa Creed. The exhibition explores how creativity is woven together through three generations of women artists. Spanning a period of 100 years, Relative Ties brings together artworks, interior designs, paper ephemera, wallpapers, fabrics, and stencils and other tools to offer a unique insight into the working lives of these artists.

The Fleming Collection's wonderful Mabel Pryde Nicholson's "The Artist's Daughter, Nancy, as a Harelquin", 1910, will be on display.

Loan

Can We Stop Killing Each Other?: Eyewitness

Why are people across the world so fascinated by the dramatisation of killing? From Shakespearean tragedy to Hitchcock’s Psycho, the spectacle of violence is central to performance traditions around the world. Through an exploration of historical and contemporary works by international artists, grappling with the horrors of homicide, Eyewitness considers how violent stage and screen narratives can invite questions about our own morality, cultural codes and religious beliefs.

The Fleming Collection is thrilled to be loaning William Orchardson's 1874 masterpiece, Ophelia to the exhibition. 

Loan

The Art of Observation

Scientists and anatomists have long depended on the power of art to give a legible visual form to knowledge.  Scientific drawing is a crucial skill in various scientific fields, particularly in biology, where it helps in accurately representing observations and data.

This exhibition is part of the University of Stirling Collection's year of Art & Science

The Fleming Collection is lending Eduardo Paolozzi's iconic 1995 bronze "Newton Measuring the World".

Loan

The Story of a Fairy Family

This exhibition will be an opportunity to explore the unrepresented histories of Kirkcudbright as an artists’ colony, sharing research which uncovers the stories of the bohemian lives of the artists who spent their summers here in the early 20th century, with a focus on Dorothy Johnstone, Vera Holme and Anne Finlay. Artworks created in the artists’ colony will be exhibited alongside key archival photographs, a hand drawn book, diaries, letters, and poetry, which will contextualise the relationships between these artists.

The Fleming Collection is lending Dorothy Johnstone's wonderful 1918 portrait of her dear friend Cecile Walton, "Portrait of Cecile Walton"

Loan

Homesickness and Hope: Stories of Hebridean Emigration, Lochaber No More- The Last of the Clan

Homesickness and Hope showcases the stories of those who left the Hebrides islands' shores behind and highlights this importnat aspect of Hebridean History. On loan from the Fleming Collection are John Watson Nicol's Lochaber No More, to be seen at Musuem nan Eilean (Benbecula) and Thomas Faed's The Last of the Clan, on show at Musuem Nan Eilean (Stornaway).

Learn more about the Emigration conference taking place in Stornaway from September 30th - October 1st, 2025