oil on canvas, signed, titled verso
framed

Provenance: The artist's studio sale, 2021
Note: Born in Kirkcudbright's Atkinson Place in 1933, John Halliday lived for nearly ninety years just two doors along from the house in which he was born. In the intervening decades, his restless life had been one of exploration: creatively, culturally, geographically and personally. Born into a family background where a career in art was not a likely or realistic prospect, Halliday found himself leaving Kirkcudbright Academy at the age of sixteen to take up work as a trainee on the local Galloway News. And there the story might well have ended. But a benign fate, never far away in the Halliday life story, began to take a hand in events. In 1948, Cecile Walton, daughter of the celebrated E.A. Walton, had decided to settle permanently in Kirkcudbright. Although in straitened financial circumstances, she was a woman of some style and flair which extended beyond her art and into her lifestyle. Introduced to Halliday at an Arts Council touring exhibition in St Cuthbert's Hall, Cecile took an interest in the talented teenager. Along with Jean Menzies, John's art teacher at school, Walton worked hard to have him accepted at the Glasgow School of Art despite his lack of formal educational qualifications. But Walton's influence did not end with Halliday's entrance to art school in 1949. Life in Cecile's Millburn studio was a far cry from the more humdrum life-style of Atkinson Place. Despite a lack of money, Cecile did not lack glamour in young John's eyes: "It was a magical place, with its old pot-bellied stove. I remember the furniture, particularly a big bureau, and the chairs were William Morris. She seemed to entertain everybody there, great Sunday lunches in particular, with all kinds of interesting guests from all the arts. And she managed to bring it all off in a single-end in the Millburn." (Tales of the Kirkcudbright Artists: Gordon, 2006). This passion for style and sparkling company left its mark on the young man. His life has been marked by enrichment through association with beautiful objects and with people who have made their mark on the world of the arts and society in general. 1949 was a good year to be arriving at the Glasgow School of Art. Teaching giants such as William and Mary Armour, Geoff Squire and John Miller greatly impressed the young but impecunious Halliday. His digs in a theatrical boarding house adjacent to the School of Art meant he spent more time than most students in the School, drawing every ounce of input from the learning experience before eventually finding himself a tiny studio in the city centre. In his final year at art school, he won two Royal Scottish Academy Awards: the Chalmers Bursary and the award for outstanding Diploma show. Output from this period featured in an exhibition, largely organised by Cecile Walton, in a Castle Douglas gallery shortly after graduation. Here again, fate took a hand. The largest canvas in the exhibition was bought by Douglas Lorimer, managing director of North British Locomotives, who financed Halliday for a year to 'see the world', as he put it. Lorimer's help, together with money from his awards saw John setting out with his friend and experienced traveller, Gerald Ashton, for his first trip abroad - to Sicily. It was a seminal experience, the beginning of a life-long love of this location to which he has returned countless times. An introduction to Glasgow architect Jack Notman led, over the years, to a series of over 70 mural commissions. Ten of these were for panels of famous Scots at Prestwick Airport, others for the Clydesdale Bank, the Bank of Scotland, the Marquis of Bute, Hope Scott, the National Trust for Scotland, Scottish and Newcastle Breweries, Glenfarclas whisky, to name only a few. In many of them his love of architecture, symmetry and the baroque technique of trompe l'oeil was fully explored. It is, however, to Whistler, friend of his own patron, Cecile Walton, that his own work is most often compared, a comparison with which Halliday was not unhappy. " It is his half-tones and quarter tones which I really love and these play an important part in my work also. The light in the early morning or evening can only be realised through them. People talk a lot about my preoccupation with light but it is to those tones that I am really referring," he remarks. New York-based Clare Henry, doyenne of international art critics, is among those happy to make the comparison: "Landscape is Halliday's real love, be it a damp day by the Tweed or noon in Sicily...while studies of ancient facades in Venice are positively Whistlerian." (The Herald, 25th November 1998). Richard Jacques in The Scotsman has seen similar parallels: "Specially rewarding are those Whistlerian images of Kirkcudbright and Galloway in which the elements of landscape are seen in a penumbral create an almost magical effect." (The Scotsman, 18th November 1991). Some might also see a parallel closer to home. In his love of penumbral light and muted tones and outlines, Halliday at times forays into the concerns, if not the palette, of another Kirkcudbright artist, Macaulay Stevenson. John Halliday remained however, very much his own man with a vision of Galloway to which he had been drawn irresistibly throughout a long career. Travels throughout Europe, homes across Scotland have resulted in glorious oils, gouache and crayon images from all parts: from Calabria to Coldstream, from the baking sun of Sicily to wintry scenes in Edinburgh.