Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.


Scottie Wilson artist

Scottie Wilson was born Louis Freeman to Lithuanian-immigrant Jewish parents in Glasgow, Scotland in 1888. After serving in the British Army during the First World War, he emigrated to Ontario, Canada, where he developed a highly personal style and his own characters – ‘evils and greedies’ – whom he juxtaposed with naturalistic symbols of goodness and truth. He began exhibiting in Canada then moved to London, where he showed his work with great success, though often outside mainstream commercial galleries.

Born: 1888 Glasgow, Scotland

Died: 1972 London, England

Other name/s: Louis Freeman


Biography

Painter Scottie Wilson was born Louis Freeman into a working-class Jewish family originally from Lithuania, on 6 June 1888 in Glasgow, Scotland. His early childhood remained a great influence throughout his life, though he left home aged nine to become a drummer boy in the army, where he acquired the nickname ‘Scottie’, commonly applied to all Scottish soldiers. He served in India and South Africa and, during the First World War, he fought on the Western Front. After the war, he moved to Toronto, Canada, and opened a secondhand shop. One day, fascinated by a pen from his stock, he was compelled to draw: ‘I’m listening to classical music one day – Mendelssohn – when all of a sudden I dipped the bulldog pen into a bottle of ink and started drawing – doodling I suppose you’d call it – on the cardboard tabletop. I don’t know why. I just did. In a couple of days – I worked almost ceaselessly – the whole of the tabletop was covered with little faces and designs’ (Outsider Art Now). Aged 44, he discovered he had an intense passion for art and started producing his totemlike figures and patterns, often meticulously built up of hatched lines. His work first achieved critical acclaim in Canada when it was featured in several group exhibitions. Wilson had a lifelong distaste for commercial art galleries and would often show his work independently. Locations included shopfronts and the interior of buses, where Wilson would not sell his work but instead charged admission for people to come and see.

In 1945 Wilson left Toronto for England, settling in Kilburn, north west London. Soon after arriving he held his first solo exhibition at London's Arcade Gallery. His work was praised in the Observer, which described him as an ‘ingenious ideographer’ (The Observer 1945, p. 2). Two years later his work featured in a mixed show of surrealist and 'primitive' paintings at the London Gallery, The Times commenting that Wilson’s ‘minutely drawn and wholly imaginary plants are certainly curious and interesting inventions' (The Times 1947, p. 6). In 1950 he participated in Aspects of British Art at the recently established Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA). Picasso and fellow ‘outsider artist’ Jean Dubuffet were avid fans and collectors of Wilson’s work and met him when Wilson visited France in the early 1950s.

Wilson evolved a highly personal and visionary artistic style, peopled by his own characters – which he called ‘evils and greedies’ – and which he juxtaposed with naturalistic symbols of goodness and truth, especially birds, fish, flowers, and fauna, often playful and colourful, sometimes bizarre, as exemplified by his pen and ink on paper Greedies (Ben Uri Collection). His highly wrought but refined drawings, with their vast bestiary of fantastical creatures, earned him wide recognition. He produced complex symmetrical compositions in which faces and figures emerged from an unstable ground, images that seemed alive and yet static, suggesting only a small part of a larger, mysterious universe, known only to the artist. In the 1960s Wilson began decorating ordinary, cheap plates, transforming them into delicate works of art, with much of his imagery inspired by the art of indigenous North American tribes. These plates were featured in a solo show at Gallery One, London, in 1963. In a review of the exhibition, which ‘should not be missed’, The Tatler and Bystander commented: ‘There is an extraordinary logicality about his work; it seems to grow like something organic, or like a piece of lace in a skilled lacemaker’s hands. The borders to his plates have the look of folk art or tribal art, but everyone is different. Within them, each one, is confined a unique variation on the universe according to Scottie.’ (Wraight 1963, p. 39). The porcelain company Royal Worcester commissioned Wilson to design a dinner service, which was sold until 1965. Wilson’s drawing, Bird Song, was chosen as one of the designs for the 1970 UNICEF Christmas Card. Despite his 'outsider' inclinations, Wilson exhibited in many London galleries, including Gimpel Fils in Mayfair (established in 1946 by émigré sons of French art dealer, René Gimpel, who perished in 1945 in Neuengamme concentration camp), and Ben Uri (with whom he held several solo shows, including in 1971, the year before his death).

Scottie Wilson died in London, England on 26 March 1972. Posthumously, his work has featured in surveys including Outsider Art, Tate Britain (2005) and Inner Worlds Outside, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2006), while Ben Uri has regularly presented his work, including in the Exhibition of Four Naive Painters: Scottie Wilson, Moshe Maurer, Dora Holzhandler, Perle Hessing (1985) and The Ben Uri Story from Art Society to Museum (2001). Wilson's work is represented in UK public collections including the Ben Uri Collection, the British Museum and Tate. In 2017 Outside In and Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, launched an open call for artists to respond to Wilson’s work, with the opportunity of being exhibited alongside his works from the Gallery’s collection. The resulting commissions were awarded to British artist and social worker, Greg Bromley, and Palestinian artist, Laila Kassab, and featured in Colliding Worlds: Outside In and Pallant House Gallery co-commission (2018).

Related books

  • 'Scottie Wilson', in Benezit Dictionary of Artist (Oxford : Oxford Univ. Press, 2012)
  • Anthony Petullo, Scottie Wilson: Peddler Turned Painter (Milwaukee: Petullo, 2004)
  • Gillian Rathbone, ed., The Ben Uri Story: From Art Society to Museum (London: Ben Uri Gallery, The London Jewish Museum of Art, 2001)
  • Walter Schwab and Julia Weiner, eds., Jewish Artists: The Ben Uri Collection (London: Ben Uri Art Society in association with Lund Humphries, 1994)
  • Derek Hill, 'The Private World of Scottie Wilson', The Irish Times, 1 November 1986, p. 5
  • George Melly, It’s All Writ Out for You: The Life and Work of Scottie Wilson (London: Thames and Hudson, 1986)
  • Mervy Levy, Scottie Wilson (London: Brook Street Gallery, 1966)
  • Robert Wraight, 'Coalhole Aesthetics', The Tatler and Bystander, 2 January 1963, p. 39
  • S. P., 'Scottie Wilson Shows Drawings', 10 December 1949, p. 15
  • 'Art Exhibitions', The Times, 22 July 1947, p. 6
  • Maurice Collis, 'Art', The Observer, 4 November 1945, p. 2

Public collections

Related organisations

  • London Group (member)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Colliding Worlds: Outside In and Pallant House Gallery co-commission, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (2018)
  • Inner Worlds Outside, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2006)
  • Outsider Art, Tate Britain, London (2005)
  • Director's Choice: Highlights from the Ben Uri Permanent Collection, Ben Uri Gallery, Boundary Road, London (2003)
  • Scottie Wilson and Outsider Art, Dean Gallery, Edinburgh (2003)
  • The Ben Uri Story from Art Society to Museum, Phillips Auctioneers, London (2001)
  • Scottie Wilson: The Canadian Drawings, Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina (1989)
  • Third Eye Centre, Glasgow (1986)
  • An Exhibition of Four Naive Painters: Scottie Wilson, Moshe Maurer, Dora Holzhandler, Perle Hessing, Ben Uri Art Society, Dean Street, London (1985)
  • Mercury Gallery, London (1982)
  • Scottie Wilson, Ben Uri Art Gallery (1971)
  • Group Show, Peterloo Gallery, London (1969)
  • New Images by Scottie Wilson, Circle Gallery, London (1968)
  • Scottie Wilson and Margaret Baird, Moyan Gallery, Manchester (1967)
  • Ben Uri Annual Exhibition (1963)
  • Scottie Wilson drawings, Ben Uri Art Gallery (1962)
  • Ben Uri Opening Exhibition (Berners Street) (1961)
  • Scottie Wilson: Recent Drawings, Ben Uri Art Gallery (1959)
  • Scottie Wilson, Gallery One (1963, 1961, 1960)
  • Scottie Wilson, Gimpel Fils (1957)
  • Scottie Wilson, Gimpel Fils (1951)
  • 1950 Aspects of British Art, Institute of Contemporary Arts (1950)
  • Gimpel Fils, London (1949)
  • Surrealist and Primitive Paintings, London Gallery (1947)
  • Group show, London Gallery (1946)
  • Arcade Gallery, London (1945)
  Scottie Wilson
   
Ben Uri collection

Scottie Wilson in the Ben Uri collection

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Scottie Wilson]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Scottie Wilson] in the Ben Uri Library