Detail from Alison Watt, 'Echo', 2006. The HBOS Art Collection.
© The National Gallery, London.
Courtesy Alison Watt / Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh.

Special Feature

Alison Watt at work
Images from the exhibition and of Alison in her studio

Alison Watt on film

Living with Paintings

Fabric and Flesh

Painting 'Phantom'

Bank of Scotland Private Banking - Sponsor of the Alison Watt exhibition catalogue

12 March – 29 June 2008
Sunley Room Admission free

Alison Watt is the seventh Associate Artist at the National Gallery, and the youngest in the scheme’s history.

Born in Greenock in 1965, Watt is a painter who studied at the Glasgow School of Art. In 2000 she became the youngest artist to be offered a solo exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

Her recent work demonstrates a deep fascination with the possibilities of the suggestive power of fabric. A childhood trip to London to visit the National Gallery resulted in a lifelong admiration for Ingres’s 1856 portrait 'Madame Moitessier', a picture that has been a constant source of inspiration for her.

The Rootstein Hopkins Foundation Associate Artist is appointed for a period of two years, working in the National Gallery studio with the brief of creating new work that relates to the Gallery’s permanent collection. The aim of the scheme is to demonstrate the continuing inspiration of the Old Master tradition on today's artists.

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View details of the Associate Artist Scheme