Duncan, John, RSA
1866 – 1945
Born in Dundee, at the age of eleven he commenced studies at the Dundee School of Art, and shortly afterwards began to draw for a local paper “ The Wizard of the North,” and the “Dundee Advertiser.” After seven years of this, he then spent three years in London working as a book illustrator before travelling to Antwerp to study art under Verlat and then moving on, via Düsseldorf, to Italy in 1890 and returning to Dundee in 1891. He became involved with fellow Dundonian Patrick Geddes HRSA in a project to produce murals for Geddes at Ramsay Lodge and contributed illustrations to Geddes' influential publication "The Evergreen" and to numerous other books. He wrote and illustrated at least one children's book, 'The Shoemaker and the Elves,' which was published in Dundee in 1905. Due to the influence of Geddes, Duncan spent three years in Chicago as Associate Professor of Art at the Chicago Institute (1900-03) followed by a similar period in Dundee, when he was occupied with a group of panels for a French chateau. In 1905 he moved to Edinburgh where he had previously lived in 1896 and concentrated on his painting career and also was involved in stained glass commissions such as those he produced for St Hilda's Priory in Whitby. This church connection was continued by the windows in stained glass which he executed in late years for North Morningside Church, Newbattle, Paisley, Carnoustie and Morar. He also produced murals and experimented with the traditional medium of tempera in his emulation of the art of the Italian Primatives. He exhibited at the RSA from 1896 until 1945, he became an Associate Member of the RSA in 1910 and an Academician in 1923. He held the office of RSA Librarian for twenty years from 1925 until 1945.
Works in which this creator appears
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