Ian Eadie, 1913-1973

"Art should be judged from all points: design, colour, rhythm, decoration, technique and feeling" - Ian Eadie

Painter, muralist and teacher, Ian Eadie was born in Dundee in 1913. He showed an early talent for drawing - leaving Harris Academy as Dux Medallist in Art - and from 1931 he studied under J. Milne Purvis at Dundee College of Art, gaining his diploma after three years.

He won the first travelling scholarship awarded by the College, which enabled him to study under Ferdinand Sabatté in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts and to travel in Italy, a tour cut short by the death of his father. Aged 22, Eadie had shown at the RSA (Royal Scottish Academy), to which he was soon to add RP (Royal Society of Portrait Painters) and RWS (Royal Watercolour Society). In 1939 he studied for four months at Westminster School of Art under Mark Gertler.

When World War II interrupted Eadie joined the Gordon Highlanders and served as a divisional war artist (51st Highland Division). His work was eventually taken by the Imperial War Museum and public galleries in Aberdeen, Dundee and Glasgow.

Following the war Eadie returned to Dundee College of Art to teach, part-time. He continued to work freelance until the end of his life, but unfortunately his heavy workload as a mural painter eroded time for easel painting. Travels on the continent saw him latterly returning to easel painting, but ill health and cut short Eadie's working life. He died of a heart attack on the 10th December 1973.