John Bellany (18 June 1942 – 28 August 2013) was a Scottish painter. Early life Bellany was born in Port Seton. His father and grandfather were fishermen in Port Seton and Eyemouth near Edinburgh. During the early 1960s, he studied at Edinburgh College of Art, here he met with other young Scottish artists to begin lifelong friendships and share ideals for a renaissance in Scottish arts. His contemporaries included Alan Bold and Alexander Moffat. Bellany and Moffat studied under Robin Philipson. Their initial interest was in impressionism but with their common Scottish background they looked toward Alan Davie as a connection to a greater but more accessible artistic world. After his studies at Edinburgh, Bellany achieved a major travelling scholarship and travelled around Europe discovering how the traditions of the great northern European masters could be connected to his own Scottish experience. After this he would marry Helen Percy and move to attend the Royal College of Art in London. In 1967 he was invited to a trip to East Germany. In Dresden he viewed Otto Dix's War Triptych. Career In 1968 Bellany graduated and his diploma show was hailed as great success. Many of the paintings from this and the earlier periods are now in public institutions as well as various national galleries. After graduation, Bellany was offered a teaching position at the Edinburgh College of Art but he carried on as a working artist, taking teaching jobs at Brighton College of Art and then Winchester College of Art. He was elected to The London Group in 1973. After he separated from his wife in 1974, his art appears to take on a darker tone. The symbolism increases and it seems as though each picture can have a whole narrative of symbols within it, increasingly the pictures become wilder, tending more to expressionism. He suffered a nervous breakdown and returned to Port Seton for recuperation. Between 1973 and 1978 Bellany had been head of faculty of painting at Croydon College of Art and had met Juliet Lister who he later married. He lectured at Goldsmiths' College from 1978 to 1984. In 1982 he was offered a show at the Rosa Esman Gallery in New York which presented his work to a greater audience, resulting in purchases to important private collections as well as to the Museum of Modern Art. One of the works exhibited was "Time and the Raven",