Ian Fleming, 1906-1994

Born in Glasgow, Fleming studied painting at Glasgow School of Art in the 1920s, where his lifelong interest in etching and engraving began. From 1931, he returned to GSA to teach, where his students included the Two Roberts, Colquhoun and MacBryde, whose portrait he painted. He worked with William Wilson, Edinburgh-based printer and stained glass artist, and each influenced the other’s work. He became warden of the Patrick Allan-Fraser Art College at Hospitalfield in 1948, where he painted some of the landscape and harbour scenes which he is best known. He was appointed head of Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen in 1954 and supervised the expansion of the school. On retirement, he became the founding chairman of Peacock Printmakers Workshop in Aberdeen.