In 1949 the National Cash Register Company decided to commission a mural painting for the main entrance hall in the office block of their new factory in Dundee. They asked the Royal Society of Arts to organise a competition to find a suitable work. The subject set for the panel was the ‘Scottish Scene’ and entrants were free to embody any theme of their choice, within the overall framework of the ‘Scottish Scene’. From the designs submitted, fifty were selected for an exhibition which opened in London and toured venues in Scotland before closing in Belfast. Kelp Gathering was Ithell Colquhoun’s entry for the competition.

Although Colquhoun had established her reputation in the late 1920s and early 1930s as a painter of figure compositions (including the prize-winning Judith Showing the Head of Holofernes, 1929, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1931), by the time Kelp Gathering was painted figures had all but disappeared from her compositions. Instead, she was busy pursuing her occult researches and experimenting with the automatic painting techniques she had learned from the Surrealists.In a marginal note to a full size watercolour study for this work, Colquhoun explained the painting techniques she used to achieve her textural effects:

‘Textiles. creels: vertical comage (fine)
tweeds: diagonal comage (fine)
kelp: coarse comage
grass: fine comage
fur, hair: decalcomania
rocks, stones: grattage
oil in a wax medium on canvas’ (Tate archive)

The Tate archives also contain a number of pencil sketches and watercolour studies together with Colquhoun’s annotated copy of the architect’s drawing of the proposed setting for the mural.

We are very grateful to Dr Richard Shillitoe for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.