IN November 1989, Sir Nicholas Fairbairn, former solicitor-general for Scotland, spoke about his latest exhibition of paintings, which was taking place at Glasgow’s Washington Gallery.
Posing in what this newspaper described as gold-crested velvet slippers, colour-co-ordinated romper suit, and blue denim cap sporting the badge of the Rhodesian police, he played, as was his wont, to the gallery of photographers.
No, he explained, he did not usually wear the blue velvet crested slippers for painting; he wore a different pair, but they did not match his blue boiler suit.
The exhibition contained watercolours and oil paintings, priced between £100 and £2,200. A percentage of the proceeds were to be donated by Sir Nicholas and the gallery’s directors to the National Art Collections Fund, a national charity which campaigned to help museums and galleries buy artworks which might otherwise have left the country.
By now, Fairbairn had been describing himself in Who’s Who as author, farmer and painter. He had often said that if he had not been a lawyer or a politician, he would have become a serious artist. He was said to have exhibited, and sold, his first painting while still at university, his one-man show earning him £2,000.
The photograph here was taken in his studio in October 1980, when he was still solicitor-general. He was donating five of his paintings to a charity auction at Stirling University. “I have not had enough time to devote to my painting because of the pressure of work, particularly the recent terrorist trial at the High Court in Glasgow,” he told The Herald. “I hope to remedy that situation now that I have a studio in my London flat as well as at Fordell Castle.”
Fairbairn resigned as solicitor-general in January 1982 after making controversial remarks about a Glasgow rape case.
He indulged his creative habit even while attending committee hearings in the Commons. “In committee room 13 he has set up a veritable studio,” one profile noted in 1992. “Pads of cartridge paper and piles of coloured crayon are strewn casually around his part of the bench, obvious to all and sundry and provoking Donald Dewar to urge the chairman, Michael Martin, to call him to order.”
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