DAME ELIZABETH BLACKADDER Louis on a Silk Cushion

Dame Elizabeth Blackadder was a Scottish painter and printmaker. She was the first woman to be elected to both the Royal Scottish Academy and the Royal Academy.

She studied at Edinburgh College of Art and then in 1962 began teaching there and continued until her retirement in 1986.

Blackadder worked in a variety of media such as oil paints, watercolour, drawing and printmaking. She painted portraits and landscapes but her later work contains mainly flowers and her cats.

Regular trips abroad, particularly to Japan, helped stimulate her interest in colour and pattern. Her work can be seen at the Tate Gallery, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and has appeared on a series of Royal Mail stamps.