John Bellany 1942-2013 helped change the course of painting in Scotland. His intensely felt images were a direct challenge to the much diluted Colourist tradition and were at odds with the decorative, drawing room pictures of much contemporary Scottish painitng in the 1960s. This book includes essay and illustrations of works from key periods of the artist's career. It begins with the celebrated paintings of fishermen and their boats from the mid-1960s, to darker pictures of the early 1970s through to the richly coloured allegorical paintings which show a renewed vigour and optimism in his recent years.