page_title: William Geissler
section_title: Post First World War Life
hierarchical_section_title: William Geissler / Post First World War Life
caption_attribution_description: Farm Scene in Wamphray, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, by William Geissler Oil 76cm x 62.8 cm
context_page_description: William Hastie Geissler was a Scottish artist known for his watercolours of the natural world. He was one of The Edinburgh School, and much of his earlier work came from sketching trips undertaken with other members of this group, though he himself is sometimes described as a "neglected" member. Although his natural preference lay with watercolour, often with gouache and pen and ink, several works in oil survive.
context_section_description: After demobilisation from the army in 1919, he attended Edinburgh College of Art as a full-time student. Geissler and William Gillies both graduated from ECA in June 1922. In 1923, Geissler, Gillies and William Crozier, having won scholarships, travelled to Paris to study with André Lhote. On his return from Paris, the formal cubist influence of Lhote in Geissler's work softened and was transformed by his own observation of the geometry of the natural world. He exhibited for several years with colleagues as a member of The 1922 Group, an association of ECA graduates who had been awarded travelling scholarships, and whose annual exhibitions were shown at the New Gallery, Shandwick Place, Edinburgh. Exhibitions included work by Geissler, Gillies, William MacTaggart (the Younger), John Maxwell and Crozier.
  Geissler tutored at Edinburgh College of Art in the 1920s before being appointed Art Master at Perth Academy in 1928. In 1931 he married Alison McDonald, later known as the glass engraver Alison Geissler, with whom he had three children, Paul, Erik and Catherine. In 1935 he took a post teaching art at Moray House College of Education, becoming Head of the Art Department in 1947 until his retirement in 1962. He was a member of the Society of Scottish Artists (SSA), of which he was President from 1954 to 1957, and of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour (RSW).
  He worked from close observation of nature, with scenes of lowland Scottish farms and farmsteads, of harbours with fishing boats, and of woodlands and trees. His landscapes are almost all without figures. His vision encompassed not only broad landscapes but was also enthralled by their finer details, as in Roots, Undergrowth, Toadstools, Dead Wood,  Hemlock. As if plants and trees were the representation of life, some of his works at the end of the Second World War create a haunting, sinister mood, the expression of his desolation at the scene of a forest near Carrbridge felled by a storm. After 1951, however, vacations in the New Forest in Hampshire infused his paintings with bright colour and sun.
  An MPhil thesis devoted to his work was completed by Norman Shaw in 1994, from which much of the information in this entry is drawn.
  In the 1950s he developed an interest in cinematography as a means of teaching art in schools. With the participation of teachers and school children from Norton Park School he took an active part in the production of two films set in Edinburgh, The Singing Street and Happy Weekend.
  A retrospective exhibition of his paintings entitled Poetry of Place was held at Edinburgh College of Art in 1996.
  Several of his works have not been traced. References to some notable paintings not shown here are listed below, followed by a selection of some of his known works, arranged in approximate chronological order to show the development of his style and choice of subject matter during his career (see also ):
  Moniaive, Watercolour, SSA exhibition 1934
  Highland Fling (SSA exhibition 1938)
  Toadstools, Watercolour with pen and ink (SSA exhibition 1943)
  The Monk's Walk (RSA exhibition 1944)
  Tree Stumps, Gouache, 1946 
  Gateway, Watercolour on paper, 1947, RSW exhibition 1950
  Roots, Watercolour, gouache, pen and ink on paper, late 1940s
  Woodcuts, illustrations of books on plants
caption: The Hill Farm (Wamphrey) 1930, Oil[8], Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
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