Kathryn Kynoch RP (1941 - 2025)

Bio

Kathryn Kynoch passed away peacefully in Glasgow Royal Infirmary on 27 February 2025. She had been suffered ill-health from mid-2024, and was admitted to the Infirmary on 31 December.

Born in Portobello (Edinburgh) in 1941, Kathryn studied at the Glasgow School of Art from 1959 to 1964. After completing a ‘Post-Dip’ year she won a travelling scholarship and studied in the Museo del Prado, Madrid, for four months. 

Her profile page on the Royal Society of Portrait Painters website shows a range of her portraits completed from the later 1960s, including several eminent Scots. The first was Professor Alec Macfie, the Adam Smith Professor of Political Economy in the University of Glasgow, who had seen her portrait of Rosemary Atkins (which he bought and is now displayed in the Hunterian Art Gallery). Another who sought her out was Professor Alec Cairncross, the noted Scottish economist, and this led to a personal friendship with both him and his wife, Mary. Later, Professor Fraser Noble, another noted Scottish economist, used his influence to make certain that she painted his portrait for the University of Leciester (although the work was painted in Aberdeen). She painted a portrait of Lord Wheatley, the former Chief Justice Clerk of Scotland at his home in Edinburgh as a commission for the University of Stirling where he chaired the University Court.

Kathryn always preferred painting her portraits from life, rather than from photographs, but one exception was when the former MP, Neil Carmichael, sought her out to do a posthumous portrait of Lord Ross of Marnock (the former Willie Ross MP and Labour Minister) which is in the Government Art Collection.

Most of these notable works predate her association with the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.

Some of her works can be seen online on her personal website, on the ArtUK website, and on the website of the Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow.

Kathryn was at school in Leicester, where she excelled in literature and the arts, but she decided to join the Glasgow School of Art, partly under the influence of her art teacher (who had studied there himself). 

Kathryn was elected as an artist member of the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts in 1994, and as an artist member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 2021.