James Cadenhead
James Cadenhead was a Scottish landscape and portrait painter.Life and work
Cadenhead was born in Aberdeen, the only son of the procurator-fiscal, and received his early training in art in that city, showing an aptitude for black and white drawing, etching and portraiture. He was encouraged in his art endeavours by Dr. John Forbes White who aroused his interest in the old masters, and artists of the French Barbizon and modern Dutch schools. He went on to the Royal Scottish Academy schools in Edinburgh, then, in 1882, to Paris to study at the atelier of Carolus-Duran. There he was also strongly influenced by the work of Jean-Charles Cazin.
Cadenhead returned to Aberdeen in 1884, moving to Edinburgh in 1891. In 1893, he was elected a member of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour, and in 1902 was made an Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy, and later a full member. He became Chairman of the Society of Scottish Artists, and was one of the original committee of the Scottish Modern Arts Association. He exhibited regularly at the Royal Scottish Academy and Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, and was elected a Scottish Royal Academician in 1921.
Amongst his portraits is one of his mother entitled Lady with Japanese Screen and Goldfish. Cadenhead lived at 14 Ramsay Garden: in the artistic and intellectual colony established by Patrick Geddes close to Edinburgh Castle at the top of the Royal Mile. He was closely associated with Geddes' Fin de Siècle Scottish cultural revival, contributing illustrations to all four volumes of The Evergreen: A Northern Seasonal published by Patrick Geddes and Colleagues between 1895 and 1897. He also took the role of Fionn mac Cumhaill in the Celtic section of the Scottish National Pageant staged in Edinburgh, at Aberdour Castle and at the University of Glasgow in 1908.
In later life he lived at 15 Inverleith Terrace in north Edinburgh.
He died in Edinburgh in 1927. He is buried in Warriston Cemetery on the upper east-west path, near the East Gate.
