Fyffe William George Christie (b. 2 February 1918, Bushey, Hertfordshire, England, d. 6 March 1979) British figurative artist and mural painter.
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Fyffe Christie was born and spent his earliest years in Hertfordshire in England. His mother Ethel was English but his father was a Scot, commercial artist George Fyffe Christie, and he is often viewed as a Scottish or Anglo-Scottish artist. After the death of his mother in 1930 he returned to Glasgow, Scotland were his father had some success with his creation of a popular sketch character 'Scottikins' in the local Bulletin newspaper. Fyffe Christie suffered from severe dyslexia and was unable to read until the age of twelve. He showed an early interest in drawing and painting, as well as in music, playing the bagpipes. Father George Christie's income remained uncertain however and because of this he sent his son Fyffe to work in the more secure legal profession. After two years Fyffe left the lawyers office he worked in and began an apprenticeship as a lithographic draughtsman but this too proved unsatisfactory.
On the outset of The Second World War Fyffe Christie joined the British Army as a bagpiper (pipers also traditionally serving as stretcher bearers in the field), attending a course at the Army School of Piping in Edinburgh Castle. He was then posted to the 9th battalion the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles). The battalion was in continuous action after D-Day, 6 June 1944 and suffered heavy casualties as they fought for eleven months from Normandy into Northern Germany.
During rest periods Christie began to sketch the scenes and landscapes around him in ink and watercolours (he was ambidextrous and drew with both hands). Many of these sketches are now held in the Regimental Museum in Edinburgh, the Imperial War Museum, London and the Second World War Experience Centre in Leeds. Many of the Glasgow men he served with could not read and, having overcome his childhood dyslexia, Christie often helped his comrades by reading their letters from home and writing their replies for them. He spoke little of his wartime experiences but it was during the war that he resolved that he would become an artist.
Christie attended the Glasgow School of Art from 1946 to 1951 studying mural painting under Walter Pritchard. Pritchard was a respected figure in mural painting and Christie worked with him in the painting of a large mural for St. Francis-in-the-East, at Bridgeton in Glasgow. He won the Newbery Medal in 1950 for the most distinguished student of his year. In 1951 he took a postgraduate's study year and a six month travelling scholarship to France, Germany and Italy. He had also begun teaching evening classes at the School of Art and there met his wife, student Eleanor Munro, the couple marrying on Fyffe's return to Scotland in 1952.
In the post-diploma year of 1950-1 Christie executed his first major commission, the mural of Christ Feeding the People for the Iona Community. The work was commissioned by the charismatic founder and leader of the community the Reverend George MacLeod who had been responsible for the reconstruction of the Abbey on the Island of Iona off Scotland's west coast. The mural was painted on the walls of the community centre canteen on Clyde Street, Glasgow which was open to the public as a cafe and served as a soup kitchen for the homeless. Christie depicted the huge scene of an interior with ordinary folk, men returning from work and women baking and bathing children, while at the centre Jesus serves to a table of people begging to be fed. The portrayal of ordinary folk would seem to lend dignity to their humble work and domestic life, while their depiction in contemporary working dress and the inclusion of Glasgow's Clyde Street in the scene which can be seen through the doors and windows of the mural might also be considered to have brought a sense of immediacy and relevance to the work. Shortly after completion of the work the newspaper The Glasgow Herald ran an article on mural art in Scotland and the work of the muralists Walter Pritchard, William Crosbie and Christie. The 'powerful simplicity' of Christie's Iona Community mural was praised. Christie preferred to paint directly onto the wall but the Iona Community specified that the commission was completed on panels. Fortunately this allowed the work to be saved following the closure of the centre. After disappearing for several years the work was rediscovered and put on exhibition at the Glasgow Museum of Religious Art. Despite enthusiastic coverage in The Scotsman and Herald newspapers the work was sold by a private dealer to an unknown buyer in England in 1998.
Other murals executed by Christie include: Glasgow College of Piping, Glasgow.
Crossmyloof Ice Rink, Glasgow (demolished).
The James Bridie Memorial Room, Glasgow University Union. Mural based on the song West End Perk by James Bridie the playwright and poet. The work was originally sited near the entrance to the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow before being purchased by the James Bridie Trust for the Memorial Room.
Children's Games, 1955, Hillhead Primary School, Glasgow. Four or five panels each approximately 4 ft. X 5 ft
A Modern Pilgrim's Progress Little Ilford Baptist tabernacle, Stamford Rivers, England.
The Seasons (circa 1970),Bromley Hospital, England (relocated to the Canada Wing of the Orpington Hospital).
Fyffe and Eleanor Christie worked as art teachers in Glasgow (Eleanor studying sculpture) until 1957 when they left for better job prospects in England. Christie taught at the Gurney School for Disadvantaged Children in Ilford before moving to the Park Modern School (later the Barking Abbey School) were he taught until retirement. The couple lived in the Ilford suburb of Seven Kings before moving to a smaller flat in Blackheath. During his career at the school he produced around 200 drawings of his pupils mostly executed between 1964 and 1974. A solo exhibition was held at Foley's Gallery in Charing Cross Road in London in 1958 which attracted favourable reviews in the Glasgow Herald. Christie was not however a self-publicist and the ascendancy of abstract art in the latter 20th century led to increasingly fewer commissions for figurative artists such as Christie. Christie was also a landscape painter, painting with his wife Eleanor on holidays in Scotland (particularly the Ayrshire coast), England, France and Italy. In 1973 he began a series of around 40 large figure compositions of nudes, oil on canvas. Other works included still lives.
Fyffe Christie died on the 6th March 1979, the same year in which he and Eleanor held a joint show locally at Woodlands Art Gallery.
The Lady of Shallot, 1957, draught screen on four panels each 4 ft X 2 ft, oil on hardboard
Posthumous shows included: Exhibition of Drawings at the Glasgow School of Art. Cyril Gerber Fine Art, Glasgow, 1988. Fairhurst Gallery, Fulham, London, 1988. 'Children & Childhood' Exhibition, City Art Centre, Edinburgh, 1989. Exhibition of his schoolchildren drawings was held at the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood, 1991. Exhibition, Blackheath Concert Halls. Exhibition, Norwich.
Buckman, D., Jordanova, L. and Radford, R., Nature and Humanity, the work of Fyffe Christie: 1918-1979, (Sansom & Company, Bristol, 2004)