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Alex Galt (19 March 1913 – 2000) was a Scottish painter, born in Greenock. He went to the Glasgow School of Art in 1930, winning the Torrance Award on his graduation. He was in the Glasgow Art Club and was elected to the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts.

Life
Alex Galt was born in Greenock, Renfrewshire. His father was Galt, his mother Millard. He was the seventh child of a Clyde brass founder.

The family were very poor, but Galt won a scholarship to enrol in the Glasgow School of Art.

At the onset of the Second World War, Galt taught briefly at Greenock High School, before he joined the RAF.

He married Agnes, and they had a son, Ian, in 1952.

After the war he taught as a tutor at the Glasgow School of Art, before again becoming an Art teacher at Greenock High School.

Art
While at the Glasgow School of Art other students teased him about his poverty. Frequently with little money, Galt made his own paint; and for brushes he used his own hair.

His friends at the art school were David Donaldson and Bill Crosbie. Donaldson went on to be be Head of Drawing and Painting at the Glasgow School of Art and the Queen's Limner in 1977; he said of Galt that '…he could draw like an angel….and …could out Orpen Orpen'.

His teachers called Galt 'the human camera'. He won the Torrance Award on his graduation. His diploma work toured Scotland as an example of the School of Art.

He became friends with the sculptor Jacob Epstein. When Galt's painting The Stable Boy was purchased by the Caird Museum in Greenock, the arts critic James Agate became a fan of his work. Agate introduced Galt to the Redfern Gallery in London.

He won a Carnegie Scholarship in 1938 which allowed him to travel to France. He became part of the Montparnasse artistic community for two years befriending Donald Caskie, who became the war hero 'The Tartan Pimpernel'.

He had to return to Scotland at the onset of the Second World War.

After the war Galt was still struggling for money. He could no longer afford his membership fee at the Glasgow Art Club and asked to resign his membership. The club refused his resignation, simply foregoing his fee, so that he remained a member.

Galt was elected to the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts. He was an active member, and won his last prize with the RGI at the age of 81.

His work was featured in the RGI's exhibition at McLellan Galleries in 1980; with the review that Galt was 'unjustly underrated'.

In 1984 The Scotsman newspaper said of Galt that he was 'an artist who had never received his just acclaim'.

In 1991, the McLean Museum and Art Gallery in Greenock exhibited some of his work together with other artists in their summer exhibition which ran from July to August that year.

The RGI exhibition of December 1992 also featured his work. The Scotsman newspaper remarked: 'It is good to see the return of Alex Galt, a much underrated landscape painter if ever there was one.'

Death
He died in 2000. Galt was extremely confident in his painting abilities, which made him refuse almost all offers for his work. On his death, the attic of his Greenock Cottage, which he used as a studio, was found to have dozens of paintings crammed in there. Thirty of the paintings went on exhibition at the Panter and Hall gallery in Mayfair, London in 2005.

The Gallery co-owner personally went up to Greenock to collect Galt's work. Matthew Hall explained: What we found was an astonishing cache of significant paintings by a great Scottish character who didn't sell much of his work. Alex Galt was remarkably confident in his abilities and simply turned down most of the people who tried to buy his Colourist-style works.

The paintings were in the very dusty attic of the Galts' charming wee home and I had to clamber over joists to the water tank area to retrieve them. I came out filthy dirty - but it was well worth it. The paintings are simply fabulous.

Works included in the 2005 Mayfair exhibition included:- Agnes Resting, a portrait of his wife; a study of Portree; one entitled Looking up Coast of Clyde from Skelmorlie; a dramatic oil entitled The White Hat; and one of a man snoozing on a train.

The Herald reported the exhibition of Galt's work: A COLLECTION of paintings by a forgotten Scots artist, who was once so poor he used his own hair for making brushes, is set to be sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds after being discovered in an attic.

A second exhibition of Galt's work took place at the Panter and Hall gallery in 2007. The focus was then on his watercolour work. Works included:-Overton in the Snow; Upper Skelmorlie; Inverkip Shore; Showers over the Clyde; and Greenock from the Golf Course.