User:Agnesbethiabegg/sandbox

 Nita Begg DA  (born 13 November 1920) is a Scottish painter.

Life and work
Nita Begg was born in Mount Vernon, Lanarkshire, the second of three children to James Livingstone Begg and Jean Hepburn.

In 1938 she enrolled on the diploma course at Glasgow School of Art, studying under Hugh Adam Crawford RSA. Among her contemporaries on graduating from the school of art were Joan Eardley, Carlo Rossi, Margot Sandeman, Ethna Low, John Aitken and Charlie MacNamee. She studied further under James Cowie RSA at Hospitalfield House, Arbroath 1946-47, which may be where she first encountered the troubled Scottish artist Angus Neil (Ref 03).

During the war years she undertook firewatching duties at the Macintosh building and worked for a short time at a Shettleston munitions factory. She also performed nursing duties at Stonehouse and Larbert hospitals.

In 1942 her parents received a telegram announcing the death of her brother Thomas Begg, killed in action at the fall of Tobruk (Ref 04). He had been a Gunner with the Norfolk Kings Yeomanry, Anti-Tank Regiment, Royal Artillery. He had been educated at Glasgow High School, was highly successful academically and in sport, and had been accepted to university. The effect of this devasting loss on Nita and her father was a lifelong embitterment (Ref 05).

She met the Glasgow artist William Gallacher (link to famous Paisley People url) who had also embarked on the diploma course at GSA in 1938, though his studies were curtailed by war service until demobilisation in 1946 (Ref 06). In 1949 they married and lived in a flat in Denistoun moving later to the west end of Glasgow. Hillhead West End of Glasgow. While Gallacher taught at GSA and undertook portraiture, Nita brought up their three children and continued to paint and exhibit professionally.

They exhibited together at the Blythswood Gallery (link to RGI), Glasgow (J.D. Kelly Gallery) in 1967. She then exhibited solo at the English Speaking Union, Edinburgh 1969.

Nita became a member of the Glasgow Society of Lady Artists in 1962 winning the Lauder Award in 1968 (Ref 07). Around the same she purchased a holiday cottage in Straiton, Ayrshire as a retreat from the city. She relocated there in 1981, three years after the sudden death of her husband.

Glasgow Society of Women Artists awarded her a special prize for painting in 2004.

Nita Begg painted prodigiously from her time at art school in the 1940s up until a period of ill health in 2004. In 1962 she was diagnosed with cancer. Since that time she has regularly contributed paintings for charitable causes including Christian Action Housing Association, MacMillan Support, Friends of St Columba's Hospice Edinburgh, Cancer Research and High Blood Pressure Foundation Edinburgh. She exhibited in many Scottish galleries (see below) and in the regular group shows at the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts, Paisley Art Institute, Royal Scottish Academy, Glasgow Society of Women Artists and Scottish Society of Women Artists.

Her work has been purchased by many individuals and by Glasgow Museums and Art Gallery, Fine Art Society Edinburgh, Links House Glasgow, Shepherd & Wedderburn, Edinburgh Fund Managers, and Her Majesty The Queen.