Full Name: Young, Andrew McLaren
Gender: male
Date Born: 1913
Date Died: 1975
Place Born: Southend, Argyll and Bute, Scotland, UK
Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK
Home Country/ies: United Kingdom
Subject Area(s): painting (visual works)
Overview
Whistler scholar and Richmond professor of Fine Art, University of Glasgow, 1965-75. Young was the son of Robert Comingo Young (1882-1946) a Presbyterian missionary, and Olga Parsons (1890-1939). He attended Jamaica College (to 1930), in Kingston, Jamaica where his father was assigned. He returned to Scotland where he continuing studying at George Watson’s College, Edinburgh and after 1932 at the University of Edinburgh. At Edinburgh the lectures David Talbot Rice convinced him to study art history. He joined the Tate Gallery as a temporary staff, without completing his degree in 1938. When World War II broke out the following year, Young joined the infantry. In 1940 he married Margaret Heath Halse (b. 1919). During the war he fought in Burma, north Africa, and Sicily where he was wounded in action. After his discharge Young joined the Barber Institute of Fine Arts at the University of Birmingham in 1946 under Thomas Bodkin. In 1949, he moved to the University of Glasgow to found department of art history and create a university art museum. His exhibition of Whistler paintings in 1960 focused on a more precise chronology of the artist’s work. In 1965 his achievements were rewarded with an honorary A. M. and a promotion to the first Richmond professor of Fine Art. His Charles Rennie Mackintosh exhibition followed in 1968. While attending the Royal Academy exhibition on J. M. W. Turner, he suffered a heart attack and died. He is buried at Keil Com Keil, Southend, Argyll. His catalogue raisonné of Whistler paintings was completed by and published in 1980.
Selected Bibliography
and MacDonald, Margaret, and Spencer, Robin, and Miles, Hamish. The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler. 2 vols. New Haven: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art /Yale University Press, 1980; Glasgow at a Glance: an Architectural Handbook. edited, and Doak, Archibald, and Walker, David. Glasgow: Collins, 1965; Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928): Architecture, Design and Painting. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Festival Society, 1968; James McNeill Whistler: an Exhibition of Paintings and Other Works. London: Arts Council of Great Britain/English-Speaking Union of the United States, 1960 [Ipswich, Suffolk : W.S. Cowell].
Sources
Farr, Dennis. “Young, Andrew McLaren.” Dictionary of National Biography; [obituaries:] Farr, Dennis. “Professor Andrew McLaren Young.” Burlington Magazine117, No. 868. (July 1975): 487; Miles, Hamish. “Prof A. McLaren Young, Fine Art at Glasgow University.” The Times (London) February 12, 1975, p. 20.
Archives
- Andrew McLaren Young Papers [In Process], University of Glasgow Archives and Special Collections, ACCN3658.
Contributors: Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen