James Beattie Michie 1891-1960

James Beattie Michie was born in Inverness in 1891. He married the artist Anne Redpath in 1920 and was apprenticed to the War Graves Commission under the direction of Edwin Lutyens, tasked to the design and layout of many war cemeteries. At this time his interest in painting, particularly the landscape developed.

In the late 1920s he moved to the South of France as an architect and was commissioned to paint two large murals in the Chapelle St Roseline near Toulon. During the War he served with the Gloucester Regiment. He spent the war years in Galashiels. After the war he was appointed as a lecturer at the West of England School of Architecture in Bristol. He balanced his time teaching architecture and making painting.