John Duncan

John Duncan, who was born in Dundee on July 19, 1866, and died in Edinburgh in 1945, was a master of painting, illustration, and glass art design. An extraordinary visionary in the world of symbolism, Duncan's art was consistently an ode to human emotion and the subtle in-betweens of existence. Every brushstroke, every color choice, every design he produced took the viewer on a rich, multi-layered journey that spanned centuries of history, culture and art. Duncan grew up in Scotland, where he began his artistic training at a young age at the Dundee School of Art. He took his first professional steps as a cartoonist for the monthly comic newspaper "The Wizard of the North" and provided illustrations for the "Dundee Advertiser." He then worked as a book illustrator in London and later decided to pursue a career as a portrait painter, which led him to art schools in Antwerp and Düsseldorf. His first trip to Italy, which took him through Rome, Florence, Lucca, Bologna and Venice, had a lasting influence on his work.