Viola Paterson

Mary Viola Paterson (19 February 1899 – 1981) was a Scottish painter, wood engraver and colour woodcut artist.

Biography Paterson was born in Helensburgh in Scotland into an artistic family, her father being the architect Alexander Nisbet Paterson whilst her mother, Maggie Hamilton, was a painter and embroiderer. The artist James Paterson, one of the Glasgow Boys, was an uncle of Viola Paterson as was William Paterson who ran a Bond Street art gallery. She was the subject of a painting by William Russell Flint entitled The Fawn Habit.

While attending a finishing school in London during 1917 and 1918 Paterson took lessons, on a part-time basis, from Henry Tonks at the Slade School of Art before returning to Scotland and studying at the Glasgow School of Art from 1919 to 1923. She continued her studies in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière until 1925 and also attended the school run by André Lhote in Montparnasse. She developed a technique, which she called Wood Types, for engraving lines onto a wood block to separate different painted areas of colour.