Scottish figure painter in oil and watercolour; lithographer and theatrical designer. Colquhoun was educated at Kilmarnock Academy and won a scholarship to the Glasgow School of Art 1933-8, where he studied under Hugh Crawford and Ian Fleming and met his inseparable companion Robert Macbryde. ‘The two Roberts’, as they were known, visited Paris and Italy 1938-9, Colquhoun on a travelling scholarship.

He served in the RAMC 1940-1, until he was invalided out. In 1941 he settled in London with Macbryde, sharing a studio for a while with John Minton, Jankel Adler, an artist who was to affect Colquhoun’s style, took a neighbouring studio. Colquhoun and MacBryde first exhibited together in 1942 at the Lefevre Gallery, and his first one-man show in 1943 was also at the Lefevre, where he continued to exhibit regularly from 1943 to 1950. The 1947 exhibition was perhaps the highpoint of his painting career. Woman with Leaping Cat (Tate Gallery), Woman with Birdcage (Bradford Art Gallery), Two Scotswomen (Museum of Modern Art, New York), demonstrate his main interest: the human figure and animals, and reveal the influence of late Cubism, especially that of Picasso.