Peter Howson was born in London in 1958 and moved to his adopted Scotland in 1962, where he studied at Glasgow School of Art (1975-7 and 1979-81). Alongside contemporaries such as Adrian Wiszniewski, Ken Currie and Stephen Campbell who were known collectively as the Glasgow Boys, Howson was one of the central figures in the school of Scottish figurative painting that rose to prominence in the 1980s.

Howson made his name with large format paintings showing massive, predominantly male figures portrayed in a bold, muscular style that used line and colour to powerful, expressive effect. The almost grotesque form of his overly-developed bodies was to become the focus of much of Howson's most lauded work. Howson's stated abhorrence of vio...