Peter Doig was born in Edinburgh in 1959. Although he was born in Scotland, Doig mostly grew up in Trinidad (initially moving there in 1962) and Canada (1966) before moving to London (1979) where he studied at Wimbledon School of Art (1979–1980), St Martin’s School of Art (1980–1983) and Chelsea School of Art (1989–1990). After hesitant beginnings in Britain during which Doig was more focused on finding his marks and a voice than making a name for himself, successive moves back to Canada then Trinidad helped ground his practice.
A humble artist, he was catapulted to success thanks to the art market. In 2007, his painting White Canoe (1990-91) sold at auction for a record-breaking USD 11.3 million, making him at the time the highest valued painter in Europe (a title since claimed by Lucian Freud in 2011). Rather than celebrate, Doig was weary of what this symbolised regarding the art market’s scale, health and trajectory. Nevertheless, that did not stop the art market’s exponential interest in the artist, as in 2013 another one of his paintings, The Architect’s Home in the Ravine, was auctioned for USD 12 million in London; Gasthof zur Muldentalsperre was sold at Christie’s in 2014 for USD 17 million; Swamped, also sold at Christie’s, in 2015, reached USD 25 million; and Rosedale was sold for close to USD 29 million a few years later.
Doig’s style is very personal. Unknowing about art before attending art school, Doig had few referents and carved his own path for lack of aesthetic kinship or preferences. Photographs played an important methodological part, allowing him to create using memory and spatial proxies. Part romantic, part mystical, the painter’s fluid scenes possess a sense of dread and slight sadness. Many of his landscapes display a meteorological abstraction likely inspired by childhood visions of frozen Canadian horizons, all while evoking a patchwork of aesthetic referents ranging from Munch to Friedrich.
This dichotomy between the artist’s earnestness and market stardom has made him a bit of a critic’s darling, with figures such as Jonathan Jones defending his place in the contemporary art scene for the fresh air Doig’s art incarnates.
This unique status has helped Doig secure numerous exhibitions, starting in 1991 with a solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery after winning the Whitechapel Artist Prize (1990). He would go on to win first prize at the John Moores exhibitions and be nominated for the Turner Prize in the following years (1993 and 1994 respectively).
Other major shows include Tate Britain (2008), touring to Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt; Dallas Museum of Art (2005); Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2004); Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht (2003); and Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1998). His native Scotland would have to wait until 2013 for a retrospective at the Scottish National Gallery, in Edinburgh. Other comprehensive exhibitions include The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts/Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art joint show in 2014. A retrospective opened at Fondation Beyeler, Basel, in 2014, travelling in 2015 to Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek, Denmark. The same year, an exhibition of recent works opened at Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice, Italy. In November 2019, new paintings by Doig were presented at the Michael Werner Gallery.
Doig currently lives and works in Trinidad.