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Born in Aberdeenshire, James Cowie (1886–1956) studied at the Glasgow School of Art under Maurice Greiffenhagen. A conscientious objector during the First World War, he taught art at the Bellshill Academy from 1918 to 1935. That year he became Head of Painting at Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen, but in 1937 Cowie became the warden of the Patrick Allan Fraser School of Art at Hospitalfield House, where Robert Colquhoun, Robert MacBryde, Robert Henderson Blyth and Joan Eardley were some of his students. He was commissioned by the War Artists' Advisory Committee to paint a portrait of a Scottish policeman during the Second World War.