A RARE painting by Scottish Colourist Francis Campbell Boileau (FCB) Cadell is up for auction for the first time.

Portrait of a Man in Black will be offered at Lyon & Turnbull’s Scottish Paintings and Sculpture auction on Friday.

Cadell is known for his portraits of elegant women in black, but this features his close friend, the artist known as William “Spanish” Macdonald, because of his love of that country.

It is part of a collection that belonged to Macdonald, who died in 1960 and his artist wife Beatrice L Huntington, who passed in 1988.

The collection was inherited by Huntington’s friend, William Syson, who died last year aged 88.

Nick Curnow, head of paintings at Lyon & Turnbull, said: “We can identify that this was painted in his Edinburgh studio on Ainslie Place, which Cadell worked in from 1920.”