THE death of one of Scotland’s greatest artists, Dame Elizabeth Blackadder, was announced yesterday.

The first woman to be elected to both the Royal Scottish Academy and the Royal Academy, Dame Elizabeth was perhaps best known for her watercolours featuring flowers, cats and Oriental objects.

The Scottish Gallery confirmed she had died peacefully at her home in Edinburgh on Monday.

Immediate tributes were paid to her. Edinburgh College of Art tweeted: “We were saddened to learn of the death of esteemed artist Dame Elizabeth Blackadder.

“She studied Fine Art at ECA and @EdinburghUni from 1949 to 1954, and lectured here for over two decades. She will be much missed.”

The Royal Academy tweeted: “We are saddened to hear of the death of Dame Elizabeth Blackadder RA. Our thoughts are with her family and friends.”

The Royal Scottish Academy tweeted that it is “deeply saddened” by the news of Dame Elizabeth’s death.

Born in Falkirk to an engineering business owner, Thomas, and his wife Violet, she was bereft when her father, a keen amateur artist, died when she was just 10.

Educated at Falkirk High School, after she completed her studies in Edinburgh she won scholarships to pursue her painting in southern Europe, and later married fellow painter, Fife-born John Houston, a former professional footballer who became an outstanding painter of landscapes and also lectured at Edinburgh College of Art. They travelled widely together and were married for more than 50 years until he died in 2008 at the age of 78. Her first solo exhibition was in Edinburgh in 1959, and she lectured at Edinburgh College of Art from 1962 until she retired in 1986.

Dame Elizabeth won numerous awards for her work and in 2001 she was appointed Her Majesty’s Painter and Limner in Scotland.

Her work can be seen at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, the Tate Gallery and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and has featured on a series of Royal Mail stamps.

Guy Peploe, a director at The Scottish Gallery with which she had a long association said: “Elizabeth was without question one of our greatest artists, as well-known in London as Scotland.

“She was very important to the gallery with an exhibition history of over 60 years, and will be hugely missed by all who knew her.”

The National Galleries of Scotland posted a generous tribute online in the form of a blog by Patrick Elliott, Chief Curator in Modern and Contemporary Art,.

He wrote: “Equally adept with oil painting and watercolour, and a hugely accomplished printmaker, she became celebrated as a landscape artist, and also for her paintings of flowers, cats and still lifes..

“The retrospective exhibition we mounted at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh in 2011 remains one of the most popular and admired shows we have ever staged. It also demonstrated the extraordinary scope and variety of Dame Elizabeth’s achievement.”

Sir John Leighton, Director-General of the National Galleries of Scotland, was a student of Blackadder at Edinburgh College of Art in the early 1980s and was also involved in mounting that retrospective exhibition in 2011.

He observed: “With the passing of Dame Elizabeth Blackadder, we have lost one of the most distinguished Scottish artists of recent times.

“Across a long and successful career, Dame Elizabeth re-vitalised established traditions of landscape, still-life, and flower painting in this country.

“Her many achievements as an artist and her generosity and influence as a teacher have had a significant impact on the history of modern Scottish art.”