Victoria Crowe studied at Kingston School of Art from 1961-65 and then at the Royal College of Art, London, from 1965-68. At her postgraduate show she was invited by Sir Robin Philipson to teach at Edinburgh College of Art. For 30 years she worked as a part-time lecturer in the School of Drawing and Painting while developing her own artistic practice.
She is a member of the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) and the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolours (RSW). She has shown widely throughout the UK, with regular solo shows at the Thackeray Gallery, London, and in particular with The Scottish Gallery since 1970.
She has undertaken many important portrait commissions and her work can be seen in university and government collections, as well as the National Portrait Gallery, London; the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh; and the Danish National Portrait Gallery.
In 2000 her exhibition, A Shepherd’s Life, consisting of work collected from the 1970s and 80s, was one of the National Galleries of Scotland’s Millennium exhibitions. It received great acclaim and went on to tour. The exhibition was subsequently regathered in 2009 for a three month showing at the Fleming Collection, London. A tapestry was commissioned from the Dovecot Studios to celebrate the exhibition. This coincided with a retrospective and current collection of work, Overview, at The Fine Art Society, London.
Victoria was awarded an OBE for Services to Art in 2004 and from 2004-07 was a senior visiting scholar at St Catherine’s College, Cambridge. The resulting body of work, Plant Memory, was shown as a solo show at the RSA in 2007 and is currently touring Scotland. In 2009 she received an Honorary Degree from The University of Aberdeen and in 2010 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Victoria Crowe is currently Deputy President of the Royal Scottish Academy.
Her work is in public and private collections worldwide, such as The Bank of Scotland, Contemporay Arts Society, National Portrait Gallery, London, The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation, amongst others.