Louise Annand MacFarquhar

Dr Louise Annand MacFarquhar, who has died aged 96, enjoyed, perhaps not surprisingly for a Gemini, outstandingly successful twin careers as an artist and an educator.

Suberbly practical yet also creative, with a sharp observational eye, she had the perfect attributes for both fields. They also made her an able administrator who, in addition to her own prolific artistic endeavours, found time to contribute enormously to numerous organisations, not least heading the JD Fergusson Foundation and the Society of Scottish Women Artists.

In her role in the Schools Museum Service, as an assistant and later an education officer, she introduced children to a wide variety of Scottish history and culture through films she was involved in making. For example, she co-directed the first film about Scots architect and artist Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

Her own artwork was as vibrant and multi-faceted as the woman herself but always running through it was a thread reflecting her love of Scotland, whether it was a symbolic painting of her contemporaries or capturing the practicalities of sporran-making on film.

She was born in Uddingston, the daughter of Walter Dinnie Annand, who was related to the Aberdeenshire athlete Donald Dinnie, and his wife Emma Louise Gibson. Both her parents were teachers and she was a bright child who was also gifted artistically, winning medals for English, history and art.

She had planned to study painting at Glasgow School of Art but her father, head of English at Hamilton Academy where his daughter was schooled, insisted she become a teacher. She then read English at Glasgow University, graduating MA in 1937 before training at Jordanhill College of Education and going into teaching which she described as "a chore".

But she also began studying at art school in the evenings and became part of the innovative group of artists that flourished around the Scottish colourist JD Fergusson. She exhibited regularly from the 1940s and, in 1949, gave up teaching to join the Schools Museum Service.

From the early 1950s she began making 16mm films which ranged from At The Museum, which she directed, to the History of Lighting, the History of Glasgow Tram Cars and the Charles Rennie Mackintosh film made in 1965.

Her filmmaking career began about the same time she was widowed. Her first husband was agricultural supply salesman Alistair Matheson, and they lived in Bearsden. She later enjoyed a long partnership with Roderick MacFarquhar, secretary of a Highlands and Islands charitable fund who had fought in the Spanish Civil War, though they did not marry until shortly before his death in 1989.

Throughout her artistic career her style of painting changed and developed. She was influenced in part by The Glasgow Boys and her early work echoed the emphatic lines of the post-Impressionist painters. She also produced abstracts, large atmospheric oils of Scottish landscapes and worked in pastels and watercolour, as well as producing pen and ink drawings for her publication A Glasgow Sketch Book: A Quarter-Century of Observation, in which she documented the architectural details of buildings about to be demolished.

She was into her 80s when, never having done any figure painting, she decided to go back to school to study the subject. The last piece she exhibited was a nude and she was honoured with a retrospective exhibition at the Lillie Gallery in Milngavie when she was 90. It included a self portrait featuring her star sign, Gemini.

Her artistic life was closely linked with her friends who included Fergusson and his wife, the dancer Margaret Morris, and writers Naomi Mitchison and Lavinia Derwent, some of whose books she illustrated.

She chaired the Scottish Educational Film Association's Glasgow Production Group and the Glasgow Lady Artists Club Trust, twice serving as its president after the organisation became The Glasgow Society of Women Artists. She was also twice president of the Society of Scottish Women Artists, once in the mid-1960s and again from 1980-1985, as well as a member of the Royal Fine Art Commission for Scotland.

She retired from the Schools Museum Service in 1980, after a decade as museums education officer, and became a visiting lecturer in Scottish Art at the University of Regina in Canada.

She was a key figure in the setting up of the JD Fergusson Foundation in Perth, which safeguards a collection of his paintings and which she chaired from 1982-2001, remaining a trustee until last year. She also wrote the book, JD Fergusson in Glasgow 1939-61.

Made an MBE in December 1980, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Glasgow University in 1994. She had served on the business committee of the university's general council and chaired the Glasgow Graduates' Association.

Other interests included the Soroptimists, climbing – a member of the Scottish Ladies Climbing Club, she bagged almost every Munro and the crampons she used in her youth still hung in the stair cupboard – and the SNP. Scotland was very dear to her heart. She had been a nationalist all her life and was an honorary member of the Saltire Society.

Although she was latterly in a Glasgow nursing home she remained fun, lively and sharp until the end.

Just before she died she was delighted to be visited by members of the fire service. She had illustrated a series of Wallace The Fire Dog books, about the legendary dog that "joined" the Glasgow brigade in the 1890s – another reflection of her wide-ranging artistic talent.

"She had a terrific life," said her niece Rachel Annand, "and was a brilliant person, a good person in so many senses of the word and a much-loved personality."