Five Centuries of Scottish Art: why a nation's sense of its art history is vital for its self-esteem

Because of this historic gaslighting, when I started to write the book it was clear to me that unless the Reformation was included, iconoclasm would continue to cast a dark shadow. It had to be part of the story, not a dark hiatus. So the narrative begins with James III, the first Scottish monarch for whom we can say with confidence art mattered and who can therefore be recognised as a renaissance prince. In the century that followed, although the evidence is so fragmentary, when the monarch embodied the nation Scotland was clearly proud and self-aware. It took its place confidently among the kingdoms of northern Europe and this was reflected in the art of the Court and its dynastic connections. A touching witness to this is a beautiful and very personal illuminated Virgil that Louis XI of France commissioned as a gift to the young James III.

The Auld Alliance with France was not just a fond idea, but a very real treaty renewed by successive monarchs. Following the Union of the Crowns, however, ours became a nation without court or monarch to provide patronage and leadership, all the more unfortunate in the uniquely turbulent century that followed. Scotland’s parallel links with the Netherlands were rich and, through the court, involved art and artists as well as trade, and indeed art as trade. Nevertheless, with still only a tiny middle class, without the court most of the 17th century was a lean time for art.

Painting and painted decoration remained part of Scottish life nevertheless, while the intellectual tools forged in the Reformation were developed eventually to flower in the Enlightenment. This, I endeavoured to show, first of all in my book Painting in Scotland: the Golden Age published in 1986 and then in 1990 in this book, was the key to understanding Scotland’s distinct artistic identity. It was here, too, I think, that what I was trying to do differed most from my predecessors, for I set out to illustrate how Scottish artists, poets and philosophers were deeply engaged with shared ideas.

Gavin Hamilton was a pupil of Francis Hutcheson, the philosopher of moral sense. Adam Smith was a fellow pupil. David Hume and Allan Ramsay were close friends as were Henry Raeburn and Dugald Stewart, Thomas Reid’s principal disciple. Alexander Runciman and the poet Robert Fergusson were also close friends, as were Robert Burns and Alexander Nasmyth, Allan Ramsay’s sometime assistant. David Wilkie RA was friendly with both Raeburn and Nasmyth. His art illustrates, and indeed frequently reflects directly on, his rich Scottish heritage. Later too, he was also a friend and supporter of Thomas Chalmers, leader of the Kirk in the Disruption, the national spiritual crisis that followed the Enlightenment. Some of his most beautiful paintings reflect his deep engagement with the ideas that inspired that event.

READ MORE: 200 Years, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh review: 'not quite 200 years'

When you look at Scottish art like this, as a kind of collective enterprise, the picture changes. Far from being a peripheral curiosity, it becomes central to the story of European art. In the 18th century, Scottish artists were among the first to reflect radical ideas about the imagination in the philosophy of moral sense, about perception and the role of the artist in Thomas Reid’s philosophy of common sense, and about the imaginative value of the "primitive" argued by Thomas Blackwell, Adam Ferguson and Blackwell’s pupil James Macpherson, all following the theories of the Italian philosopher, Giambattista Vico. Thus the artists prefigured key ideas that later shaped modern art. In my recent book Scotland and the Origins of Modern Art, I argued further that in the 19th century the reception and dissemination of these ideas in France by the direct influence of the artists, especially David Wilkie – greatly admired by his French contemporaries – but also through the philosophers, helped shape the French art that eventually gave birth to modernism. Indeed, Balzac’s celebrated story Le Chef d’oeuvre inconnu (1831, The Unknown Masterpiece) appears to be a satirical account of what would happen if his artist friends were literally to apply to their painting (as indeed the Impressionists later did) Thomas Reid’s ideas about perception then being promoted by the philosopher Victor Cousin. Following Cousin’s reforms to French education, too, from the 1840s onwards philosophy was compulsory in the lycées and what was taught was again Reid’s philosophy of common sense.

Nor did Scottish artists simply hand over these ideas and then step back. The stature of 19th-century artists like William McTaggart and Arthur Melville proves that the energy apparent in the Enlightenment had not faded. The brilliant art of Phoebe Traquair was deployed in service of the social value of decorative art, but there too the background was the Enlightenment. Decorative art was championed by William Morris, Walter Crane and, in Scotland, Patrick Geddes, but their ideas were shaped by John Ruskin whose philosophy likewise had its origins in the Enlightenment. It was because of this energy, too, and indeed the self-confidence it brought, that the work of the Scottish Colourists shone so brightly at the opening of the 20th century.

In a way however, for the visual arts, as the 20th century progressed it became more like the 17th. Then it had been the absence of the wealth and patronage of the court in a century of religious strife that depressed the arts. In the 20th century, it was two major wars and a shrinking economy in a nation with perhaps even fewer organs of political identity than it had had in the 17th century. For the first time, for instance, it became normal for artists to have to teach to live, while the question of identity found focus in Patrick Geddes’s idea of a Scottish "Renascence". This took root in painting as it did in literature, while the sheer dedication of artists like William Gillies, Anne Redpath and Joan Eardley inspired the younger artists who succeeded them. It is notable, too, that after the war it was the Scottish artists William Gear and Eduardo Paolozzi who confidently led the way back to Europe. Paolozzi and his near contemporary Ian Hamilton Finlay both went on to become artists of international standing.

READ MORE: Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun: Artists, Lovers, Outsiders, Kilmarnock review: 'dazzling'

While painting and printmaking continued, and still continue, to flourish, direct public subsidy of art through the Scottish Arts Council established in 1967 brought in a new kind of patronage – although it is never described as such. Its immediate impact came, not so much through subsidy to individual artists, however, as through the creation of a gallery system independent of any market. This meant new art forms could flourish. Glen Onwin’s exhibition, The Recovery of Dissolved Substances, which in 1975 opened the new Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh would really not have been possible earlier, but although Elizabeth Blackadder had a retrospective also at the Fruitmarket in 1990, subsequently that became unthinkable. A class of professional curators emerged armed with this new power of patronage. Looking to make their mark, but also endorsing each other as they did so, collectively they increasingly excluded traditional forms as their search for the "cutting edge" became more and more factional.

While this situation has produced some brilliant and original artists, the consequent split between "new art" and "old" is not healthy, although the Royal Scottish Academy by widening its membership has significantly ameliorated its impact. All this is surely just a small blip in a much wider history, however. Certainly as I write now, the situation is very different from what it was in 1990. Scottish art is widely recognised and thanks to the vision of Sir John Leighton its historic riches are displayed for all to see as part of the European tradition in an elegant, purpose-built wing of the National Gallery’s historic building on Edinburgh’s Mound. While I hope that this book when it was first published may have helped eventually to make that outcome possible, I hope too that the narrative of Scottish art in the new third edition may serve as a companion to that display.

The third edition of Five Centuries of Scottish Art by Duncan Macmillan is published by Lund Humphries, £35

The Scotsman’s arts newsletter is now sent twice a week - subscribe today

Enjoying the Arts & Culture journalism on scotsman.com? Make it easier to find by selecting us as a preferred Google source

Want the latest Scottish headlines sent directly to your phone? Sign up to our new WhatsApp channel here