New National Scottish Gallery at the National gallery

 

Margaret MacDonald

Brand new galleries have been built behind the Mound art galleries Edinburgh to be a new and open home to display Scottish art From 1800s to 1845 – from the Glasgow Colourists: Francis Cadell, Leslie hunter, Samuel Peploe and JD Fergusson (1890 – 1914)

William McTaggart

The galleries hold over 60K works of Scottish art and 140 will be on display. Including – William McTaggart, Anne Redpath, Phoebe Anna Traquair, Margaret Macdonald, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Glasgow Boys.

Director john Leighton, Before retiring was ambitious to fulfil his desire for a proud spacious showcase for Scottish art at the national galleries. Before this Scottish art was displayed down some steep steps to  a confined, dark gallery space. 

 

On display is the controversial *Monarch of the Glen by English artist Edwin Landseer, 1661 - “thousands of real local people were cleared from surrounding glens to make way for aesthetically pleasing emptiness, deer and sportsmen.”

 

In 1830s, English reform campaigner William Corbett, was outraged that Edinburgh – which he regarded as the worlds finest city – was not surrounded by thriving agricultural villages, because aristocrats preferred their estates empty, rural and unspoiled. 

Allan Ramsay

 

Victoria Morton's painting Soliton Kelvingrove

At Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, from the Hamilton Bequest (since 1927), there are world-renowned works by Glasgow Boys William Kennedy, Scottish Colourist Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell and painter Joan Eardley as well as Monet's View of Ventimiglia and The Young Girls by American Impressionist Mary Cassatt.

The final paintings are by Scottish abstract painter Victoria Morton's Soliton hangs at the gallery's south east stairs next to Salvador Dali's Christ of St John of the Cross.

As an art student, she came to Kelvingrove and was inspired by the Scottish Colourists and the French Impressionist collection. The colours in her work and the broken brush she is looking back to past master examples: a sensory experience.

" Morton's paintings are closely connected to her practice as a musician (she sings as well as playing bass recorder, piano and analogue synthesizer). Working through painting, sculpture, found objects, photography and sound, the artist explores colour perception, expression and non-verbal communication. "They were very open-minded," 

Morton, "I wanted to make a series of works where people could just walk in and experience them all at once, almost like they were different movements in a piece of music. I was thinking about broad and universal themes like light and sound and the physics of sound. The name Soliton comes from a type of wave form that exists in nature and also in physics. I was interested in that sound aspect because I work with music as well. "Soliton is quite a sensory piece. There is a direct connection to music and waveforms. I wanted to make a large scale, abstract expressionist painting that relates to real experiences. I love colour and the effect it has. Colour is a type of waveform, so there are different frequencies at play.”

*New Scottish Portrait Gallery

I visited the recently refurbished Scottish Portrait Gallery a month back and left somewhat disappointed. It is housed in an imposing sandstone building that sits on the corner of Queen street and down from George Street.The gallery owns 3,000 paintings and sculptures, 25,000 prints and drawings and 38,000 historic and modern photographs.

I can’t help but wonder that it’s location amidst the Hanoverian Edinburgh new town has affected the choice over whose portrait is considered important enough to be displayed in the new collection – rather than be stashed in it’s rather full basement. I wasn’t sure what I had expected after reading the hype but certainly a gallery proud of Scottish heritage and reflecting both Scottish traditions and Scottish contemporary artists with the main focus on portraiture. However many of the inclusions appear obscure.   

I went with my two older children and they were not impressed either. They thought the boring dark images of past kings and queen, who all look the same strangely, held no interest for them. My son was puzzled by the inclusion of a whole section of shiny and not very good photos of Asian families which he said seemed rather incongruous.  

The photographic images that stood out were - Mark Neville - Port Glasgow Town Hall Christmas Party 2004; Oscar Marzoroli - The Castlemilk Lads 1963, an iconic image by an Italian photographer; A Photo of Bob Dylan in Princes Street; the portrait of Robert Burns and of Mary Queen of Scots on the third floor.

The gallery celebrates many respected photographers, which is fine, but there lacks an emphasis on portraiture. Many of the most significant Scottish writers, poets, artists, and musicians appeared to be missing and the displays seemed ill thought out. I was puzzled by some of the inclusions as to why they were considered portraits at all.

Scottish Writers, Poets, Artists and Politicians Not on Display -  Liz Lochead (Scottish Makar), Carol Ann Duffy, Hamish Henderson, Norman McCaig, Sorely MacLean, Iain Crichton Smith, Jim Kelman, Alex Salmond, Gordon Brown...

Today I read an article in the Scotsman (below ) and agreed with so much of it. (Extract below) Lesley Riddoch points out that the Portrait gallery appears to focus on the Upper Classes and in this sense does not represent the inclusive forward thinking Scotland of today. 

THE National Portrait Gallery lacks images of Scots the general public would recognise or could name, writes Lesley Riddoch, May 2012
Is the Scottish Portrait Gallery capturing the zeitgeist of modern Scotland? Is it meant to?
Reaction to the gallery’s renovation has been overwhelmingly positive since it reopened at Christmas. There’s no question the building’s interior looks splendid – but what about the contents? I found myself mightily disappointed by the relative absence of modern Scots on display and slightly bored by the much larger areas given over to “imperial history.” Hey ho, I thought. That’s just me. 
But then last week, the genial giant and subversive sculptor George Wyllie died and I found myself thinking about his curious absence from our National Portrait Gallery. George was universally popular. With the Straw Locomotive, 80-foot Paper Boat, giant nappy pin outside the Glasgow Maternity Hospital and Walking Clock outside the bus station, George fused everyday life, industrial heritage and Glasgow humour together like a master welder.