Scottish art in the nineteenth century is the body of visual art made in Scotland, by Scots, or about Scottish subjects. This period saw the increasing professionalisation and organisation of art in Scotland. Major institutions founded in this period included the Institution for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts in Scotland, the Royal Scottish Academy of Art, the National Gallery of Scotland, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the Glasgow Institute. Art education in Edinburgh focused on the Trustees Drawing Academy of Edinburgh. Glasgow School of Art was founded in 1845 and Grays School of Art in Aberdeen in 1885.

Henry Raeburn, most famous for his intimate portraits of leading figures in Scottish life, was the first significant artist to pursue his entire career in Scotland. His pupils included the brothers William, Archibald and Andrew Robertson. The next generation of portrait painters included David Watson and John Watson Gordon. Significant Glasgow artists included John Graham-Gilbert and Daniel Macnee. David Wilkie emerged as of one of the most influential British artists of the century in a variety of forms. Alexander Nasmyth helped formulate the tradition of Scottish landscape painting, which focused in the mid-nineteenth century on the Highlands. It was taken into the late nineteenth century by artists including Horatio McCulloch, Joseph Farquharson and William McTaggart. Towards the end of the century a number of artist colonies were founded, particularly in coastal communities such as Pittenweem and Kirkcudbright. Wilkie was instrumental in the development of genre painting, which was pursued by artists including John Burnet, Alexander George Fraser and Walter Geikie. He also helped inspire the interest in Spanish and oriental painting, continued by William Allan, David Roberts and John Phillip.

Sculpture was pioneered in Scotland by Lawrence Macdonald and George Combe. John Steell was the first significant Scottish sculptor to pursue their career in Scotland, gaining attention for his Alexander and Bucephalus and his design for a statue of Sir Walter Scott incorporated into the author's memorial in Edinburgh. The tradition of Scottish sculpture was boosted by the statues made for the Wallace Monument and by the centenary of Robert Burns' death in 1896. Photography was pioneered in Scotland by Robert Adamson and David Octavius Hill. As Hill & Adamson they formed the first photographic studio in Scotland in 1843 and produced work that is among the first and finest artistic uses of photography. It was subsequently pursued by Thomas Annan, George Washington Wilson and Clementina Hawarden.

The beginnings of the Arts and Crafts movement in Scotland were in the stained glass revival of the 1850s, pioneered in Edinburgh by James Ballantine and in Glasgow by Daniel Cottier. The Glasgow-born designer and theorist Christopher Dresser was one of the first, and most important, independent designers, a pivotal figure in the Aesthetic Movement and a major contributor to the allied Anglo-Japanese movement. A Celtic Revival, drawing on ancient myths and history to produce art in a modern idiom, was pursued by artists including Anna Traquair, John Duncan, Stewart Carmichael and George Dutch Davidson. In the late nineteenth century developments in Scottish art are associated with the Glasgow School. This was made up of loose groups including the Glasgow Boys, of James Guthrie, Joseph Crawhall, George Henry and E. A. Walton, who were influenced by French Impressionism and Realism. From around 1890 "The Four" or the "Spook School", was composed of acclaimed architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Margaret MacDonald, Frances and Herbert MacNair. They produced a distinctive blend of influences that helped define the Art Nouveau style.

Institutions and education

The Institution for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts in Scotland was founded in 1819 in Edinburgh, to provide an opportunity for artists to present their work. It came to be dominated by a small aristocratic elite and excluded artists from its committee. This led to the founding of the Royal Scottish Academy of Art in 1826. The resulting competition between the two bodies eventually resulted in a de facto merger. In 1835 the now Royal Institution's building on Princes Street, Edinburgh became the Academy's home for exhibitions.M. MacDonald, Scottish Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 2000), , p. 90. The Academy was granted a Royal Charter in 1837Whitaker's Concise Almanack 2012 (A&C Black, 2011), , p. 410.L. A. Rose, M. Macaroon, V. Crow, Frommer's Scotland (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 12th edn., 2012), , p. 23. and its members were instrumental in the foundation of the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh, which opened in 1859. The Scottish National Portrait Gallery was founded in 1882.D. Porter, and D. Prince, Frommer's Scotland (John Wiley & Sons, 10th edn., 2008), , pp. 109–111. The Glasgow Institute was formed in 1861 to provide exhibiting opportunities in the growing city similar to those in Edinburgh. It opened its own gallery on Sauchiehall Street in 1879. It received a Royal charter in 1896 and became the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts.K. Hartley, Scottish Art Since 1900 (National Galleries of Scotland, 1989), p. 171.

Scotland has had schools of art since the eighteenth century. The Trustees Drawing Academy of Edinburgh had been founded in Edinburgh in 1760. It became the Trustees' School of Art, and placed under auspices of the Science and Art Department in South Kensington in 1858. It was taken over by the Scottish Education Department in 1907.M. Potter, The Concept of the 'Master'in Art Education in Britain and Ireland 1770 to the Present (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013), , p. 27. Glasgow School of Art grew from the city's School of Design, founded in 1845. Grays School of Art in Aberdeen was founded in 1885.D. Arnold and D. P. Corbett, A Companion to British Art: 1600 to the Present (Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2013), .

Portraiture

Henry Raeburn (1756–1823) was the first significant artist to pursue his entire career in Scotland. Born in Edinburgh and returning there after a trip to Italy in 1786, he is most famous for his intimate portraits of leading figures in Scottish life, going beyond the aristocracy to lawyers, doctors, professors, writers and ministers, adding elements of Romanticism to the Grand Manner tradition of Joshua Reynolds.C. C. Ochterbeck, ed., Michelin Green Guide: Great Britain Edition (London: Michelin, 5th edn., 2007), , p. 84. He became a knight in 1822 and the King's painter and limner in 1823, marking a return to the post being associated with the production of art.D. Campbell, Edinburgh: A Cultural and Literary History (Oxford: Signal Books, 2003), , pp. 142–3. His pupils included the brothers William (Alexander) (1772–1841), Archibald (1765–1835) and Andrew Robertson (1777–1845). William and Archibald went on to found the Columbian Academy of Painting in New York, and Andrew to be the leading Scottish miniaturist of his day. Also associated with Radeburn towards the end of his career were John Syme (1795–1861) and Colvin Smith (1795–1875).D. Macmillan, Scottish Art 1460–1990 (Mainstream, 1990), , pp. 151 and 162.

Of the generation of painters that followed Raeburn, David Watson (1767–1837) trained with Reynolds in London before returning home to become the first president of the Scottish Academy in 1826.MacDonald, Scottish Art, pp. 75–6. The influence of both Reynolds and Raeburn can be seen in his work, including A Girl Drawing (1813) and the large group portrait The Children of the Earl of Elgin with their Nurse (c. 1805).Macmillan, Scottish Art, p. 162. He was followed as president of the academy by his nephew John Watson Gordon (1788–1864), who also studied with Raeburn. He painted portraits of leading cultural figures James Hogg and Lady Nairne as part of a series of portraits commissioned by William Blackwood. From the 1840s his work began to be influenced by early photography, with cool light and muted colours, as can be seen in his full-length portrait of Principal Lee (1847).Macmillan, Scottish Art, p. 163.

John Graham-Gilbert (1794–1866) was born in Glasgow and worked in the city from 1834, playing an important part in the professionalisation of painting there. Other figures to pursue their careers largely in portraiture and based in Glasgow included Daniel Macnee (1806–82). He moved to Edinburgh after his election of President of the Academy in 1876. Other major figures who worked in portraiture included Francis Grant, who became the first Scottish president of the Royal Academy in London, Robert Scott Lauder (1803–69), William Quiller Orchardson (1832–1910) and John Pettie (1839–93).Macmillan, Scottish Art, pp. 163–4. John Zephaniah Bell (1794–1883) was educated in London and was a forerunner of the trend of Parisian education that would become common among Scottish artists of the later nineteenth century. Andrew Geddes (1783–1844) produced some landscapes, but also portraits before he finally moved to London in 1831.R. N. Wornum and C. L. Eastlake, Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of the Pictures in the National Gallery ... British School ... Temporarily exhibited at South Kensington (London: National Gallery, 12th edn., 1864), p. 40. David Wilkie (1785–1841) worked mainly in London, and produced the flattering painting of the King George IV in Highland dress commemorating the royal visit to Scotland in 1823 that set off the international fashion for the kilt. He succeeded Raeburn as Royal Limner in 1823 and would emerge of one of the most influential British artists of the century.I. Chilvers, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 2009), , pp. 678–9.

Landscape painting