Scottish art in the eighteenth century is the body of visual art made in Scotland, by Scots, or about Scottish subjects, in the eighteenth century. This period saw development of professionalisation, with art academies were established in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Art was increasingly influenced by Neoclassicism, the Enlightenment and towards the end of the century by Romanticism, with Italy becoming a major centre of Scottish art.
The origins of the tradition of Scottish landscape painting are in the capriccios of Italian and Dutch landscapes undertaken by James Norie and his sons. These were further developed by Jacob More, who added a romantic sensibility to the Scottish landscape. Alexander Nasmyth helped found the Scottish landscape tradition and was highly influential as a teacher in Edinburgh on the subsequent generation of artists. John Knox linked it with the Romantic, historical myth-making novels of Walter Scott and was one of the first artists to take an interest in the urban landscape of Glasgow. Aberdeen-born John Alexander and William Mossman were the leading portrait artists of the first half of the century. Allan Ramsay emerged as the leading portrait painter of the mid-century and to the royal family, noted for his intimate representations. Towards the end of the century Henry Raeburn emerged as the leading portraitist and one of the first artists to spend the majority of their career in Scotland, extending his range to leading figures of the Enlightenment and most famous for his depiction of the Skating Minister.
Neoclassicism was pioneered by Gavin Hamilton and his protégés, the brothers John and Alexander Runciman, and David Allan. Alexander Runciman pioneered historical painting and Alan helped develop genre art, both of which would be taken up by Scottish artists in the next century. After the Acts of Union in 1707 there was very little patronage for large and expensive works of art in Scotland. With the growth of civic development there was an increasing demand for public statuary and the portrait bust also became popular. Commissions of new statuary tended to be made in relatively cheap lead and even more economical painted or gilded plaster. From the late eighteenth century there are a handful of examples of work from Scottish artists.
Background
Professionalisation Many Scottish painters of the early part of the eighteenth century remained largely artisans. Roderick Chalmers' (fl. 1709–30) painting The Edinburgh Trades (1720) shows the artist himself, perhaps ironically, among the glaziers, wrights and masons of the burgh.MacDonald, Scottish Art, p. 56. Thomas Warrender (fl. 1673–1713) produced the Allegorical Still Life (after 1708), of a letter board that seems to be a commentary on the union of 1707, but he made his living as a house decorator, working closely with architects, including William Adam.MacDonald, Scottish Art, p. 51. He may have trained James Norie (1684–1757), who with his sons James (1711–36) and Robert (d. 1766), painted the houses of the peerage with Scottish landscapes that were pastiches of Italian and Dutch landscapes. They tutored many artists and have been credited with the inception of the tradition of Scottish landscape painting that would come to fruition from the late eighteenth century.Waterhouse, Painting in Britain: 1530 to 1790, p. 293. The painters Allan Ramsay (1713–84), Gavin Hamilton (1723–98), the brothers John (1744–68/9) and Alexander Runciman (1736–85), Jacob More (1740–93) and David Allan (1744–96), mostly began in the tradition of the Nories, but were artists of European significance, spending considerable portions of their careers outside Scotland.Wormald, Scotland: A History. Henry Raeburn (1756–1823) was the most significant artist of the period to pursue his entire career in Scotland, born in Edinburgh and returning there after a trip to Italy in 1786.Campbell, Edinburgh: A Cultural and Literary History, pp. 142–3.
In 1729 the first academy of art in Scotland was established in the University of Edinburgh as the Academy of St. Luke, inspired by the Guilds of St. Luke across Europe and particularly the Accademia di San Luca in Rome.Rock, 2020 The President was George Marshall, a painter of still lives and portraits and the treasurer and drawing master was the engraver Richard Cooper senior (1701-1764). Its sponsors were the elder Norie, the poet Allan Ramsay and William Adam. Other members included Cooper's student Robert Strange, the two younger Nories, the portrait painters John Alexander (c. 1690-c. 1733) and Allan Ramsay, son of the poet (1713–84).Smart, The Life and Art of Allan Ramsay, p. 11. The Academy grew out of Richard Cooper's collaboration in the University of Edinburgh with the anatomist, Alexander Monro primus (1697-1767) where he and a minor artist, William Robertson (or Robinson) drew and engraved anatomical specimens for publication in the Medical Essays between 1733 and 45. Rock The Book Collector pp. 27-60. The success of the group was limited somewhat by its associations with Jacobitism, with Strange printing bank notes for the rebels, but critically it provided facilities for drawing from the life, in Monro's anatomy classroom until Cooper's death in 1764.Brydall, Robert, Art in Scotland: Its Origin and Progress (Edinburgh 1889) pp. 110-11. He transcribed the Charter for the establishment of the Academy where items IV and V refer specifically to the life class. Mackie, Lenman and Parker, A History of Scotland, p. 311. The Foulis Academy was founded in Glasgow in 1754 by the printmaking brothers Robert and Andrew Foulis, and in Edinburgh the Board of Trustees for Fisheries, Manufactures and Improvements in Scotland established the Trustees Drawing Academy in 1760, indicating that art was now part of civic life and not just aristocratic patronage.MacDonald, Scottish Art, p. 57.
The growing importance of art can be seen in the post of Royal Painter and Limner, created in 1702 for George Ogilvie. The duties included "drawing pictures of our [Monarch's] person or of our successors or others of our royal family for the decorment of our houses and palaces". However, from 1723 to 1823 the office was a sinecure held by members of the Abercrombie family, not necessarily connected with artistic ability.The Laws of Scotland: Stair Memorial Encyclopaedia, vol. 7 "The Crown", para 847.
Intellectual trends
All the major painters of the period were to varying degrees influenced by forms of Neoclassicism, which revived Greek and Roman form of artistic expression. Italy became an important point of reference for Scottish artists, with over fifty artists and architects known to have travelled there in the period 1730–80 as part of a Grand Tour, to paint, sample the art and learn from Italian masters. With so many artists visiting or resident, Rome became almost a "Third Academy)" for Scots.MacDonald, Scottish Art, p. 64. In the second half of the century Scots became the major figures in the trade in antique sculpture, particularly Gavin Hamilton, Colin Morison (1732–1801) and James Byres (1734–1817), making them the arbiters of British taste in this area. However, the only major Scottish collection of marble before the nineteenth century was that of James Johnstone, 2nd Marquess of Annandale.Skinner, "Scottish Connoisseurship and the Grand Tour", pp. 39–40.
Scottish artists in the later eighteenth century were strongly influenced by the Enlightenment, which stressed rationalism and human inquiry, of which Scotland was a major centre of influence. Artists like Alan Ramsey formed The Select Society, with philosophers David Hume and Adam Smith and produced his Dialogue on Taste, which made a major contribution to the study of aesthetics. Scotland also played a major part in the origins of the Romantic movement through the publication of James Macpherson's Ossian cycle, which was proclaimed as a Celtic equivalent of the Classical epics. Fingal, written in 1762, was speedily translated into many European languages, and its deep appreciation of natural beauty and the melancholy tenderness of its treatment of the ancient legend did more than any single work to bring about the Romantic movement in European, and especially in German literature, influencing Herder and Goethe.Buchan, Crowded with Genius, p. 163.
Forms
Landscape
The origins of the Scottish landscape painting tradition are in the Nories' capriccios or pastiches of Italian and Dutch landscapes.Baudino, "Aesthetics and Mapping the British Identity in Painting", p. 153. Jacob More, having trained with the Nories, moved to Italy in 1773 and is chiefly known as a landscape painter. This period saw a shift in attitudes to the Highlands and mountain landscapes in general, from viewing them as hostile, empty regions occupied by backwards and marginal people, to interpreting them as aesthetically pleasing exemplars of nature, occupied by rugged primitives, which were now depicted in a dramatic fashion.C. W. J. Withers, Geography, Science and National Identity: Scotland Since 1520 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), , pp. 151–3. Produced before his departure to Italy, More's series of four "Falls of Clyde" (1771–73) paintings have been described by art historian Duncan Macmillan as treating the waterfalls as "a kind of natural national monument" and has been seen as an early work in developing a romantic sensibility to the Scottish landscape.
Alexander Nasmyth visited Italy and worked in London, but returned to his native Edinburgh for most of his career. He produced work in a large range of forms, including his portrait of Romantic poet Robert Burns, which depicts him against a dramatic Scottish background, but he is chiefly remembered for his landscapes and is described in the Oxford Dictionary of Art as "the founder of the Scottish landscape tradition".Chilvers, The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists, p. 433. He was also a highly influential teacher at the Trustees Drawing Academy in Edinburgh.MacDonald, Scottish Art, pp. 78–83. The work of John Knox (1778–1845) continued the theme of landscape, directly linking it with the Romantic works of Walter Scott.Hill, Picturing Scotland Through the Waverley Novels, p. 104. He was also among the first artists to take a major interest in depicting the urban landscape of Glasgow.Kemp, The Pleasures and Treasures of Britain, p. 401. Alexander Runciman was probably the first artist to paint Scottish landscapes in watercolours in the more romantic style that was emerging towards the end of the century.Waterhouse, Painting in Britain, p. 293.
Portraiture
Aberdeen-born John Alexander and William Mossman were the leading portrait artists of the first half of the century. John Alexander was born in Aberdeen and was a great grandson of portrait painter George Jamesone. He studied in London and Rome, returning to Scotland about 1720.Waterhouse, Painting in Britain, p. 330. His younger contemporary William Mossman (1700–71) was also from Aberdeen and studied in Rome. Both worked predominately in the north-east around their home city, but also painted many of the figures of early-Enlightenment Edinburgh. Alexander's best known work included the portrait of George Drummond the Lord Provost of Edinburgh (1756), who had been responsible for the creation of the New Town in Edinburgh and the Royal Infirmary, which is shown in the background of the painting. Mosman's work included his portrait of John Campbell of the Bank (1749), who was chief cashier of the Royal Bank of Scotland and a Whig, but who is depicted in the recently forbidden Highland Dress. Because of his Jacobite sympathies Alexander was forced to leave for the continent after the rebellion of 1745, and in Rome he made a living painting the Jacobite expatriates who congregated there, before his return a few years later.