Scottish art in the nineteenth century
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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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.
