The Story of Scottish Art episode 2

The Story of Scottish Art episode 2

The Story of Scottish Art episode 2: The 18th century heralded the greatest blossoming of Scottish artistry in its history. The most powerful and influential figures in Britain clamoured to have their portraits painted by Allan Ramsey and Henry Raeburn and their houses designed by Robert Adam; they stood in awe at the epic Highland landscapes of Horatio McCulloch and wept at the sensitive genre paintings of David Wilkie. Scots artist Lachlan Goudie explores how the intellectual revolution of the Enlightenment and the classical influence of the continent gave these artists the confidence and the inspiration to forge a whole new artistic landscape.


 

 



From dusty storerooms of Edinburgh to the dazzling antiquities of ancient Rome this is a journey of startling contrasts – between the past and the future, between the forces of reason and romance, between Presbyterian restraint and unfettered emotion. Out of the ashes of the Reformation a new culture identity was beginning to emerge and it was built on art.

 

The Story of Scottish Art episode 2

 

Horatio McCulloch

Horatio McCulloch, sometimes written MacCulloch or M’Culloch, was a Scottish landscape painter.He was born in Glasgow in November 1805 the son of Alexander McCulloch, a cotton merchant, and his wife, Margaret Watson.

Horatio McCulloch was trained in the studio of the Glasgow landscape painter John Knox (1778–1845) for about one year alongside Daniel Macnee (1806–1882) and at first earned his living as a decorative painter. He was then engaged at Cumnock, painting the ornamental lids of snuffboxes, and afterwards employed in Edinburgh by William Home Lizars, the engraver, to colour the illustrations in Prideaux John Selby’s British Birds and similar works.

After he moved to Edinburgh in 1825, he began painting in the tradition of Alexander Nasmyth. Working unweariedly from nature, he was greatly influenced in his early practice by the watercolours of H. V. Williams. He returned to Glasgow in 1827, and was employed on several large pictures for the decoration of a public hall in St. George’s Place, and he did a little as a theatrical scene-painter. About this time by the writings of Sir Walter Scott and the expressive landscape works of John Thomson, friend of Scott’s and minister at Duddingston Kirk, Edinburgh. Gradually MacCulloch asserted his individuality, and formed his own style on a close study of nature; his works form an interesting link between the old world of Scottish landscape and the new.

In 1829 McCulloch first figured in the Royal Scottish Academy’s exhibition. (He was a regular exhibitor year by year afterwards.)By the early 1830s McCulloch’s exhibits with the Glasgow Dilettanti Society and with the Royal Scottish Academy had begun to attract buyers, notably the newly instituted Association for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Scotland. A commission from Lord Provost James Lumsden helped established the artist’s reputation within Scotland. Commissions from book and print publishers allowed him to concentrate on easel painting.

Lachlan Goudie – The Story of Scottish Art episode 2

Lachlan Goudie was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1976, the son of Scottish figurative painter Alexander Goudie. He was educated at the Kelvinside Academy, after which he studied English Literature at Cambridge University. Following this, he was awarded the Levy-Plumb scholarship of a year’s painting residency at Christ’s College, Cambridge.

Goudie was awarded the R. S. P. Prize for painting at the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts in 1999, and the N. S. MacFarlane Prize at the Royal Scottish Academy in 2001. He studied at the Camberwell College of Arts and is a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters.

He has presented the television programmes Secret Knowledge: The Art of Witchcraft (2013) and Stanley Spencer: The Colours of Clyde (2014), both on BBC Four. In 2017 he was a judge on the BBC’s The Big Painting Challenge. In 2017 he was commissioned to document the construction of new aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy. In 2015 he wrote and presented the four-part BBC series The Story of Scottish Art.

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