- 5/19/2025
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LearningTranscript
00:00:00If you can draw, you can draw, or so you think.
00:00:27But if you don't keep at it, you'll find, as I did, that it slips away.
00:00:35So one day you wake up, and you start doing it again, whenever and wherever you can.
00:00:44And more often than not, it'll be the human face that you're drawn to.
00:00:57This is where my talent brought me. Glasgow School of Art.
00:01:16I first came here as a student in 1976. I was a noisy, but secretly nervous youth.
00:01:27And when I walked through these doors, I joined a sea of denim, long hair, and Afghan coats.
00:01:38What gift I had was for drawing faces.
00:01:42So I'd certainly come to the right place if I wanted to learn about that most particular of Scottish arts, the portrait.
00:01:49But then, you see, punk rock happened, and a whole bunch of us abandoned our army surplus greatcoats
00:01:56in favour of peroxide hair, PVC trousers, and guitars.
00:02:01I turned my back on the place, but now, with this programme, I've been offered a second chance.
00:02:09A chance to learn anew about the great traditions and history of Scottish painting.
00:02:14And this time, I'm going to take it.
00:02:38Here at the Glasgow School of Art, the final year degree show is coming down,
00:02:54and a whole new group of artists is setting out to take their part in the story of Scottish art.
00:03:00It is a story that has been dominated by the portrait.
00:03:06I'm going to be looking back over 500 years to consider why.
00:03:14I'll be looking at the artists who have been capturing Scotland and its people on canvas.
00:03:24From 17th century portrait painters, to 19th century neoclassicists, to Glasgow boys, old and new.
00:03:33Scotland's artists have created an enduring and unique portrait of Scotland.
00:03:38This story of Scotland's art begins here, an unassuming church in Perth that witnessed the advent of a revolution.
00:04:06What happened here would change Scottish art forever.
00:04:12It was on this spot, on the 11th of May, 1559, that John Knox preached an impassioned sermon
00:04:20that outlawed what was until then the mainstay of Scottish art, religious icons.
00:04:27On that day, Knox unequivocally brought to Scotland a brand of Protestantism that would change everything.
00:04:36Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above,
00:04:47or that is in the earth below, or that is in the water under the earth.
00:04:56It was year zero.
00:04:59The crowd grew so frenzied, they smashed the stained glass and ripped down the paintings and statues.
00:05:08The reformation of the Catholic Church was gathering pace.
00:05:12Across Europe, it would devastate swathes of cultural heritage.
00:05:18In a way, the death of religious art was the making of the portrait.
00:05:22Holy pictures were now forbidden, so with no market and a living to earn, artists had to take a different tag.
00:05:30Protestants believed in the importance of the individual, and through reading the Bible, having a direct relationship with God.
00:05:38You were responsible for your actions, not the Catholic hierarchy in Rome.
00:05:44The perfect art form to illustrate the new way of thinking was portraiture.
00:05:53Scotland's artists embraced the desire for painted portraits,
00:05:57so much so that by the 18th century, a Scottish painter would be acknowledged to be among the very best in Britain.
00:06:06When Alan Ramsey was appointed the King's Painter in 1761,
00:06:10he set the pattern for Scottish artists to follow.
00:06:14When Alan Ramsey was appointed the King's Painter in 1761,
00:06:18he set the pattern for Scottish artists capturing on canvas the figures and the times that forged Scotland's history.
00:06:34And the best are all in here, in this suitably imposing building,
00:06:39one of Edinburgh's dearest treasures, built as a shrine to Scottish heroes, hence the statues.
00:06:45It is, in fact, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery,
00:06:49the very first purpose-built portrait gallery in the world.
00:07:10In this building, you can see how portraiture has reflected the changing face of Scotland.
00:07:21The man in charge is James Holloway.
00:07:25Do you think that the Scots have a particular interest in portraiture?
00:07:29Is it something that is significant to them?
00:07:32Very good question. I think when you look at the 18th century and the 19th century,
00:07:36there's some wonderful artists. The greatest artists have been portrait painters,
00:07:40certainly in the earlier periods.
00:07:42And, yes, there is, I think, a way of looking at people, analysing them, looking at their characters,
00:07:47and there is a sort of Scottish vision.
00:07:49Do you think that there is such a thing as a Scottish face?
00:07:53Would that be racist? Is it racist to say that?
00:07:56It probably is. It may well be racist, but let's pretend it isn't.
00:08:00Yes, I think... Well, there are faces that you instinctively think of as Scottish.
00:08:05For instance, we bought a marvellous portrait of somebody
00:08:08who was a local defence volunteer in the Second World War.
00:08:11He was painted as a part of propaganda.
00:08:13He had a face that could have stepped out of Dad's army,
00:08:16but it was recognisably Scottish.
00:08:18You couldn't say that was a Welsh face or an Irish face. It was a Scottish face.
00:08:23I'm interested to know, you have numerous pictures of royalty.
00:08:28Yes, we do. We've got a fantastic portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots,
00:08:31a great full-length portrait. It's one of the most famous portraits of her in the world.
00:08:35Fantastic. Yes, of course we can.
00:08:37This way?
00:08:39Yes, down here and up the staircase.
00:08:41You know your way about.
00:08:43I should do.
00:08:50And what was the purpose of a picture like this?
00:08:53Because this was done after her death, wasn't it?
00:08:56Yes, it was. It was painted for her son, for James VI,
00:08:59who by that stage had become James I of England.
00:09:02This painting obviously is a reflection of her, what she looked like,
00:09:06but it's also a comment on her martyrdom.
00:09:09That red colour, the tablecloth, is the red blood of her martyrdom.
00:09:14Now, clearly it was very important who you married
00:09:17when you were a member of the Royal Family.
00:09:19Very much, and actually they used portraits for that.
00:09:22In what way? What were portraits used?
00:09:24Portraits were sent out from the royal courts to, say, to a king,
00:09:27of prospective brides.
00:09:29They were sent across Europe.
00:09:31And then they were also sent to embassies
00:09:35to raise the status right across the world.
00:09:38But you had to be careful, otherwise you'd get yourself into a tie-bride situation.
00:09:42Well, this happened with Henry VIII.
00:09:44There was a very flattering portrait of Anne of Cleves.
00:09:47And when she turned up?
00:09:49He called her the Flanders mare.
00:09:51So she didn't live up to Holbein's image at all.
00:09:54And so Mary, Queen of Scots, she had suitors as well, didn't she?
00:09:57She had lots of suitors. She had three husbands too.
00:10:00She was a very pretty, very glamorous, very tall woman.
00:10:03I think that irritated Elizabeth particularly.
00:10:16Sketching a painting is an odd thing to do.
00:10:19But it makes me look at it more carefully.
00:10:22And it lets me spend a little more time with it.
00:10:28There's a lovely story that I read.
00:10:31But it was that, um...
00:10:34Mary, Queen of Scots' son, James VI,
00:10:38and whilst, of course, his mother was beheaded...
00:10:44..and was not buried in Westminster
00:10:47with all the splendour of a queen,
00:10:50and when he became the king,
00:10:53he had her body brought...
00:10:57..to London.
00:10:59And there she was buried,
00:11:01with all the appropriate...
00:11:03..respect.
00:11:05But there's a lovely image
00:11:07in that he had to do this a bit on the quiet,
00:11:10because politically it wasn't very popular.
00:11:14And so they brought her body on a carriage
00:11:17in the middle of the night.
00:11:19And it rode through London.
00:11:21And apparently, as it did,
00:11:23the streets were lined with supporters of the old queen,
00:11:28standing there, raising lanterns.
00:11:33So he was a good son, after all.
00:11:45MUSIC FADES
00:11:54Scotland's first really successful native painter
00:11:57was Aberdeen-born artist George Jameson.
00:12:02His studio still exists on Edinburgh's Royal Mile,
00:12:05where he worked in the 1630s.
00:12:09Jameson expert Dr Duncan Thompson met me there.
00:12:13It's the city's oldest inhabited building,
00:12:16and we've been allowed access by the owners.
00:12:21Oh, this is incredible.
00:12:23This represents wealth, in a sense,
00:12:25because one would expect your normal Scottish ceiling of this date
00:12:30to be open beams painted,
00:12:32which was really the cheap way of decorating a room.
00:12:35This represents a sort of growing prosperity.
00:12:38So it's very likely, then, that this is Jameson's ceiling?
00:12:41Well, I should think it probably was here
00:12:43when Jameson occupied this building.
00:12:46So here he is. The founder of Scottish art.
00:12:49The founder of Scottish art?
00:12:51Well, he's the first major native painter.
00:12:53I mean, there had been foreign painters working in Edinburgh,
00:12:56but he's the first major painter who was actually a Scot.
00:13:03His background was in the decorative painting tradition,
00:13:06the people who painted ceilings.
00:13:08But quite quickly he becomes a major portrait painter.
00:13:13And this is his self-portrait?
00:13:15It's a very pretentious, in a good sense.
00:13:18I mean, he's advertising himself.
00:13:21He's advertising what he's capable of.
00:13:23You see, this appears to be a portrait of Charles I here.
00:13:26There was no existing portrait of Charles I by Jameson,
00:13:29but it looks as if he did paint one.
00:13:31I should think that's more than likely.
00:13:35A skull on a shield, which is a common memento mori,
00:13:39a reminder of death, that life was short.
00:13:42A very common feature in 17th century art.
00:13:45I think he's sort of saying, you know,
00:13:48he's a very important figure in Scottish life.
00:13:51And he had a surprising amount of fame during his own lifetime.
00:13:55I mean, there are a number of poems written about Jameson
00:13:58and what a great painter he was.
00:14:01But presumably it was a way to...
00:14:04If somebody was famous,
00:14:06it was the only way to show people how they looked.
00:14:10That's right.
00:14:11It's much the same reason as we still have our portraits painted.
00:14:15There's obviously an element of vanity.
00:14:18You want to protect yourself from the ravages of time, as it were.
00:14:21You want people to know what you look like once you've gone,
00:14:25just as we have our portraits painted today.
00:14:31This promise of immortality
00:14:33led to a growth in the popularity of portraiture.
00:14:39By the middle of the 18th century,
00:14:41it had become the perfect visual form
00:14:43for exploring the new philosophical ideas of the day.
00:14:47Ideas that were being forged in Scotland's capital.
00:14:53It was a time of great change.
00:14:55Ideas that were being forged in Scotland's capital.
00:15:00It was the age of the Enlightenment,
00:15:02a time when Edinburgh pulsed with intellectual energy.
00:15:06Almost every aspect of mankind's existence,
00:15:09philosophy, history, medicine, economics,
00:15:13was being forensically examined and questioned.
00:15:20At the time, Scotsmen like philosopher David Hume,
00:15:23economist Adam Smith and medic Joseph Black
00:15:26successfully challenged beliefs about the physical world.
00:15:30Thanks to John Knox and the Reformation,
00:15:32Scotland was one of the most literate nations in the world.
00:15:35During the Enlightenment,
00:15:37it moved to the very centre of European intellectual thought.
00:15:40Edinburgh was described as the Athens of the North,
00:15:43and Voltaire declared that it is to Scotland
00:15:46that we look for our civilisation.
00:15:49And this radical shift in Scottish intellectual life
00:15:53soon found its way into Scotland's art.
00:15:58Alan Ramsay was born in Edinburgh in 1713.
00:16:02During his lifetime, his sophisticated, painterly style
00:16:06would put Scottish art on the European stage.
00:16:11He built his reputation as an intellectual painter
00:16:14in both Edinburgh and London,
00:16:16and went on to be hailed
00:16:18as one of the finest portrait painters of his time.
00:16:23It was Ramsay's belief
00:16:25that art should be easily understood by anyone.
00:16:28His paintings should reflect exactly what he saw.
00:16:34These beliefs brought him close to a man called David Hume,
00:16:38one of the leading thinkers of the Enlightenment.
00:16:41Both men lived in Edinburgh.
00:16:43They were both founder members of the Select Society,
00:16:46a distinguished debating club here in the city,
00:16:48and they became firm friends.
00:16:50It was only natural that Hume's ideas
00:16:52should begin to find expression in Ramsay's art.
00:16:58Hume believed that the key to understanding the world
00:17:01was directly through experience and the senses,
00:17:04and you can see that
00:17:06in Ramsay's direct and honest portrait of the philosopher.
00:17:14Here in the portrait gallery,
00:17:16I'm going to find out more about Alan Ramsay
00:17:19from Deputy Curator Nicola Kolinsky.
00:17:22So, who is this?
00:17:24This is the first Mrs Ramsay, Anne Bain,
00:17:27about 1739-40.
00:17:30So, an early portrait by Alan Ramsay.
00:17:33So, how old would he have been when he painted this?
00:17:36Well, he's a young man in his early 20s.
00:17:38He's already made his first trip to Italy, where he trained,
00:17:42and he came back to Britain
00:17:45and he married Anne Bain on his return in 1738.
00:17:49But already a very, very accomplished painter. Yes.
00:17:52The pose is quite strange.
00:17:54It seems quite uptight, stiff.
00:17:57She's a young girl.
00:17:59She's probably never been painted before
00:18:01and she's subject to the intense scrutiny of the artist.
00:18:06It's probably quite a nerve-wracking thing to do.
00:18:09If you compare this to commissioned portraits of the period,
00:18:14those portraits that he's paid to do of women,
00:18:18this is much more intimate and direct.
00:18:21There is something almost uncomfortable, I think,
00:18:24about the directness of it.
00:18:26And she feels quite exposed.
00:18:28Yes, her gaze, when you look at her,
00:18:32she's saying something.
00:18:36It's really between she and her husband, isn't it?
00:18:40We're probably not supposed to be part of this exchange, perhaps.
00:18:43She's not really looking at me.
00:18:45She's looking at him.
00:18:49I love the colour as well.
00:18:51At this period, Ramsey is using quite an intense red underpainting,
00:18:56which he would have learnt in the Italian studios,
00:18:59and that probably gives the face this warmth.
00:19:02The eyes, very kind of warm highlights.
00:19:05So the red will have gone down first... Yes.
00:19:09..as opposed to later. Indeed.
00:19:11And then built up with these other layers of paint.
00:19:14It's a palpable, living, breathing human being.
00:19:16That's what is amazing about him.
00:19:18He does... She's there.
00:19:21She's in that picture. Yeah.
00:19:26She died in 1743 in childbirth,
00:19:30so, in fact, it was a very short marriage, just five years.
00:19:33Very sad.
00:19:35So we only know her as a young woman, a young bride.
00:19:38Right.
00:19:40Well, that gives an added poignancy, I think, to this.
00:19:43It does indeed, yes.
00:19:4711 years later, Alan Ramsey married again.
00:19:52And, of course, he painted a beautiful portrait
00:19:55of the second Mrs Ramsey.
00:20:01It's such an incredibly sensitive
00:20:05and delicate painting in this picture,
00:20:08particularly if you look at the lips.
00:20:11And I think...
00:20:14..what makes this picture...
00:20:17..one of Ramsey's...
00:20:20..most celebrated...
00:20:23..and most famous pictures...
00:20:26..is not just his handling of light...
00:20:30..not just the subtlety with which he renders...
00:20:35..the lace and the garments and the clothing...
00:20:40..not just the pose, which is...
00:20:44Margaret here, I think, has just been arranging flowers
00:20:48in the vase in their home.
00:20:52In the vase in their home.
00:20:55And appears just to have been caught in the moment of doing that.
00:21:01I think...
00:21:04..it's because you can see how much he loves her.
00:21:23Alan Ramsey was painting at a time
00:21:25when Scotland's art market had seen considerable change.
00:21:29The Act of Union in 1707
00:21:31meant Parliament now followed the court south,
00:21:34taking with it long-established patrons of the arts.
00:21:41Scottish painters had lost the patronage
00:21:43of the church and of the royal court.
00:21:45Times might have been hard
00:21:47if a new group of benefactors hadn't emerged
00:21:50in the shape of Scotland's landed gentry
00:21:52and the new middle class.
00:21:59It was gentry like the Earls of Bute
00:22:01who built their country pile, Mount Stewart,
00:22:04in the late 19th century.
00:22:06The Butes used the same architect
00:22:08that designed the portrait gallery in Edinburgh.
00:22:15This sumptuous building
00:22:17houses the fruits of centuries of patronage of the arts.
00:22:37Alan Ramsey's success as a portrait painter
00:22:40wasn't just down to his skill alone.
00:22:42It was his personality as well.
00:22:44His tact and integrity earned him friends in high places.
00:22:48And he became a particular favourite of John Stuart,
00:22:51the Thordale of Bute.
00:22:57Here at Mount Stewart,
00:22:59they have one of the best collections of Ramseys in the world.
00:23:04I've had a special invitation to view them
00:23:06from the 7th Marquess of Bute himself.
00:23:09This is the dining room, Peter,
00:23:11and as you can see, this is where we've got
00:23:13the core of the family portrait collection.
00:23:16These amazing Ramseys.
00:23:18Yeah, they're very, very wonderful.
00:23:22I mean, I grew up in this house.
00:23:24I was born on the island and grew up here.
00:23:26So, I mean, in a way, it's slightly bizarre,
00:23:31you know, in the 20th and 21st century
00:23:34to be brought up in these surroundings.
00:23:37So, this is the King as Prince Regent.
00:23:42That's the King.
00:23:44That's the Thordale there.
00:23:46The Thordale, yeah.
00:23:48Now, the Thordale was, in fact,
00:23:50the first Scotsman to hold the post of First Lord of the Treasury.
00:23:55I, Prime Minister.
00:23:57He was, and he had a very short political career.
00:24:03Really?
00:24:04He wasn't popular because he was a Scot.
00:24:06Oh, dear.
00:24:07But I don't think that was the only reason.
00:24:09You know, he passed unpopular legislation.
00:24:13He introduced a tax on cider,
00:24:16which obviously didn't go down very well.
00:24:22Do you have any idea why the Thordale
00:24:25was so taken with Ramsey in the first place?
00:24:28My understanding is that when Ramsey was in his heyday,
00:24:31he was acknowledged to be the best British portrait artist.
00:24:35Now, I think when Ramsey got a bit older
00:24:38and Reynolds had developed,
00:24:40that Reynolds took over that mantle.
00:24:42Yeah.
00:24:43But I think it really was a case of, you know,
00:24:45who is the best portrait artist in Britain?
00:24:48Yeah.
00:24:49And that man was Alan Ramsey.
00:24:53Have you ever had your portrait painted?
00:24:55No, I haven't, actually.
00:24:56No? Do you not fancy it?
00:24:57I do quite, yeah, but I've never got round to it.
00:25:00Well, it's difficult to know quite who to go to, isn't it?
00:25:03I'd probably be more than likely to go
00:25:06for the Lucian Freud type of option.
00:25:08Oh, that would be fantastic. Yeah.
00:25:10But I think you look quite good in the part of the wig and the gear.
00:25:13Do you think so?
00:25:18If Johnny Bute does get round to having his portrait painted,
00:25:21the snazzy get-up worn by his ancestor
00:25:23in the show Stopping Portraits is kept here at Mount Stewart.
00:25:28How long do you have these beaches?
00:25:30There they are.
00:25:32This is 250 years old.
00:25:34And for an incurable old fop like myself,
00:25:36the chance to reach out and touch the past
00:25:38with Mount Stewart's archivist was irresistible.
00:25:41You can see how Ramsey has really caught this colour,
00:25:44because, I mean, this velvet has such variance in tone.
00:25:49Beautiful.
00:25:50Of course, tightened there so the stockings
00:25:52and the rest of his legs will be shown to the best advantage.
00:25:57I could slip them on right now.
00:26:00This remarkable jacket, which appears beneath the robes.
00:26:04This is Vivienne Westwood, eat your heart out.
00:26:08Can we see the others? I'm frightened to touch it,
00:26:10although I'm desperate to try it on.
00:26:13And they're sort of little threads wound onto tiny little wires
00:26:17with little sort of jeweled things in them.
00:26:21And this is the business.
00:26:23Beautiful buttons.
00:26:26I mean, it's actually not garish.
00:26:28If someone was to describe that to you,
00:26:30you'd think that's a bit of bling, it's a bit over the top.
00:26:33But in fact, it's very elegant.
00:26:35I mean, how old is that?
00:26:37250 years.
00:26:39250 years old.
00:26:40And what you have to remember is that, of course,
00:26:42Ramsey has looked at this, he has seen this.
00:26:44He would have had this in his studio,
00:26:46so he could get up close to it and do it in detail.
00:26:49But, I mean, there must have been someone,
00:26:51and so Alan Ramsey must have gone,
00:26:53oh, please, no, don't wear the jacket with the tassels.
00:26:55Not all the tassels, I'll have to do all of those.
00:26:58You know, just wear a plain pair of, not velvet.
00:27:05Ramsey's work for the Bute family earned him other fans too.
00:27:09They recommended him to the Prince of Wales,
00:27:12the future George III.
00:27:14And in 1760, he was appointed King's Painter.
00:27:19Ramsey had reached the pinnacle of his career,
00:27:22but when he died in 1784,
00:27:25another brilliant Scottish portrait painter
00:27:28was poised to take his place.
00:27:34Edinburgh-born Henry Rayburn certainly drew on Ramsey's influence,
00:27:38but it was his bold technique that would make him famous.
00:27:43We know Rayburn was born in 1756,
00:27:45just downriver from here in Stalkbridge,
00:27:47where the waters of Leith piled his parents' wool-boiling mill.
00:27:51We know he was an apprentice goldsmith here in Edinburgh.
00:27:54We know he studied for a time in Italy,
00:27:56but we don't know how he arrived at his technique.
00:28:00He was born in Edinburgh.
00:28:02He was born in Edinburgh.
00:28:04He was born in Edinburgh.
00:28:06He was born in Edinburgh.
00:28:08He was born in Edinburgh.
00:28:10We arrive at his technique.
00:28:16By the early 1790s, Rayburn was displaying
00:28:19an astonishing confidence in the handling of paint.
00:28:22He was working with a courage, a vigour and a daring
00:28:25that saw him, quite unlike the more studious Ramsey,
00:28:28rarely bother with any preparatory drawings.
00:28:30It was just him, the sitter and that big blank canvas.
00:28:35He was working without a safety net.
00:28:41Rayburn created a purpose-built studio,
00:28:43one of the first in Britain, in Edinburgh's new town.
00:28:47Here he could receive his grand subjects
00:28:49in a relaxed and informal atmosphere.
00:28:53Today the building houses a media agency.
00:28:56Great view, isn't it?
00:28:58But you can still see how Rayburn designed the space
00:29:00to give him precise control over the light.
00:29:02So the enormous scale of this is because of light?
00:29:06That's right.
00:29:08It's facing north, as you can see.
00:29:10People always say this about artists' studios,
00:29:12about them having a northern light.
00:29:14I never really understood what that meant.
00:29:16It means basically the positions of the shadows,
00:29:19once you've fixed them, don't move,
00:29:21because the sun isn't moving.
00:29:23This is facing north?
00:29:25It's facing virtually due north across to Fife.
00:29:28It's because the sun's rising over there,
00:29:30so when it's moving that way...
00:29:32It doesn't really throw any shadows in here.
00:29:34Shadows, light, were so important to Rayburn.
00:29:37This was one of his favourite devices in a portrait.
00:29:40It was very carefully controlled lighting.
00:29:43And this window, as you can see,
00:29:45it's surrounded by a very complicated set of shutters.
00:29:49He would modify where the light was coming from
00:29:52so that it fell on the subject's head or body
00:29:55just exactly as he wanted it.
00:29:57Now, let's say a sitter's coming along,
00:30:00like Mrs Scott Mott-Creef here,
00:30:02who's this lady in this rather beautiful and alluring picture.
00:30:06It's quite a racy picture, I think.
00:30:08Yes, you could say that.
00:30:10It's quite a romantic feeling.
00:30:12It's got quite a distinct erotic feeling.
00:30:15It's a very sensual picture.
00:30:17But there's a lot of exposed flesh there,
00:30:19which I'm quite surprised at.
00:30:21Well, it's a sort of late empire dress,
00:30:24which emphasised the breasts
00:30:26and showed a lot of the upper area of the chest.
00:30:29There was nothing unusual,
00:30:31nothing scandalous about this at the time.
00:30:33And Rayburn was obviously quite aware of this lady's charms.
00:30:38You know, he reacted to them.
00:30:40And hence, when he reacted to the personality
00:30:43or the individuality of the subject,
00:30:46then we got a better painting.
00:30:48We got a more, in this case, a more dramatic,
00:30:50a more romantic painting.
00:30:52Well, he certainly seems to have made a connection.
00:30:54But, as you can see how important the light was,
00:30:57the light is 50% of that picture.
00:31:01It still looks like a real person.
00:31:03It looks like a real human being with a character.
00:31:05Oh, absolutely, yes, yes.
00:31:07If I've come to get my portrait painted,
00:31:10I'm the Right Honourable Archibald Capaldi of Capaldi.
00:31:13OK, yes.
00:31:15How would it work?
00:31:16He would have said pretty quickly,
00:31:18because he worked fast,
00:31:20this is where I would like you to stand on this...
00:31:22Up on this?
00:31:23..podium here, if you could just go up there.
00:31:25Right, so I'll go up here, OK.
00:31:27Well, we've had to make do with a coffee table.
00:31:29Why would I be up higher like this?
00:31:31So the shadows of your features were tending to fall.
00:31:35Shadows under the nose, shadows under the chin,
00:31:38and even shadows under the buttons on your coat.
00:31:41So how would he actually use the space of the studio?
00:31:44Because it's a big room.
00:31:46The first thing we must do is make sure
00:31:48that these two doors are wide open.
00:31:50These ones as well?
00:31:51Because Rayburn, besides painting in here,
00:31:53this room was part of the process as well.
00:31:56So these doors would be wide open
00:31:59so that there was extra light
00:32:01coming from the south side of the building,
00:32:03which helps to light up the shadow side of your face,
00:32:06which is very dark
00:32:09when only the window is lighting you.
00:32:12He would then retreat from his easel
00:32:16right across where this boardroom table is sitting at the moment.
00:32:21He would be backing...
00:32:23back right into the other half of this double-cube room,
00:32:27always looking at you,
00:32:29and he would go back as far as he could
00:32:32until he eliminated the tremendously bright light
00:32:35coming in from the north.
00:32:37He would stand here, sizing up exactly how you look,
00:32:42and then very rapidly he would stride forward
00:32:45right across where the table is,
00:32:47go up to the easel,
00:32:49and without actually looking at you at this point,
00:32:52he would dash in all the highlights,
00:32:54the forehead, the chin.
00:32:56These are always painted with very thick direct impasto.
00:32:59There was no drawing involved in this.
00:33:01It was Rayburn's memory and his brush and his paint,
00:33:05and it would go directly onto the canvas
00:33:08and it would begin to grow.
00:33:10So he'd run up and down here doing that?
00:33:12He's doing a lot of legwork, absolutely.
00:33:22¶¶
00:33:39The fearlessness of Henry Rayburn's technique,
00:33:42combined with his piercing instinct for character,
00:33:45made a formidable combination.
00:33:48Centuries later, he still exerts a powerful influence
00:33:51over one of Scotland's leading artists.
00:33:54How you doing? Nice to see you.
00:33:56Alison Watt's work is bold and original.
00:34:00She began her career painting portraits,
00:34:03but now she's found very different subject matter
00:34:07for her sensual paintings.
00:34:15From the start, she's had a love affair with Rayburn's work.
00:34:20I've only ever seen it out of this context once,
00:34:23because it's always here,
00:34:25but two years ago I saw it in London at the Royal Academy.
00:34:28This picture of William Clunes
00:34:30was hung alongside the greats in European portraiture.
00:34:33So you had David and Ingres and Reynolds and Gainsborough,
00:34:37and this picture easily held its own in that company.
00:34:41And I remember thinking how important that would have been to Rayburn
00:34:45because throughout his lifetime
00:34:47he worried about how he was perceived
00:34:49outside of his native Edinburgh.
00:34:51And here he was in revered company,
00:34:54and I think that would have given him a lot of pleasure.
00:34:57From a technical point of view, from a painter's point of view,
00:35:00what is it that's interesting to you about this?
00:35:03Well, I mean, the technical virtuosity
00:35:05displayed in this picture is astonishing.
00:35:08I mean, on the one hand,
00:35:10he's used an incredibly daring composition.
00:35:13When I first saw it, the first thing I thought was,
00:35:16could they not get the horse to face us?
00:35:19That's what I love about it.
00:35:21And also Rayburn has given both animal and sitter
00:35:25a strange kind of equality,
00:35:27and in certain parts of the painting
00:35:30the horse and the sitter actually mirror each other
00:35:34to balance the painting.
00:35:36Show us.
00:35:41These strong, dark verticals
00:35:43are incredibly important in the picture.
00:35:45The forelegs of the horse and then the legs of Major Clunes.
00:35:48But what's great about seeing the picture close up
00:35:51is we really get to see Rayburn's technique.
00:35:54And if you look at the highly polished riding boots, for example,
00:35:58you can see his wet-on-wet technique.
00:36:01What is wet-on-wet?
00:36:03As it suggests, it's when you apply wet paint to paint which is not dry.
00:36:07It means there's a fluidity to it,
00:36:10but it also means that, again,
00:36:12there's a great amount of skill attached to working in this way
00:36:15because you have to employ rapidity
00:36:18in your application of the paint
00:36:20in order to retain this incredible freshness and immediacy
00:36:24that you can see in the painting here.
00:36:26But what I love about that
00:36:28is that you can really see the action of the artist.
00:36:31You can see the speed through the brush marks.
00:36:33You can see the paint just pulling through the black.
00:36:36And it's so assured,
00:36:38and that's something a moment has been trapped in time.
00:36:41You actually see the mark that Rayburn made,
00:36:43and I love to see that in a painting.
00:36:45I mean, look at the way he's used colour.
00:36:47If you look at that Vermilion,
00:36:49that extraordinary Vermilion in the waistcoat...
00:36:51I can't really see it from here.
00:36:53It has a way of punctuating the entire painting,
00:36:57and yet at the same time it holds together the whole composition.
00:37:00You mean on his vest?
00:37:02Yes, this incredible colour and the way that he's painted it.
00:37:05The paint looks deceptively simple.
00:37:07It looks as if it's been applied in flat slabs of colour,
00:37:10and that really accentuates the lighting and the painting.
00:37:13But the other side of that is he loses none of the important detail,
00:37:17so he manages to do both.
00:37:19This is really, really forward-thinking painting.
00:37:22I think we, when looking at Rayburn,
00:37:25you automatically use the words courage and vigour and energy.
00:37:29It's much more than a likeness.
00:37:33It is lovely.
00:37:41Until the Enlightenment,
00:37:43Scotland had been something of an intellectual backwater
00:37:46dominated by a repressive church.
00:37:49But by the late 18th century, it was Europe's most literate society,
00:37:54alive with sophisticated thinking and debate.
00:37:59Scots now led the world in science and medicine,
00:38:02and the new, deeper understanding of how the human body works
00:38:06was picked up by Scottish artists.
00:38:11Theories about perception were at the heart of Enlightenment thinking.
00:38:15Emerald intellectuals were wrestling with the big ideas,
00:38:18and it's obvious from some of his later works
00:38:21that Rayburn was in on the debate.
00:38:25The fact that perception was a mental process appealed to Rayburn.
00:38:29His work reflects the idea
00:38:31that the brain can make a meaningful image
00:38:34out of patterns of tone and colour.
00:38:38Science and art truly became bedfellows
00:38:41when Edinburgh surgeon Charles Bell produced a book
00:38:45on the anatomy of expression in painting.
00:38:48It was specifically aimed at artists.
00:38:53Bell saw an important connection between science and art.
00:38:57Painting could provide a study
00:38:59of the physical effect of the mind on the body.
00:39:03Put simply, if you painted somebody's portrait,
00:39:06you got an insight into the sitter's mind.
00:39:09It was written all over their face.
00:39:12Scottish painters like David Wilkie
00:39:14took the new anatomical knowledge to heart.
00:39:17When he paints his portrait of a whole family,
00:39:20their expressions make it clear how uncomfortable they are.
00:39:24Wilkie painted the charmers' Bethune family when he was just 19.
00:39:31It seems to me that the Scottish tradition of portraiture,
00:39:34which blossomed after the Reformation,
00:39:36was energised by the Enlightenment,
00:39:39as artists and philosophers alike explored what it is to be human.
00:39:45Scotland's forward-thinking men of science and philosophy
00:39:48had put this small country at the centre of European thought.
00:39:54And where Ramsay had paved the way,
00:39:56other Scottish painters now followed.
00:40:05It was a vibrant time of cultural exchange and cross-fertilisation.
00:40:13Scottish artists, full of Enlightenment ideas,
00:40:16travelled abroad where they fully embraced the continental arts scene.
00:40:25Inspired by ancient art and literature,
00:40:27they would return home to create a new and enduring portrait.
00:40:34A portrait of Scotland.
00:40:39The grand tour craze was at its height.
00:40:42Wealthy aristocrats finished their education
00:40:45with an extensive tour of Europe.
00:40:49The idea was to broaden their horizons with exposure to art and culture.
00:40:54And it took some dedication.
00:40:56The guidebooks recommended three hours' sightseeing each morning for six weeks.
00:41:01And that was just in Rome.
00:41:05Archaeological discoveries in Italy
00:41:08meant more was known about the classical world than ever before.
00:41:14This led to a neoclassical revival in art,
00:41:17as painters recreated in their imagination
00:41:20scenes from ancient Roman history.
00:41:25Rome's cafes buzzed with intellectual debate.
00:41:29And at the heart of this community
00:41:31was Scottish painter Gavin Hamilton.
00:41:35Hamilton was the Scottish Enlightenment's ambassador in Italy.
00:41:39In a series of epic paintings,
00:41:41he explored the latest thinking about the origin of society.
00:41:48Many artists were mining the classical world.
00:41:51But Hamilton went right back to Homer for inspiration.
00:42:02Hamilton doesn't glorify violent heroism.
00:42:05Like Hume, he championed sympathy and compassion.
00:42:10These are the values that make us human, moral and civilised.
00:42:17Around Hamilton, with his groundbreaking neoclassical work
00:42:21and gregarious personality,
00:42:23a new Scottish art school blossomed in Rome.
00:42:28But unlike the well-funded aristocrats on the Grand Tour,
00:42:31Hamilton had to earn a living.
00:42:33History painting was his passion,
00:42:35but portraiture offered a steady income.
00:42:40There she is. Elizabeth.
00:42:42Elizabeth Gunning.
00:42:44One of the famous Miss Gunnings.
00:42:47She was the youngest of two sisters.
00:42:51Her elder sister was Maria, Irish.
00:42:55And her mother brought her over to England
00:42:58to put her on the marriage market.
00:43:00And what were they famed for?
00:43:02Beauty. Beauty. Not much else.
00:43:06The newspapers and magazines of the day,
00:43:09before they got married, followed their every move.
00:43:13I think kind of waiting for them to actually fall from virtue.
00:43:17And this is painted shortly after she got married.
00:43:20Interesting, though, I mean, with all due respect
00:43:23to the Duchess of Hamilton, as was,
00:43:27it's not the kind of beauty that has the same currency in our society.
00:43:32That's true.
00:43:34I think she is what we might call a statuesque beauty.
00:43:37She's quite big. She's a big girl.
00:43:39Both girls were tall.
00:43:41They had very regular features, apparently, and remarkable figures.
00:43:45Elizabeth's son was something of a character.
00:43:49He was. He was.
00:43:51He possibly took a little bit after his father,
00:43:54who was said to have been a little bit of a rake
00:43:57before he married Elizabeth.
00:43:59Fond of the gaming table, fond of ladies and fond of drink.
00:44:04I think I'd like to meet him.
00:44:06Good. Let's go and find him. Can we do that? Yep.
00:44:09That's lovely.
00:44:13Let's go and see Mrs Hamilton's offspring.
00:44:17Here he is.
00:44:19Douglas. Douglas. Douglas Hamilton.
00:44:22Douglas Hamilton, who becomes the eighth Duke.
00:44:25And this also is painted by Gavin Hamilton.
00:44:28Yes, yes, but 20 years later.
00:44:31So he's really quite a hot portrait painter, if you want it to be.
00:44:36He could have been.
00:44:38By the time this portrait was being painted,
00:44:41Gavin Hamilton had really stopped working as a portrait painter.
00:44:44He didn't need to.
00:44:46He was painting his big historical canvases.
00:44:49He was working as an archaeologist.
00:44:51He was working as a dealer.
00:44:53Now, this is set clearly in Italy somewhere.
00:44:57Mm-hm. It's in Rome and they're looking down onto the Forum.
00:45:01Right. They're on the Capitol Hill and looking down.
00:45:04The Forum, if Rome was the high point of the Grand Tour,
00:45:09the Forum was probably the high point of Rome.
00:45:12But their interest in the classical world,
00:45:15I suppose, is one that...
00:45:17It's not just in Roman culture, but it's in Greek culture as well.
00:45:21Yes, yes. This is the period when it begins to broaden out from Rome
00:45:25to an even more distant, more authentic past, to Greece.
00:45:29And because of archaeology,
00:45:31people are beginning to see the ancient world in a different way
00:45:35than what they had before, which had been, I guess, largely imagined.
00:45:39Yeah, or literary.
00:45:41And now they're actually beginning to accumulate real knowledge
00:45:45and a lot of preconceptions about the classical past
00:45:49begin to shift as knowledge increases.
00:45:53Can you give us an idea of Gavin Hamilton's influence and impact?
00:45:59He begins to define and spread neoclassical taste.
00:46:05His great history paintings are extremely influential
00:46:08to the next generation of artists all across Europe.
00:46:16And the generation that followed Hamilton
00:46:19no longer had to rely solely on their imagination.
00:46:22The new science of archaeology
00:46:24was providing physical evidence of classical art,
00:46:27going right back to Homer's time.
00:46:30Recently discovered ancient pottery
00:46:32showed people in profile rather than face-on.
00:46:36David Allen, one of Hamilton's young protégés,
00:46:39used this evidence when he painted Pliny's classical legend,
00:46:44which describes the origin of painting itself.
00:46:56So who knows who painted the first picture or made the first drawing?
00:47:01Who knows where it was, whether it was on a cave wall or on a sandy beach?
00:47:09Nobody knows.
00:47:11But there is a legend that was created by Pliny in Roman times...
00:47:19..of the origin of painting.
00:47:24And the legend features Debutadis,
00:47:28who's the daughter of a Corinthian porter...
00:47:33..who on the eve of battle...
00:47:37..sketches her lover's profile...
00:47:41..cast from his shadow on the wall.
00:47:45It's a legend, really, that says...
00:47:49..the first picture was a portrait...
00:47:54..and that the reason that it was done was love.
00:47:59But another interesting point...
00:48:02..to me, anyway, about this picture...
00:48:05..is that if we look at the...
00:48:09..the young man's profile,
00:48:11we'll see, as has been remarked many times before...
00:48:19..that the classical profile...
00:48:22..is shared with none other than the king himself, Elvis Presley.
00:48:30This classical...
00:48:34..Lisa Marie Presley is...
00:48:37..drawing the quiff...
00:48:41..of her lover.
00:48:47Elvis has left the museum.
00:48:49Elvis has left the museum.
00:49:06Fascination with ancient history
00:49:08wasn't confined to Gavin Hamilton and his circle in Rome.
00:49:11Here, in Scotland,
00:49:13the discovery of an epic poem written in Gaelic
00:49:16was about to ignite an interest in the primitive past.
00:49:24The man behind the discovery was James Macpherson,
00:49:27who claimed to have found fragments of poetry
00:49:30written by a Celtic bard named Ossian.
00:49:34When the work was published in the 1760s,
00:49:37Ossian was hailed as Scotland's answer to Homer.
00:49:40Scottish artists turned their back on the ancient classical world
00:49:44in favour of their own primitive past.
00:49:52I'm following the path taken by hordes of tourists,
00:49:55all keen to see the memorial to Ossian,
00:49:57created in the 18th century by the Duke of Athol,
00:50:00here on his estate.
00:50:04Hi, Ben, how you doing? Welcome.
00:50:06Thanks very much for letting me in. Welcome.
00:50:08I like this place. It all looks pretty...
00:50:10The fact that Ossian turned out to be largely fake
00:50:13didn't diminish its reception.
00:50:16This was number one bestseller of its day.
00:50:19Napoleon carried a copy. Everybody had copies.
00:50:22This became a cult, a craze.
00:50:24But whether he really existed, who knows?
00:50:27You don't know, but as a character, he became very, very powerful.
00:50:30As a character, he was very, very real.
00:50:32But he certainly was believed in.
00:50:34What he stood for was believed in.
00:50:36The fact that he stood for heroic deeds
00:50:39and fantastic tales and storytelling.
00:50:42And a very strong culture, going way back into the distant past.
00:50:46So he gave Scotland an identity.
00:50:48Going way back, yes.
00:50:50And this is his house.
00:50:52What's much a house? It's a memorial to Ossian.
00:50:55And that's what we're going to see now.
00:50:57That's exactly what we're going to see now.
00:51:04So, the ladies and gentlemen who were coming here,
00:51:07what would they be confronted with here?
00:51:09They'd be confronted with the round end of the building,
00:51:11the stone door.
00:51:13So you'd push open the door, and as you come in,
00:51:16that's when you'd be confronted in the gloom
00:51:19with Ossian appearing before you.
00:51:21And also notice, you've almost lost the sound of the waterfall.
00:51:26Oh, yeah, you can hardly hear it.
00:51:28It's gone very quiet, deliberately.
00:51:30But if you then come forward...
00:51:33And you'd...
00:51:35And you'd be taken to the main chamber.
00:51:39And you'd have the roar of the waterfall.
00:51:41And you'd go through, and you'd cut through the blackened halls.
00:51:45They're lovely, aren't they? Absolutely beautiful.
00:51:47Oh, my God, it's fantastic.
00:51:52Beneath the aged trees,
00:51:54old Ossian sat on the moss,
00:51:57the last of the race of fingers.
00:51:59I hear the river below murmuring hoarsely over the stones.
00:52:03What dost thou, old river, to me?
00:52:14The popularity of Ossian proved there was a real appetite
00:52:18for authentic Scottish heritage.
00:52:21So when a new and genuine rustic poet emerged
00:52:25in the shape of Robert Burns, a farmer's son from Ayrshire,
00:52:29his public were ready and waiting.
00:52:35When Robert Burns arrived in Edinburgh in 1786,
00:52:38all he had to his name was a small volume of poetry
00:52:42called Poems, chiefly in the Scottish dialect.
00:52:45Not the catchiest of titles, but it became a literary sensation.
00:52:51All of Edinburgh wanted to meet the Ployman poet,
00:52:54and very soon Burns found himself drinking
00:52:57with Enlightenment philosophers
00:52:59and making eyes at eminent socialites.
00:53:05Of course, Burns was a poet, not a painter,
00:53:08but it was his attitude to his own image
00:53:11that would help cement his reputation
00:53:14as one of the great icons of Scottish culture.
00:53:18It seems to me that we have a very particular
00:53:22and specific view of Burns, visually.
00:53:25The best-known portraits of Burns result from the production
00:53:29of the Edinburgh edition in 1787.
00:53:32That is the Naismith oil and the Bugha engraving.
00:53:35Yes, and we have a very interesting comparison between these two.
00:53:39This, I guess, is the image that most people would recognise.
00:53:42That's the Chocolate Box poet.
00:53:45So he himself, his opinion of this was what?
00:53:48His opinion of this was that it didn't catch the likeness
00:53:51as well as the engraving that was derived from it.
00:53:54He has hardened the features.
00:53:56This has the stamp of authenticity that the original oil lacks.
00:54:02This one here, who looks a bit meatier,
00:54:05looks a bit more like Sean Connery.
00:54:07He looks more able to hold a plough,
00:54:09and actually more like the Ployman poet.
00:54:11You can imagine that below here were the farmer's boots,
00:54:14which so attracted the ladies of Edinburgh.
00:54:16I have to say the one that I like the best is this one at the end.
00:54:21The reed miniature. Yeah.
00:54:23I don't know whether that's just because it's so different from the others.
00:54:27This was done about a year before Burns' death,
00:54:31and we know that he himself liked this.
00:54:33He seems to have caught Burns entirely to Burns' satisfaction.
00:54:37I wonder if he thought this was his good side.
00:54:41Aren't they all from this side?
00:54:43Yes. Did he have a horrible wart or something the other side?
00:54:46He may have done.
00:54:48If this had happened in the 20th century,
00:54:52you'd almost think that some design consultant had said to Robert Burns,
00:54:56let's just make one image.
00:54:58That's how it's going to work.
00:54:59Let's get one image and put that out there
00:55:01and just hit it again and again and again.
00:55:03But 20th-century or 21st-century marketing is nothing new.
00:55:06They knew all about it in the 18th century.
00:55:08You had to sell yourself. You had to sell an image.
00:55:11Pictures sold books.
00:55:13And yet, in doing that,
00:55:15Bugo gave us the definitive image of Burns for all time.
00:55:26Contemporary Scottish artist Callum Colvin
00:55:29has an inventive take on portraiture.
00:55:32Callum subverted iconic Scottish images throughout his career.
00:55:37And I get the impression Burns particularly intrigues him.
00:55:42What's great about this, and I really, really like your work,
00:55:45but it's usually always seen, obviously, in photographic form.
00:55:50And in a way, this is what the photograph always tempts me to do.
00:55:55You want it to be a pendant.
00:55:57It's to come to the place where the bits are.
00:56:01And find the spot where all the bits coalesce into the portrait.
00:56:06If you look at a work of art and just move on,
00:56:09it hasn't really done its job.
00:56:12I think with my work, people feel obliged, even if they don't like it,
00:56:16they feel obliged to try and figure out what it is they're looking at.
00:56:19So this mixture of painting, sculpture, photography,
00:56:22there is a process of decoding.
00:56:25As I often do with pictures,
00:56:27I take a basic structure from an original image,
00:56:30which I subvert and turn into something else.
00:56:33But how do you create,
00:56:36how do you break the image of Burns down into the bits?
00:56:40I have all my props.
00:56:42If you imagine an unpainted set of props,
00:56:45I have all my props and then I get an acetate, something like...
00:56:50This is taken from a stamp that I found in a book of Burns' ephemera.
00:56:55This is what I made, a template.
00:56:58Then I look and I figure out what I want to do.
00:57:01I want this rearing rebel horse and I want Burns to appear within that.
00:57:06Then I knew I was going to paint the flag over the thing.
00:57:09So I look and I move around.
00:57:11Once I've decided the position,
00:57:13I move my camera, which is over here, into that position.
00:57:17Then it's just a simple,
00:57:19it is simple, but it's a laborious process of just painting.
00:57:24I'm interested in the fact that this is actually a very radical form of portraiture,
00:57:29that you're still very deliberately painting a picture,
00:57:32a recognisable picture of a human being.
00:57:35Robbie Burns appears in quite a lot of your work.
00:57:38Yes.
00:57:39Do you respond then to the political element in him?
00:57:42Well, there are all kinds of elements, I think,
00:57:45and that's the beauty of Burns.
00:57:47It's like an allegorical life.
00:57:49You can pick up so many things from him.
00:57:51The rebel Burns, the radical Burns, the lover Burns, the icon.
00:57:58So you can use an image of Burns to have a go, as I'm doing here,
00:58:02to have a go at bankrupt capitalism, if you like.
00:58:07That particular period in Scottish history I find fascinating
00:58:10because it's the period when Scotland's history is forged.
00:58:13The notion that a country's culture is part history, part invention.
00:58:20It is open, isn't it?
00:58:25It takes a bit of practice.
00:58:27Oh, it's upside down.
00:58:29It's upside down, yes.
00:58:30You didn't tell me that.
00:58:32That's great.
00:58:44This forging of Scottish identity by writers and artists
00:58:48would soon produce a new and enduring portrait of Scotland.
00:58:54By the end of the 18th century,
00:58:56Scotland was the fastest industrialising nation in Europe.
00:59:07Enlightenment faith in reason and progress
00:59:10seemed out of tune with the times.
00:59:13It was replaced by a romantic obsession with imaginative freedom,
00:59:17as artists sought refuge in the natural world.
00:59:24Scottish painters now explored human experience on a broader canvas,
00:59:29defining the Highlands as a rural idyll, an almost utopian society.
00:59:39The outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars in 1799
00:59:43put an end to the typical Rome scent at Grand Tour.
00:59:47So would-be tourists were looking elsewhere to experience ancient culture,
00:59:53and one increasingly popular location was the Scottish Highlands.
01:00:00The poetry of Ossian and Burns
01:00:02had already created a romantic image of the Highlands,
01:00:05and the work of Walter Scott
01:00:07would soon make them Europe's new must-see destination.
01:00:11So, Walter Scott's ears have proven very difficult to find for me.
01:00:19That's what they said of Scott.
01:00:21For all of his imagination and vigour, he had very, very flat ears.
01:00:27He had very, very flat ears.
01:00:29He had very, very flat ears.
01:00:31He had very, very flat ears.
01:00:33He had very, very flat ears.
01:00:35He had very, very flat ears.
01:00:37Scott's first novel, Waverley, came out in 1814
01:00:41and became a bestseller across Europe.
01:00:44It's the story of a young Englishman
01:00:46who travels to the Highlands
01:00:48at a turbulent time in Scotland's history.
01:00:51Scott describes the landscape as sublimely romantic
01:00:55and the Highlanders themselves as brutal but loyal.
01:00:59And I'll do.
01:01:30Waverley changed the way Scots saw their own past
01:01:34and boosted the country's image abroad.
01:01:37And it transformed how the Highlands were perceived.
01:01:44The desolate landscape was given a new spin.
01:01:47It was romantic.
01:01:49And, ironically, very quickly became filled up with tourists
01:01:53in search of emptiness.
01:02:00Almost single-handedly, Walter Scott brought together
01:02:03all the elements that would gel in the global imagination
01:02:07into the Scottish stereotype.
01:02:09And it's an identity that persists to this very day.
01:02:15By the mid-19th century,
01:02:17the Highlands had become an aristocratic adventure playground,
01:02:21a development symbolised by the rebuilding of Balmoral Castle
01:02:26as a holiday home for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
01:02:31Its surrounding wildlife was immortalised
01:02:34by English painter Edwin Landseer.
01:02:37This portrait celebrates a Highland pleasure ground
01:02:41where hunting the noble stag was a popular sport.
01:02:45It's still an image with great international currency.
01:02:50But it's bogus.
01:02:52It's an anachronism.
01:02:54Scotland seen through the eyes of Victorian landed gentry.
01:03:03And it overlooks the dark side of all this romantic emptiness.
01:03:08The fact that this deserted landscape
01:03:11was silent witness to the tragedy of the Clearances.
01:03:15It was an uncomfortable fact
01:03:17that the pleasure-seeking Victorians chose to overlook.
01:03:24MUSIC PLAYS
01:03:34Emigration from Scotland had been going on
01:03:37since the middle of the 18th century.
01:03:41But during the infamous Highland Clearances,
01:03:44tens of thousands of people were driven out
01:03:47to make way for sheep following.
01:03:51In a generation, Scotland lost its clan system
01:03:54and a way of life that had existed for hundreds of years.
01:04:00Whole communities were obliterated,
01:04:03leaving an eerily empty landscape.
01:04:12The Clearances were, and still are, an emotive subject,
01:04:16one that was tackled by several artists,
01:04:19but most seemed defeated by the sheer human scale
01:04:22of what was one of the greatest social transformations
01:04:25in Scottish history.
01:04:30This image of the Clearances was painted by Thomas Fyde,
01:04:34a Scottish artist based in London.
01:04:37It's one of the very few contemporary comments
01:04:40on the tragic period.
01:04:42But it's a sentimentalised image to suit Victorian tastes.
01:04:50In paintings by Glasgow artist Horatio McCulloch,
01:04:55the Scottish people themselves are conspicuous by their absence.
01:05:02McCulloch, like Scott, romanticised the Highland landscape
01:05:06and played a major part
01:05:08in cementing the stereotyped portrait of Scotland.
01:05:20MUSIC PLAYS
01:05:25As the 19th century drew to a close,
01:05:28the harsh reality of human experience during the Clearances
01:05:32was at odds with the romantic myth.
01:05:37The Highlanders that remained were struggling to survive,
01:05:42and many were drawn to Scotland's booming cities.
01:05:50Across Britain, the Industrial Revolution
01:05:52was transforming people's worlds.
01:05:54Almost every aspect of life
01:05:56was affected by the explosion of technology.
01:06:08By the end of the 19th century, Scotland was changing.
01:06:12Glasgow had been transformed
01:06:14into a great industrial city and trading port,
01:06:17and was second only to London
01:06:19as the driving force behind the British Empire.
01:06:29Glasgow now led the world in shipbuilding.
01:06:32It throbbed with the sounds of thriving industry.
01:06:35Here was a city of wealth and self-confidence,
01:06:38all fuel for a burgeoning art scene.
01:06:41MUSIC PLAYS
01:06:44In May 1901, one of Britain's greatest art collections
01:06:48was brought together here at Kelvin Grove Art Gallery.
01:06:56Back in Alan Ramsey's day,
01:06:58the main patrons of the arts were royalty and toffs.
01:07:02But gradually, democracy was filtering into the world of art,
01:07:07and here in Glasgow, wealthy industrialists
01:07:10were now backing the city's cultural explosion.
01:07:17As well as acquiring work by up-and-coming Scottish artists,
01:07:21these forward-thinking newcomers to the art scene
01:07:24acquired a taste for modern European art.
01:07:27Key to satisfying their appetite
01:07:29was Alexander Reid, a Glaswegian art dealer.
01:07:32This portrait of him
01:07:34was painted by his former flatmate in Paris,
01:07:37Vincent van Gogh.
01:07:41MUSIC PLAYS
01:07:43In 1892, Degas's daring painting of a prostitute
01:07:47went up for sale in London.
01:07:49The public greeted this degenerate image with hisses.
01:07:53But Reid bought it and quickly sold it on to a Glasgow businessman.
01:08:00At a time when Whistler and Millet were the big names in London,
01:08:04Reid's gallery was championing the French Impressionists,
01:08:07a Japanese prince and a new group of Scottish painters.
01:08:13The opening night of their first group exhibition
01:08:15was the social event of the year,
01:08:17and the word was these artists were the next big thing.
01:08:21They were dubbed the Glasgow Boys,
01:08:23and for the next 20 years, they revolutionised Scottish painting.
01:08:28MUSIC PLAYS
01:08:35The Boys, as they preferred to be known,
01:08:37took new painting styles from Europe and made them their own.
01:08:43Their figurative work focused on real people,
01:08:46often painted in the open air.
01:08:48They were rebelling against traditional Victorian sentimentality.
01:08:54We can see quite clearly the contrast
01:08:56between this totally unsentimental image...
01:08:59Exactly.
01:09:01..and this slightly more chocolate-boxy theatrical one.
01:09:04It is exactly a chocolate box.
01:09:07Thomas Fade here is painting the kind of picture that they objected to,
01:09:13because he's taking a scene from everyday life, if you like,
01:09:17but sentimentalising it,
01:09:19a rather patronising view of the working classes.
01:09:22I mean, the Boys called this kind of painting glue-pot.
01:09:25Glue-pot? Glue-pot.
01:09:27Because the... I mean, lesser painters than Fade,
01:09:31who worked in this manner, they weren't terribly good painters,
01:09:35and they would hide their inadequacies
01:09:38by giving their pictures a coat of dark brown varnish,
01:09:42which immediately made them look like old master paintings.
01:09:47Yes.
01:09:48They were called glue-pots because, like glue,
01:09:50it had to be melted... Yes.
01:09:52..in a pot on a stove. Yes.
01:09:54And it was a lovely term of abuse that the Boys would use regularly.
01:09:58Yes, I like it.
01:09:59What's lovely about this as well is, again,
01:10:02and you see it over and over again,
01:10:04it's what painting is so much about, it's light.
01:10:07Yes, but here you are very much aware of the brush.
01:10:11And this was a technique the Boys used to create perspective.
01:10:15They would put their figures up against the plane of the canvas like this,
01:10:19and the faces would be quite detailed.
01:10:21Yes.
01:10:22But to create depth,
01:10:23they made the brushstrokes of the supposed distance
01:10:27broader and softer. Right.
01:10:29So these actual...
01:10:31The size of the blocks of colour that they used,
01:10:35do you use larger blocks further away... Further away, yeah.
01:10:38..and smaller ones closer... Yes, absolutely.
01:10:41..as you can see around here?
01:10:45This is one of the earliest pictures.
01:10:49..that showed Guthrie's promise.
01:10:52In 1881, he went to Brigatirk,
01:10:55and a young boy died in the burn.
01:10:59And Guthrie made a sketch of all of the villagers
01:11:03and the young boy's friend standing outside his cottage
01:11:07with the coffin across two chairs.
01:11:10He came back to Glasgow,
01:11:12and he spent the winter painting this picture.
01:11:15And so you've just got this line of light
01:11:19which silhouettes the heads,
01:11:22so your eye is drawn to this kind of crosshair
01:11:27of the constant horizontal
01:11:29with each of the heads making a vertical
01:11:33and propping up through it.
01:11:36And also you see the courage of actually losing...
01:11:42..detail, losing... Yes.
01:11:44..the dog, losing the shapes of the chair,
01:11:47the shapes of the coffin, etc.
01:11:49I think it's wonderful.
01:12:02I can see how Guthrie was influenced
01:12:04by the Impressionist approach to tone and light,
01:12:07which was all about capturing a moment in time.
01:12:15And with the rise of the photographic portrait,
01:12:18painters were now free to express nature
01:12:21rather than simply mirror it.
01:12:26By the turn of the century,
01:12:28artists all over Europe were absorbing revolutionary ideas
01:12:32in science, psychology and philosophy.
01:12:35New knowledge about the mind and how we perceive the world
01:12:39led to radical changes in artistic representation.
01:12:42The basis of modernism, as it would come to be known,
01:12:45was that experience is fragmented.
01:12:48A person is more than the sum of their parts.
01:12:52Paris had overtaken Rome as the place for artists to study,
01:12:56and it was here that an influential group of Edinburgh artists,
01:13:00now known as the Scottish Colourists, all spent time.
01:13:04They were heavily influenced by what they learnt in France
01:13:07and were responsible for bringing their ideas to life.
01:13:10Here at Edinburgh's City Arts Centre,
01:13:12I'm meeting one of their masterpieces,
01:13:15The Blue Hat,
01:13:17by the most experimental of the Scottish Colourists, J.D. Ferguson.
01:13:29Very much a private viewing we've got here.
01:13:32Just me and the dozens of you out there.
01:13:36It's fantastic.
01:13:38This is one of the most important pictures
01:13:41in the development of Scottish art.
01:13:44And I'm going to have a little go at sketching it.
01:13:51I don't quite know how I'm going to...
01:13:55..do this...
01:13:57..because this image is...
01:14:00..I don't know how I'm going to do it.
01:14:03Because this image is...
01:14:06..above all else, painterly.
01:14:10I think I'm going to have to...
01:14:12..put the old specks on here.
01:14:19Ah, they're over there.
01:14:26Ah!
01:14:30It's the wrong specks.
01:14:33Sorry about this.
01:14:39But for Scottish art and Scottish portraiture,
01:14:43there's a new...
01:14:45..vigour here, a new energy.
01:14:49A boldness...
01:14:51..with line and colour.
01:14:53An almost abstract quality.
01:14:58It's almost cubist...
01:15:01..in its execution.
01:15:04I think it's a great shame ladies don't wear hats like this anymore.
01:15:08Or gentlemen, really.
01:15:15This lovely cheekbone.
01:15:20It's caught by the light.
01:15:32HEARTBEAT
01:15:37The modernist movement
01:15:39would lead to dramatic new artistic styles across Europe.
01:15:44Artists were producing work unlike anything seen before.
01:15:53But in Scotland, the artists remained fascinated
01:15:57with painting people as they'd always been.
01:16:01The children living in Glasgow's slums
01:16:03featured in Joan Eartley's work.
01:16:07While many of John Bellany's paintings
01:16:09drew on the East Coast fishing community where he grew up.
01:16:14When Bellany was studying at Edinburgh College of Art,
01:16:17he met John Byrne,
01:16:19another artist who was drawn to painting the human form.
01:16:26Here was someone who was not only a painter,
01:16:29but also go on to write highly influential plays
01:16:32that would formulate the way modern Scotland was beginning to see itself.
01:16:37He was among a group of popular revolutionaries
01:16:40who injected humour, style and rock and roll
01:16:43into the drab world of 70s Scottish culture.
01:16:47You look great.
01:16:49Byrne believes that for artists,
01:16:51the human form has a special significance.
01:16:55You've chosen, time and time again,
01:16:58to return to the face and to the portrait.
01:17:01And what is it about the...
01:17:03Well, I mean, every time, it's about people,
01:17:06and a whole of life, a whole of your...
01:17:08We are people, we take a particular form.
01:17:13And I know it's...
01:17:17I was and I more admire that you do something else
01:17:22because a painting is itself.
01:17:24It doesn't need to depict anything.
01:17:27Give us peace.
01:17:29With people who think and dream and work and do things
01:17:32and engage with other people,
01:17:35a photograph doesn't do it. Yes.
01:17:38A painting does it.
01:17:40It's a shocking thing to see a great painting of a human being.
01:17:43Yes. It's really, really shocking.
01:17:45Because there's much more to it than just the likeness
01:17:48or what you see on the canvas.
01:17:51And how do you feel about, for instance,
01:17:54that, you know, that's usually celebrated,
01:17:57Henry Rayburn or Alan Ramsey?
01:18:02I rate Alan Ramsey very, very highly indeed.
01:18:05I love Ramsey's portraits.
01:18:07And Rayburn is wonderful.
01:18:09They were slightly...
01:18:11You always notice the nostrils are always red in Rayburn's portraits.
01:18:16They absolutely are. He's got a formula.
01:18:19That's such a painter thing to do, is to spot immediately.
01:18:23I'll be looking at that all the time.
01:18:25But Alan Ramsey is just wonderful.
01:18:27But given that you clearly have this enormous gift for drawing,
01:18:31how do you then get it to the level that you have it at?
01:18:36You do it every day, anyway.
01:18:38And...
01:18:41Oh, God.
01:18:42Oh, God. You draw some of this to understand it.
01:18:45When you do a portrait, you try and get the whole person
01:18:49and their mind and their brain and their dreams and all that,
01:18:52as well as just their physical appearance,
01:18:54but you try and embody that.
01:18:56And something magical happens.
01:19:02When John Byrne was a student in the early 60s,
01:19:05he became friends with another young figurative painter
01:19:08who, like Byrne,
01:19:09would be an inspiration to the next generation of Scottish artists.
01:19:14Sandy Moffat was a hugely influential artist and tutor
01:19:17who arrived at Glasgow School of Art when I was in my third year.
01:19:22You came to Glasgow School of Art
01:19:25in the year that our friend Mrs Thatcher came to power,
01:19:29and I just wondered if you had any feelings about her influence on art.
01:19:35I think that was a defining moment for Scottish art.
01:19:38Scottish culture, in a sense.
01:19:41We were being ruled by a party in London
01:19:44that I think none of us had even voted for.
01:19:47Yes.
01:19:48One single Scottish Tory MP.
01:19:50So I think this was something which, you know, did affect artists.
01:19:55Yes.
01:19:56Really quite deeply.
01:19:57I mean, writers, musicians, you know, everyone.
01:20:00So in many ways, Thatcher was actually a beneficial figure
01:20:04for Scottish art and artists.
01:20:06Yes, because she provided this well of anger.
01:20:09Absolutely.
01:20:10We had to react.
01:20:11Yeah.
01:20:12We couldn't just sit around on the fence anymore.
01:20:14No.
01:20:15Something had to be done.
01:20:16Yeah.
01:20:19In the face of Thatcherism,
01:20:21something of a cultural renaissance emerged in Scotland.
01:20:25For a group of Sandy Moffat students,
01:20:27it was an extraordinarily creative time.
01:20:31Stephen Campbell, Peter Howson, Adrian Wisniewski and Ken Currie,
01:20:35amongst others, were taking the Scottish tradition
01:20:38of painting portraits and people to a new level.
01:20:43So Moffat set up New Image Glasgow to showcase their work.
01:20:49I mean, the New Image Glasgow show
01:20:51was put together in a matter of weeks.
01:20:54The break was that the show was taking place
01:20:57at the same time as the Edinburgh Festival,
01:20:59so all the London critics came over.
01:21:01Ah, I see.
01:21:02They were all knocked out.
01:21:03Marianne Eshek of The Guardian said,
01:21:05this is the greatest show, this is completely...
01:21:07You've blown away everything that's happening in London at the moment.
01:21:10Yeah.
01:21:11Is there a moment when you have a first inkling
01:21:13that there's something special going on?
01:21:15Yeah, when I first came across Howson, for example,
01:21:18you could see that it was kind of different.
01:21:21But he was a fantastic student.
01:21:23Yes.
01:21:24I mean, he had huge talent, incredible talent.
01:21:26Yeah.
01:21:27I mean, Currie was painting paintings in his third year
01:21:30and, well, quite frankly, they were mature masterpieces.
01:21:33And what Gamble was doing was, you know,
01:21:35nobody had seen the likes of that, really.
01:21:37And such labour.
01:21:39I mean, the work that these guys put in.
01:21:42None of them ever neglected this idea of, you know,
01:21:46painting as a craft.
01:21:48And the only way you can deal with that
01:21:50is putting in 12 hours a day.
01:21:52You know, whatever it is you do with a pencil or a paintbrush,
01:21:55you've got to go over it again and again, as it were.
01:21:58It's got to be mastered.
01:22:00And then after that, then you can begin to say things, as it were.
01:22:04If I imparted anything at all to, you know,
01:22:07to the young Peter Howson or the young Stephen Gamble
01:22:10or the young Ken Currie,
01:22:12it was along those lines that, in a way, Scottish art,
01:22:16you know, had to raise the bar.
01:22:18You know, they were the ones that could do this.
01:22:20But they had to...
01:22:22You know, they had to set themselves
01:22:24against the very best, you know, from elsewhere.
01:22:27Not just in the present, but they had to look at the past as well.
01:22:31The New Glasgow Boys, as they came to be known,
01:22:34shifted the centre of Britain's art scene away from London.
01:22:39The late Stephen Gamble, with his dreamlike symbolism,
01:22:42took America by storm.
01:22:48Peter Howson took his inspiration from Glasgow,
01:22:51in particular the city's tough underbelly,
01:22:54from where he fashioned a cast of bruised and shattered heroes.
01:22:59I first met Peter at art school, from where he vanished,
01:23:03only to return and astound us with the news that he'd been in the army.
01:23:07We didn't realise it then,
01:23:09but this was a hint of the drama that would follow him throughout his career.
01:23:14I caught up with him at his Glasgow studio.
01:23:17I was hoping to introduce...
01:23:20..fire down here, you know.
01:23:24Possibly a bit of fire there.
01:23:27Or to do with...
01:23:33..Dante's red.
01:23:36The great thing about painting is if you make mistakes with oil,
01:23:40like say you smudge something,
01:23:43then you can't do that with any other medium.
01:23:46You can go over it.
01:23:48The beauty of oil paint is that it lives and breathes.
01:23:51But it's amazing even the difference that that's made, I mean, to that.
01:23:55It just adds a bit of warmth.
01:24:00Put in a touch of...
01:24:02It will catch the light in the fire, you know,
01:24:06that's coming from here, and then...
01:24:10I'm interested to know, from a technical point of view,
01:24:14and with this picture,
01:24:16how much do you know where you're going with this?
01:24:19It can go in any direction that I feel led it to go.
01:24:24At the moment, that...
01:24:26I mean, the other... A few months...
01:24:28This has been on the go for quite a long time.
01:24:31That has suddenly appeared,
01:24:33and I don't even know what that is at the moment.
01:24:35So that wasn't in the original concept?
01:24:37Not in the original concept.
01:24:39And it may not be there in the end?
01:24:41It might not be in the end.
01:24:43It's quite a dangerous place,
01:24:47this place that you paint.
01:24:48No, not for me. I like it in there.
01:24:50I mean, I like...
01:24:52The idea of going in and out of these paintings
01:24:55is what appeals to me, really.
01:24:58This skyline that we see here
01:25:01is so utterly Glaswegian.
01:25:06And I just wonder how much Glasgow is a part of your work.
01:25:13Oh, yeah, it's a massive part of my work, really.
01:25:15You know, it's the only place I could really ever work in is Glasgow.
01:25:19You seem to take it and expand it
01:25:22and turn it into a biblical kind of epic sort of place.
01:25:25That's the only way of doing it.
01:25:27That's the only way of doing it, Peter.
01:25:29That's the kind of whole...
01:25:31You can't just...
01:25:32What I wanted to do with Glasgow
01:25:34is turn it into a mythical place,
01:25:36like a kind of Blakeian place
01:25:38where you would get street lamps and cars
01:25:41and also dragons and monsters.
01:25:43The thing about the Glasgow group,
01:25:45the Glasgow Boys, whatever you want to call us,
01:25:48it wasn't a kind of shallow thing.
01:25:50This was a legitimate movement.
01:25:52Yes.
01:25:53What is Scotland really like?
01:25:55What is it like to live in Glasgow?
01:25:57What's Scotland really like?
01:25:59How can we bring in the whole world into this
01:26:02but still make it Glasgow?
01:26:04Obviously, there was elements that I recognised
01:26:07because I come from Glasgow,
01:26:09and I thought the work was totally universal.
01:26:12And that was the exciting, kind of dazzling thing,
01:26:15was to see aspects of your own culture
01:26:18that you were familiar with
01:26:20exploding into this world of visions
01:26:23and painting
01:26:25that was new.
01:26:27I know. It was amazing.
01:26:29It was a great feeling.
01:26:31It was a great feeling.
01:26:33Well done. That was great.
01:26:36I haven't got paint on, you know.
01:26:38This is... I don't think the BBC will pay my dry-cleaning bill.
01:26:42Or maybe I can sell it.
01:26:46The generation of artists that followed the painterly new Glasgow Boys
01:26:50have been experimenting with new forms of media.
01:26:55They've moved beyond the formal portraiture of Ramsay and Rayburn,
01:26:59but the tradition those great painters established
01:27:02still influences Scottish artists.
01:27:061996 Turner Prize winner Douglas Gordon
01:27:09created a self-portrait that plays on the image of four famous faces.
01:27:16And Turner nominee Christine Borland's work
01:27:18investigates issues of identity.
01:27:25Glasgow-based artist Roddy Buchanan
01:27:27uses video to create portraits of Scottish communities
01:27:30and working-class life.
01:27:33It's perhaps too soon to know if the artists who are important today
01:27:36will be significant to future generations.
01:27:40But Buchanan's work shows that in Scottish contemporary art,
01:27:44portraits and people are still a central theme.
01:27:48MUSIC PLAYS
01:28:01For me, it's been a delight
01:28:03to spend time with some of Scotland's most exciting artists
01:28:07and these remarkable works.
01:28:09It's made me think about my own love of portraiture.
01:28:12It seems to me that the gift of the artist
01:28:15is to capture something of the person
01:28:17that cannot be found in words
01:28:20and can only be told in the picture.
01:28:23And it's in the pictures
01:28:25that Scotland's people and history are with us still.
01:28:31MUSIC CONTINUES
01:28:45MUSIC FADES
Recommended
1:28:42
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