The National is the national art gallery of Scotland. It is located on The Mound in central Edinburgh, close to Princes Street. The building was designed in a neoclassical style by William Henry Playfair, and first opened to the public in 1859.
Kirkcudbright is a county town, parish and royal burgh from 1455 in Kirkcudbrightshire, within Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, southwest of Castle Douglas and Dalbeattie at the mouth of the River Dee, around four miles from the Irish Sea.
Sir Henry Raeburn was a Scottish portrait painter. He served as Portrait Painter to King George IV in Scotland.
Alexander Nasmyth was a Scottish portrait and landscape painter, a pupil of Allan Ramsay. He also undertook several architectural commissions.
The Royal Scottish Academy building, the home of the Royal Scottish Academy, is an art museum in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is situated at the junction of The Mound and Princes Street in the centre of the city. It was built by William Henry Playfair in 1822-6. Along with the adjacent National Gallery of Scotland, their neo-classical design helped to transform Edinburgh into the cityscape known as "the Athens of the North". Today the structure is a Category A listed building.
Sir Archibald Geikie was a Scottish geologist and writer.
The Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) is the country’s national academy of art. It promotes contemporary Scottish art.
Walter Geikie RSA was a Scottish painter.
William Miller was a Scottish Quaker line engraver and watercolourist from Edinburgh.
Scottish art is the body of visual art made in what is now Scotland, or about Scottish subjects, since prehistoric times. It forms a distinctive tradition within European art, but the political union with England has led its partial subsumation in British art.
John Graham was an 18th-century Scottish painter and teacher of art.
Robert Burns, HRSA, RSW (1869–1941) was a Scottish painter, limner and designer. He was an early exponent of the Art Nouveau style in Scotland and an outstanding decorative artist.
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.
Art in modern Scotland includes all aspects of the visual arts in the country since the beginning of the twentieth century. In the early twentieth century, the art scene was dominated by the work of the members of the Glasgow School known as the Four, led by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, who gained an international reputation for their combination of Celtic revival, Art and Crafts and Art Nouveau. They were followed by the Scottish Colourists and the Edinburgh School. There was a growing interest in forms of Modernism, with William Johnstone helping to develop the concept of a Scottish Renaissance. In the post-war period, major artists, including John Bellany and Alexander Moffat, pursued a strand of "Scottish realism". Moffat's influence can be seen in the work of the "new Glasgow Boys" from the late twentieth century. In the twenty-first century Scotland has continued to produce influential artists such as Douglas Gordon and Susan Philipsz.
Portrait painting in Scotland includes all forms of painted portraiture in Scotland, from its beginnings in the early sixteenth century until the present day. The origins of the tradition of portrait painting in Scotland are in the Renaissance, particularly through contacts with the Netherlands. The first portrait of a named person that survives is that of Archbishop William Elphinstone, probably painted by a Scottish artist using Flemish techniques around 1505. Around the same period Scottish monarchs turned to the recording of royal likenesses in panel portraits, painted in oils on wood. The tradition of royal portrait painting in Scotland was probably disrupted by the minorities and regencies it underwent for much of the sixteenth century. It began to flourish after the Reformation, with paintings of royal figures and nobles by Netherlands artists Hans Eworth, Arnold Bronckorst and Adrian Vanson. A specific type of Scottish picture from this era was the "vendetta portrait", designed to keep alive the memory of an atrocity. The Union of Crowns in 1603 removed a major source of artistic patronage in Scotland as James VI and his court moved to London. The result has been seen as a shift "from crown to castle", as the nobility and local lairds became the major sources of patronage.
Landscape painting in Scotland includes all forms of painting of landscapes in Scotland since its origins in the sixteenth century to the present day. The earliest examples of Scottish landscape painting are in the tradition of Scottish house decoration that arose in the sixteenth century. Often said to be the earliest surviving painted landscape created in Scotland is a depiction by the Flemish artist Alexander Keirincx undertaken for Charles I.
Adam Bruce Thomson OBE, RSA, PRSW or ‘Adam B’ as he was often called at Edinburgh College of Art, was a Scottish painter perhaps best known for his oil and water colour landscape paintings, particularly of the Highlands and Edinburgh. He is regarded as one of the Edinburgh School of artists.
Scottish genre art is the depiction of everyday life in Scotland, or by Scottish artists, emulating the genre art of Netherlands painters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Common themes included markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, and street scenes.
William John Thomson was an American-born painter of silhouettes, portraits and miniatures who was active in Great Britain.
Thomas Alison (1860–1931) was a Scottish painter whose main period of activity was 1880–1914. Principally known for landscape painting, he also produced portraits and other works. He lived in Dalkeith, Midlothian, and also worked in Spain.
