News

A short history of Scottish landscape painting
Nobody thought the Highlands were beautiful until surprisingly recently. Nasmyth, McCulloch, McTaggart, Farquharson and the painters who decided what Scotland looks like. Read more...
Glasgow Boys or Scottish Colourists? How to tell them apart
Two groups, thirty years apart, both from the west of Scotland, constantly confused. A field guide to the difference — and the one painter who belongs to both stories. Read more...
What size art print do I need? A practical guide
The most common reason a print disappoints is that it is too small. How to measure the wall, what each size actually looks like, and how to choose between black, wood and white. Read more...
The face of Robert Burns: one small unfinished canvas
The portrait on every Burns Night programme in the world was painted in 1787, is smaller than a sheet of A3, and was abandoned on purpose. Why Nasmyth's is the only likeness that stuck. Read more...
Edinburgh before the New Town: what the city actually looked like
Princes Street Gardens were a sewage lake. The Mound was a spoil heap. What Nasmyth and Roberts were painting, and why the historic views still hold a wall. Read more...
The Monarch of the Glen: how one stag became Scotland
Refused by Parliament, used to sell marmalade, bought for the nation in 2017. The strange career of the most reproduced image in Scottish art. Read more...
Iona, Looking Towards Mull and Ben More by F. C. B. Cadell
Iona: the island that changed Scottish painting
Three miles long, one village, and a turquoise nobody believes. Why Cadell and Peploe went back to Iona every summer for fifteen years. Read more...
Iona, Looking Towards Mull and Ben More by F. C. B. Cadell
The Scottish Colourists: four painters and one decision
Peploe, Fergusson, Cadell and Hunter went to France and came back refusing to darken their palettes. What they changed, why one of them can't be printed, and where the name... Read more...
A Hind's Daughter by James Guthrie, 1883 — a girl standing in a field of kail holding a knife
The Glasgow Boys: what they were actually rebelling against
They called the Edinburgh establishment's paintings "gluepots". Here is what that meant, who they were, and why the pictures still look modern. Read more...