My recommendation for any art lover arriving in Edinburgh this weekend is to visit the new space given to Scottish art at the National Galleries of Scotland on The Mound. It is a revelation. No longer consigned to a few corners here and there, the pictures are brought together as a world-class collection, transforming the way we view outstanding Scottish artists of the past and present.
You may need to remember one thing before you go: the simple pleasure of enjoying great art may no longer be enough. Painting, it seems, goes hand in hand with privilege, and behind some of our most notable works of art lie stories of social deprivation, exploitation and a marked absence of equality and diversity. Warning notices to this effect may have to be posted, lest we fall into the trap of enjoying art for art’s sake.
In London, the National Gallery is staging an exhibition this autumn that includes the great English painter John Constable’s most celebrated work, The Hay Wain. Ostensibly a gentle symbol of the Suffolk countryside, it will be described as “a contested landscape” due to Constable’s “conservative” views and “privileged” position. The exhibition promises to examine the social problems of the day, and the attitudes of the artist himself, whose own social rank may have influenced the scenes he painted.
The Skating Minister by Sir Henry Raeburn appears to be a scene of quiet contemplation — or under the current trend could it portray an image of kirk domination?
ALAMY
“We want to talk about everything that has not been included in this painting,” says Dr Mary McMahon, the National Gallery’s curator. “The British landscape was a contested space, we have the Corn Laws, we are coming out of the Napoleonic Wars, people are losing their land to enclosure.”
The “social history” approach to art is spreading. Tate Britain in London has already rehung many of its pictures to highlight themes of colonialism and slavery, as well as rural poverty and deprivation. The national trusts in both Scotland and England lose no opportunity of explaining how great art collections were built on the wealth of the sugar plantations. Statues of great patrons must be relabelled or even toppled.
Judging by the make-up of the trustees of the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS), I suspect Scotland may not lag far behind. A quick run through the list of recent appointees shows an expert in carbon sequestration, biodiversity and nature improvement; a playwright whose work has covered issues of race and has been recognised by Amnesty International; a professor of gender employment studies; and, oddly, the former chief financial officer of the Scottish Football Association.
I was not able to detect anyone demonstrating a particular expertise in art or art history, quite an omission for a body representing the country’s national galleries. It suggests that art is being judged today against a set of values that have little to do with the quality of the work itself.
That seems to me entirely wrong. Indeed, if a younger generation is to be educated into believing that a picture can only be properly appreciated if the social conditions of the day are taken into account, then its most important quality — the inspiration great art imparts — is lost.
The full-length portrait of Lady Mary Coke by Allan Ramsay — the elegance of her silken dress, the soulful look in her eyes — are less important than the anti-Jacobite campaign of her father, the Earl of Argyll, and the oppressed peasantry employed by her wealthy landowning husband. The Skating Minister by Sir Henry Raeburn: just a scene of quiet contemplation, or an image of an all-dominant kirk, controlling the lives and morals of its obedient congregations?
The full-length portrait of Lady Mary Coke by Allan Ramsay, portrays elegance, but does the viewer need to know about her wealthy family?
SEPIA TIMES/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY
As for JD Fergusson and that apparently innocent portrait of his wife, Margaret, called Spring in Glasgow; have you any idea what spring in Glasgow was actually like in his day for a working family, sharing a cramped single end, with one toilet among as many as 30 residents? I thought not.
No arts organisation these days can afford to ignore issues such as diversity, racial equality and gender identity. Its board must reflect all of these, whether applying for a grant, or registering as a charity, and, of course, there is a lot of ground to be made up, from the days when trustees were drawn from the very narrowest strands of society.
As chairman, myself, of the Little Sparta Trust, which owns and maintains the miraculous garden of the artist Ian Hamilton Finlay, I am only too aware of the conditions imposed by any grant-making body before funds can be released. There is a difference, however, between requiring a proper social and racial balance within an arts organisation, and insisting that art itself should be judged by the extent to which it reflects or ignores, the social conditions of its time.
The best patrons of the past nurtured artists because they recognised genius and were content to see it expressed without interference within their walls. The minute they started imposing conditions on creativity, requiring a painter, perhaps, to improve on their weak chin, or reflect the grandeur of their possessions, integrity was lost, and with it any real hopes of originality. The best portraits are always those where the artist is projecting the character of his subjects rather than their wealth or social status.
How much more important is it, then, to judge a work by the magic it imparts rather than wondering about the wages the artist paid his staff, or whether the miners were on strike at the time? There is a delightful portrait of a lady in a white dress by the Irish painter Sir John Lavery, on show at the NGS right now. She is walking by the sea, holding on to her hat, her skirts billowing in the breeze. It is full of atmosphere; you can almost feel the spray and smell the sea air. No, I don’t know how much they paid the beach attendant.
