page_title: Scottish art
section_title: Enlightenment period
hierarchical_section_title: Scottish art / History / Eighteenth century / Enlightenment period
context_page_description: 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.
  The earliest examples of art from what is now Scotland are highly decorated carved stone balls from the Neolithic period. From the Bronze Age there are examples of carvings, including the first representations of objects, and cup and ring marks. More extensive Scottish examples of patterned objects and gold work are found the Iron Age. Elaborately carved Pictish stones and impressive metalwork emerged in Scotland the early Middle Ages. The development of a common style of Insular art across Great Britain and Ireland influenced elaborate jewellery and illuminated manuscripts such as the Book of Kells. Only isolated examples survive of native artwork from the late Middle Ages and of works created or strongly influenced by artists of Flemish origin. The influence of the Renaissance can be seen in stone carving and painting from the fifteenth century.
context_section_description: Many painters of the early part of the eighteenth century remained largely artisans, such as the members of the Norie family, James (1684–1757) and his sons, who painted the houses of the peerage with Scottish landscapes that were pastiches of Italian and Dutch landscapes. The painters Allan Ramsay (1713–1784), Gavin Hamilton (1723–1798), the brothers John (1744–1768/9) and Alexander Runciman (1736–1785), Jacob More (1740–1793) and David Allan (1744–1796), mostly began in the tradition of the Nories, but were artists of European significance, spending considerable portions of their careers outside Scotland, and were to varying degree influenced by forms of Neoclassicism. The influence of Italy was particularly significant, with over fifty Scottish artists and architects known to have travelled there in the period 1730–1780.
  Ramsay studied in Sweden, London and Italy before basing himself in Edinburgh, where he established himself as a leading portrait painter to the Scottish nobility. After a second visit to Italy he moved to London in 1757 and from 1761 he was Principal Painter in Ordinary to George III. He now focused on royal portraits, often presented by the king to ambassadors and colonial governors. His work has been seen as anticipating the grand manner of Joshua Reynolds, but many of his early portraits, particularly of women are less formal and more intimate studies. Gavin Hamilton studied at the University of Glasgow and in Rome, and after a brief stay in London, primarily painting portraits of the British aristocracy, he returned to Rome for the rest of his life. He emerged as a pioneering neo-classical painter of historical and mythical themes, including his depictions of scenes from Homer's Iliad, as well as acting as an early archaeologist and antiquarian.
  John and Alexander Runciman both gained reputations as painters of mythological and historical themes. They travelled to Italy, where John died in 1768/9. Alexander returned home to gain a reputation as a landscape and portrait painter. His most widely known work, distributed in etchings, was mythological. More, having trained with the Nories, like his friend Ramsey, moved to Italy from 1773 and is chiefly known as a landscape painter. Allan travelled to Rome from 1764 to 1777, where he studied with Hamilton. He produced historical and mythical scenes before moving to England, where he pursued portraiture. He then returned to Edinburgh in 1780, became director and master of the Academy of Arts in 1786. Here he produced his most famous work, with illustrations of themes from Scottish life, earning him the title of "the Scottish Hogarth".
caption: The intimate portrait of his second wife Margaret Lindsay by Allan Ramsay (1758)
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