The Scottish Landscape: Romance to Reality

400 years of artists in a changing land

Tracing four centuries of Scottish landscape art, the exhibition, in partnership with the Fleming Collection, features more than 80 works, including paintings, sculpture, woven textiles and photography, from Pieter Bruegel, Alexander Nasmyth, JMW Turner and Joan Eardley with contemporary artists Peter Howson, Frances Walker, Thomas Joshua Cooper, Victoria Crowe and Sekai Machache. 

From romantic visions and enduring myths of Scotland to the realities of ownership, industry and identity, the exhibition explores the role artists have played in creating, challenging and changing perceptions of the Scottish landscape.

Historic and contemporary works are shown side by side, revealing how ideas of Scotland have changed over time and inviting familiar images to be questioned and reconsidered.

Moving representations of the country that shaped myths of Scotland through to the Sublime, contested land ownership, industrialisation, botany and environmental change, the exhibition presents Scottish landscape as something alive and continually evolving. This breadth of perspectives brings a fresh and thought-provoking look at Scotland, offering a different experience from a conventional survey of landscape painting.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a beautiful, richly illustrated book, written by director of the Fleming Collection, Theo Albano.