The Scottish National Galleries in Edinburgh

There are three Scottish National Galleries in Edinburgh: the Scottish National Gallery, The Scottich National Portrait Gallery and the Scottish Museum of Modern Art. The National Gallery and Portrait Gallery are about 10 minutes walk apart, with the Modern Art museum about 45 minutes walk away.

The Scottish National Gallery is a few hundred yards walk from Waverley Station, on the other side of the incredibly gothic memorial to Sir Walter Scott. It's small (-ish), but it really is quite lovely. The Renaissance rooms were closed for re-hanging when I was there otherwise my view might have been totally different. It has a nice selection of works, lots of Scottish themed works (as you'd expect) but lots of international works as well.

There were paintings of heroes and battles, of history and antiquity, a bit of this and a bit of that from named artists and those you've probably never heard of, but all interesting and worth seeing. I was enchanted by the painting of Oberon and Titania and their realm of fairy folks by Sir Noel Paton, a very Victorian fascination with the faerie world and Shakespeare. The rooms were smallish and comfortable and I was pleased it was so full on a weekday afternoon. Free entry helps, of course.

The best room, in my view. was the late 19th Century room of Impressionists and Post-Impressionists with it's Van Goghs and Sargent and Gaugin. I loved Vincent's twisted, tortured 'Cyprus Trees' and Sargent's beautiful and serene 'Lady Agnew of Lochnaw'. These paintings were worth seeing so why were there no postcards in the shop? So typical of galleries these days.

About 10 minutes walk across the road and over a hill (there are lots of hills in Edinburgh) is the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, a rather lovely gallery, much smaller than the National Portrait Gallery in London but, I think, better, Whenever I think of the London gallery I think of rooms full of old Victorian men with beards wearing black frock coats. That's not a real reflection of the gallery but it's what my head summons up about it. The Scottish gallery is full of colour and light and I loved the different colours on the walls, the strange range of portraits and the attempt to make them relevant to the viewer. I'm really pleased I visited the gallery.

The entrance hall was rather splendid, a painted Victorian gothic hall with statues of the Scottish great and the good, marvellous painted walls with their strange tales of an invented past. On the sides of the balcony is a procession of men and women through the ages leading up to the (present) Victorian day. I loved the hall and the incredible contrast with the very modern cafe through a door on the right. The entrance hall alone could be the subject of a blog post but I must move on to some of the paintings in the gallery rooms.

The first painting that grabbed my attention on entering the galleries proper was a portrait of 'Tom Derry or Durie' by Marcus Geeraerts the Younger dated 1614. What an astonishingly real portrait this is, especially for portraiture in this country at the time. Look at that face. That man lived and could live today - watch out for him on the 159 bus tomorrow because he could be there, only dressed in a jacket and shirt rather than a ruff.

I also loved the full-length portrait of 'Kenneth Sutherland, 3rd Lord Duffs' by Richard Waitt with his wig and mini-kilt and his faithful hound. I couldn't help but crack a smile and wonder what on earth was going on back in those days to wear that get-up.

It was also a pleasure to see Dora Carrington's portrait of Lady Strachey (Lytton Strachey's mother) and the self-portrait by a young Duncan Grant.

All in all, I was very pleased with the Scottish National Galley, it's well curated and the works are well hung - there's something there for everyone to engage with. It's not just showing old paintings, it's trying to tell a story of particularly Scottish history through portraiture and it succeeds very well in doing that. It doesn't overdose on any particular period or theme but calmly moves the viewer forward through history into different coloured rooms with some great portraits. The shop beside the entrance hall has a great guide to the gallery with some lovely reproductions and text - I bought it. I think a lot of galleries could take lessons from this gallery. Well done people.

The third gallery was the Scottish Museum of Modern Art which is split over two buildings about 45 minutes walk outside the city centre, down roads of lovely old stone buildings but with the endless traffic of all modern cities. Having spent a lot more time in the Portrait Gallery than anticipated, I didn't have time to explore the modern art and focused on the Emil Nolde exhibition that I've already blogged about. It's in an old country house in its own grounds so is limited to what it can do by the architecture but I was impressed by the Nolde exhibition and, if that's an example of the kind of exhibitions it puts on, I'd be more than happy to return again. Preferably in sunshine rather than rain.

I'm very pleased to have visited the Scottish National Galleries and would be happy to explore them again, preferably when they're fully open next time. The Scottish Portrait Gallery was my favourite on this visit, for the colour and the story-telling, but I'd still like to see the Renaissance collection in the Scottish National Gallery. Next time...  

Emil Nolde at the Scottish Museum of Modern Art

The two big exhibitions in Edinburgh at the moment are about Rembrandt and Emil Nolde and, with limited time, I chose Nolde. And I'm so pleased that I did. Rembrandt is brown but Nolde is every colour of the rainbow and a few more and that's why the exhibition is titled 'Colour Is Life'. Colour is, indeed, life and we need more of it, as the sandstone front to the gallery clearly shows.

The exhibition presents works from across Nolde's life and I was pleased to see that one of the constants was his paintings of plants and flowers, from the early paintings of his gardens to later paintings of poppies. Such gorgeous colours and compositions. Paintings of parties and nightclubs in Berlin in the '30s, showing the colour and glamour and the decadence. And paintings of his trip to the South Seas and the tropical vegetation and peoples and his return to Europe during the First World War. There's a lot going on in these works.

It was odd to read about his life alongside his paintings and see that he lost thousands of his own works along with those he'd collected by Klee and Kandinsky when his Berlin apartment was bombed in the Second World War. Who knows what we're now missing? It was also disturbing to read of his support for the Nazi Party which was offset by his being banned from being a painter and having more works than anyone else exhibited in the first 'Degenerate Art' exhibition. Since he was banned he found it difficult to buy canvasses and oil paints so he honed his skills with watercolours and paper and produced some astonishing works. I'm new to painting with watercolours and don't understand how he produced such deep colours in the medium. I need to experiment more, obviously.

To illustrate Nolde's anti-semitic support for the Nazis the exhibition includes a painting in a room of religious paintings (rather than political paintings) of Jewish elders gloating over the crucifixion. The museum even has a paragraph on its website warning about this painting and saying it doesn't support the views expressed in the painting. I won't show the painting here but it's pretty obvious what it's about. His saving grace is being banned by the Nazis, I suppose. Instead, here's a painting of Adam & Eve after the fall. I'll stick with the colour and inventiveness of his paintings.

One of the last paintings on display was a small watercolour of a skater which really caught my eye. The strange composition with extreme foreshortening, arms behind his back and clear movement, all off which show athleticism and thrusting his way forward on the ice. That muscular body growing out of the touch of skate to ice and the bulging shadow, such a great composition in such minimal colours.

There was also one late painting of poppies, presumably from his garden, in the exhibition, and plastic poppies for sale in the gallery shop (I didn't buy any). I like his paintings of poppies and have used his paintings as the basis for my own versions of his poppies..

The Museum is about 45 minutes walk from the Scottish National Gallery so you need to want to go there rather than just drop in on your way to somewhere else but this exhibition is worth it. I'd be quite happy to see it again if it transferred to London.