In which I reflect on Scotland and Scottish art

Sir William George Gillies, *Winter* (1949-50)

It requires great love of it deeply to read

The configuration of a land,

Gradually grow conscious of fine shadings,

Of great meanings in slight symbols,

Hear at last the great voice that speaks softly,

See the swell and fall upon the flank

Of a statue carved out in a whole country’s marble,

Be like Spring, like a hand in a window

Moving New and Old things carefully to and fro,

Moving a fraction of flower here,

Placing an inch of air there,

And without breaking anything.

So I have gathered unto myself

All the loose ends of Scotland,

And by naming them and accepting them,

Loving them and identifying myself with them,

Attempt to express the whole.

Hugh McDiarmid, “Scotland”

There’s an exhibition on at the Fine Art Society in Dundas Street. It takes its name from this Hugh McDiarmid poem: “Fine Shadings: 250 Years of Painting in Scotland.” I’ve been to exhibitions there before, most memorably to one featuring Sir David Wilkie, one of my two favorite Scottish portrait painters (the other being, of course, Sir Henry Raeburn). There was a portrait in that exhibition that I really wanted to buy, but, acting on advice from an art-dealer friend that it was overpriced, I refrained. I did eventually buy a portrait there by Sir James McIntosh Patrick, who is known for his landscapes, not his portraits—but I love it. On reflection, it’s probably my favorite thing I own, tied with my piano.

Sir James McIntosh Patrick, *The Striped Scarf* (1932)

I won’t be able to see this exhibition in person, unfortunately. It’s just as well, because I would be very tempted to buy the Gillies landscape I put at the top of this post. It would be a great extravagance, especially given that I am on a full-year, half-pay sabbatical. Neither art nor travel is in my budget. That also is just as well, because I have a lot to get done between now and the start of classes in the fall—St Augustine’s Day, as it happens—in addition to the expense of a move to DC (or the DC area) between now and then.

Both Scotland and art are tastes I acquired well into my adulthood. I really fell in love with Scotland in the fall of 2014, when I was the American Philosophical Association Edinburgh Fellow at the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. Granted, I had wanted the fellowship because my slight previous acquaintance with Edinburgh suggested that it would be an agreeable place to spend a few months. But nothing had prepared me for becoming hopelessly and enduringly smitten with the city, as I did that fall. Its quiet, austere beauty; the ever-changing light; its humane size, everything within a half-hour’s walk of wherever I stay in the New Town; the opportunity, faithfully taken, for choral worship every Sunday and weekday.

Art came next: Scottish art in particular, because it speaks to me of a city that I love, of lochs and landscapes farther afield, of long walks in the Highlands. Here’s a landscape by D. Y. Cameron that I love. I’ve hiked in that landscape, climbed hill like those, seen beauty even in the half-light and gloom.

Ever since then my idea of travel has been to go to Edinburgh and burrow in for as long as possible, walking all over the city, climbing its seven hills, and taking the occasional excursion to various spots in the Highlands for more serious walking. I’m hoping to do a long walking tour of the Isle of Skye next time.

Summer of 2025, perhaps.

Dougie MacLean’s “Caledonia,” Scotland’s “unofficial national anthem,” arranged for Voces 8 and choir by Blake Morgan, the tall tenor, who is American