cover image Scottish Painting, 1837 to the Present

Scottish Painting, 1837 to the Present

William R. Hardie. Studio Vista, $0 (223pp) ISBN 978-0-289-80022-5

Scottish painting prior to 1860 looked to London, Rome or Madrid for inspiration. How Scottish artists developed a distinctive national style is the theme of this exceptionally rewarding, gorgeously illustrated study. What common traits unite William McTaggart's radiant impressionistic coastal scenes, Charles Rennie Mackintosh's art nouveauish studies of plant germination, Louise Annand's colorful biomorphic fantasies and John Bellamy's searing portrait The Bereaved One ? According to Hardie ( Scottish Painting: 1837-1939 ), ``Scottishness'' is marked by strong color, vigorous brushstrokes, ``an indefinable balance of delicacy and strength.'' The paintings showcased here in 151 color plates have a spontaneity, freshness and wayward independence of spirit that is not quite like anything in European art. This valuable study is a greatly enlarged update of Hardie's earlier survey, with much new material on abstraction and the strongly figurative ``new image'' painting of the postwar years. (July )