What makes Scottish art Scottish? What are the threads that bind it into a single tradition? The lasting influence of Celtic masterpieces recur throughout the centuries, not least in the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Scottish Art Nouveau, but at a deeper level an idea of Scottish art emerges in depictions of its dramatic landscape, its wars and conflicts, hardships, the heroes of Scottish history, the great figures of literature and philosophy, and its connection with France, from medieval times almost to the present.
All these factors form the character of Scottish art which is rich at the same time in distinctive personalities and individual genius, from Henry Raeburn and Allan Ramsay, the two great portraitists of the Scottish enlightenment, to artists working today like pioneering pop artist Eduardo Paolozzi and novelist and illustrator Alasdair Gray.

ISBN 0500 203334