The pictures in this exhibition of Scottish artists were all collected or commissioned by British monarchs, and they reflect their greatly varied tastes. They also provide a history of the monarchs’ changing relationship with Scotland from George III, who only knew the Scots who had come to England, to Queen Victoria, who loved the Scottish Highlands so much that she bought an estate there and rebuilt Balmoral Castle in the Scottish baronial style to be her home. Here her German consort Prince Albert not only strode about in a kilt made of a new tartan he had designed but als0 insisted that all male staff and visitors wear it too.
The earliest items in the exhibition were commissioned by George III or his wife Queen Charlotte. They stem from the time of the Scottish Enlightenment, that Golden Age of Scottish culture that produced David Hume, Adam Smith, Dugald Stewart, James Hutton, and Joseph Black, the men who contributed so much to the creation of the modern world. Among these enlightened ones were the eminent architect Robert Adam, who provided designs for Queen Charlotte, and the internationally famous painter Allan Ramsay, who had studied not only in Edinburgh and London but in France and Italy. Caledonia was already linked to the Continent.
Ramsay deserved to be a painter to the court.
There are many royal portraits