museums and institutions:
museums and institutions:
museums and institutions:
museums and institutions:
museums and institutions:
Attributed works:
I. Erminia finding the wounded Tancred, by Guercino. 1650-51. 244 by 287 cm. (National Gallery of Scotland, purchased in 1996 by private treaty from the estate of the late Lord Howard of Henderskelfe, with the aid of grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the National Art Collections Fund and corporate and private donations). One of Guercino's later masterpieces, the picture was commissioned by the Papal Legate to Bologna, Cardinal Fabrizio Savelli, in 1650 (or just before) as a companion to an Erminia and the shepherd acquired from the artist in 1649. Savelli was later persuaded to cede the commission to Isabella Clara, Archduchess of Mantua, who paid for it in May 1652. Dispersed with the Gonzaga collection in 1709, it was eventually purchased in London in 1772 for Castle Howard where it remained until 1996.
Attributed works:
II. Study for Erminia, by Guercino. c.1650. Red chalk, 19.4 by 14 cm. (National Gallery of Scotland, purchased in 1997 with the aid of the National Art Collections Fund). The only known preparatory study for Guercino's Erminia finding the wounded Tancred, this previously unpublished drawing was purchased at auction in New York just a few months after the Gallery's acquisition of the painting.
Attributed works:
III. Landscape with travellers on the outskirts of town, by Gaetano or Ubaldo Gandolfi. Pen and brown ink with wash, 20.7 by 29.2 cm. (Purchased in 1997). This drawing is an addition to the slim corpus of Gandolfi landscape drawings, hitherto all considered to be the work of Gaetano. The structure at the centre may possibly be one of the old gates of Bologna.
Attributed works:
V. Two-handled tray, engraved with the arms of the Dukes of Hamilton, by John Scofield. 1796-97. Silver-gilt, 5.4 by 88.9 by 63.5 cm. (National Museums of Scotland, purchased in 1997 with assistance from the Heritage Lottery Fund). John Scofield (master 1776-d.1799) was one of the leading London silversmiths of the late eighteenth century, working in a Neo-classical style. This huge tray clearly demonstrates the extent to which he was influenced by the work of Henri Auguste and other contemporary Parisian goldsmiths. It is one of the first trays specially created for angled display on a sideboard or table and an important precursor to the oval trays with cast vine borders which were made by Benjamin Smith I and Digby Scott between 1802 and 1807.
Attributed works:
VI. Two dessert forks, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Hallmarked Glasgow 1902. Silver, 23 by 1.6 cm. (National Museums of Scotland, purchased in 1997 with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the National Art Collections Fund). These distillations of the art-nouveau style to pure, elongated form enlivened with a simple pierced motif were made by David Hislop as part of a twelve-piece cutlery service for Fra and Jessie Newbery. Newbery, Mackintosh's former teacher and head of Glasgow School of Art, was instrumental in ensuring the realisation of Mackintosh's architectural masterpiece, Glasgow School of Art.
Attributed works:
VII. The Bute box, by George Michael Moser. c.1760. Gold with painted enamels, 4.2 by 8 by 6.2 cm. (National Museums of Scotland, purchased in 1996 with help from the Heritage Memorial Fund and the National Art Collections Fund). This hitherto virtually unknown snuff-box is the most ambitious combination of polychrome enamelling and chasing by George Michael Moser (1706-83), the leading gold chaser and enameller in mid-eighteenth-century London and the Keeper of the Royal Academy. It is decorated with a fascinating political programme of kingly virtue (exemplified by Alexander the Great) and civic order. The presence of a miniature of George, Prince of Wales, inside the lid, coupled with the subject-matter and Bute provenance, strongly suggest that this outstanding work was presented by George III to his tutor and prime minister, John, 3rd Earl of Bute, around the time of his accession to the throne.
Attributed works:
VIII. One of two communion cups from Dunfermline Abbey Church, by George Robertson. Edinburgh, engraved 1628 and 1629. Silver, 17 by 16.9 cm. and 16.8 by 16.9 cm. (National Museums of Scotland, purchased in 1996 with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the National Art Collections Fund). The two cups are from a set of four by the same maker (the other two were purchased by Dunfermline Museum and Huntly House Museum, Edinburgh). With their shallow bowls and mazer-like stems, they belong to one of the earliest groups of cups made for the Reformed Kirk in Scotland. Cups of this type were produced in reasonable numbers to conform with the Act of Parliament of 1617, which instructed all kirks to equip themselves with cups, cloths, lavers and basins for the celebration of Communion and Baptism.
Attributed works:
X. John Hay, by Samuel Cotes. c.1771-72. Water-colour on ivory, set in a gold bracelet clasp frame, 3.8 cm. (Scottish National Portrait Gallery; purchased in 1996 with the aid of a grant from the National Art Collections Fund). This is a characteristic work of the 1770s by this Irish miniaturist, who like his better-known brother, the oil painter Francis Cotes, established himself in London. In 1746 John Hay was appointed Secretary to Prince Charles Edward Stewart's Jacobite army. Later in exile, he was made Master of the Prince's household and a baronet of Scotland. He received a Royal pardon from George III in 1771.
Attributed works:
XI. Scottish soldier, 1918, by Jacob Epstein. Pencil, 31.8 by 22.1 cm. (National Museums of Scotland, purchased in 1996 with the aid of the National Art Collections Fund). Although Epstein served as a private in the Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment) during the First World War, he produced very little work relating to the conflict. This extremely unusual drawing shows a private of the Highland Light Infantry. The facial characteristics suggest it is connected with the personal commission Epstein received from Sir Muirhead Bone, the eminent official war artist, to execute a portrait bust of Sgt David Ferguson Hunter, who was awarded the Victoria Cross on 23rd October 1918 while serving as a corporal in the 1/5 Battalion Highland Light Infantry.
Attributed works:
XII. Lord William Craig, by Archibald Skirving. c.1795-1800. Pastel, 68.8 by 55.9 cm. (Scottish National Portrait Gallery, presented in 1996 by Sir Edward Playfair). This outstanding portrait is a typically frank work by the foremost Scottish pastellist of the late eighteenth century. In 1794 the Scottish lawyer William Craig was raised to the bench and in the following year was appointed a judge of the Court of Justiciary.
Attributed works:
XIII. James Watt, by Francis Leggatt Chantrey. c.1827-32. Marble, 231 by 114.3 cm. (Scottish National Portrait Gallery, placed on long-term loan by the Heriot-Watt University). This is the third of the artist's five versions of one of his most admired designs. It was funded by public subscription as a national monument to the great Scottish engineer, and was placed in Westminster Abbey. After causing structural damage to the Abbey, it was moved to the British Transport Museum, Clapham, in 1961 and installed in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral in 1972. Given in 1996 by St Paul's to Heriot-Watt University, it was cleaned and stored prior to its loan and installation in the main hall of the SNPG.
Attributed works:
XIV. Callum MacDonald, by Victoria Crowe. 1996. 68.5 by 88.9 cm. (Scottish National Portrait Gallery; commissioned 1996). This portrait, which was commissioned by the SNPG, represents one of Scotland's most innovative publishers of poetry. In 1953 he took over the publication of Lines, a newly-founded literary magazine which, renamed Lines Review, played a vital rôle in the post-war literary renaissance. To the right is a caricature of the leading Scottish poet, Hugh MacDiarmid.
Attributed works:
XIX. Le Miroir magique, by René Magritte. c.1929. 73 by 54.5 cm. (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art; Gabrielle Keiller Collection). Le Miroir magique was painted during Magritte's three-year residence in the Parisian suburb of Le Perreux-sur-Marne, where he moved in September 1927 in order to be in closer contact with Surrealist activities in Paris. Magritte's most important contribution to La Révolution Surréaliste in December 1929 was Les Mots et les images, a series of illustrated propositions investigating the complex relationship between words and images and the things they denote. Le Miroir magique is a fine example of the long series of word paintings Magritte had inaugurated soon after he settled in France.
Attributed works:
XV. Wounded officer with two soldiers and a drummer, by Jean Victor Schnetz. 1817. Pen, brown ink and wash over black chalk, heightened with white, 24.5 by 20.8 cm. (National Gallery of Scotland, purchased in 1996). Schnetz entered the Académie de France in Rome in 1816, a year before the arrival there of Gericault, whose style and technique influenced him. Antoine Monfort noted how Gericault frequently praised Schnetz and 'semblait faire un cas extrème de son talent'. This drawing is one of a group of three (see G. BAZIN: Théodore Géricault, Documents et Catalogue Raisonné, Paris [1992], nos. 1642 and 1641).
Attributed works:
XVI. White drake, by Joseph Crawhall. c.1895. Gouache and water-colour on linen, laid onto woodpulp backboard. 40.7 by 57.1 cm. (National Gallery of Scotland; purchased with the aid of grants from the National Art Collections Fund, and the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund, 1996). Born in Northumberland, Crawhall was closely associated with the 'Glasgow Boys', and is therefore generally classified as a Scottish artist. He was particularly fascinated by birds, and this exceptional water-colour is widely regarded as one of his finest animal studies. The technique, brilliant colouring and decorative composition reveal Crawhall's debt to Chinese and Japanese art.
Attributed works:
XVII. Fishing boats, Anvers, by Eugène Boudin. 1874. Board, 29 by 43 cm. (National Trust for Scotland, bequeathed in August 1995 by the late Mrs H. D. Mackinlay).
Attributed works:
XVIII. Sotileza, by Francis Picabia. c.1928. Gouache, 75.7 by 55.7 cm. (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art; Gabrielle Keiller Collection). Sotileza is a relatively early work in Picabia's so-called 'transparency' mode. Later works of this type sometimes involve more layers of ghostly superimposed images which can be difficult to disentangle. Here there are three interpenetrating but distinct layers, each different in style. At the lowest is the doe-eyed Spanish lady in a mantilla executed in a kitsch 'low-art' style; next comes a simplified outline of a toreador in full costume and the bullfight sketched at the right; the top layer is a simplified representation of a Catalan romanesque crowned Madonna.
Attributed works:
XX. Plus jamais, by Yves Tanguy. 1939. 92 by 73 cm. (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Gabrielle Keiller Collection). Plus jamais is an excellent example of Tanguy's highly refined and meticulous style of the 1930s, in which abstract biomorphic forms, as three-dimensional in effect as tiny sculptures, are presented in a deep but vague illusionistic space which evokes simultaneously a beach or desert and the sea bed. It was painted shortly before Tanguy set sail for New York at the beginning of November 1939.
Attributed works:
XXI. Serpent's breath, by Alan Davie. 1966. 122 by 152 cm. (Edinburgh City Art Centre, purchased by Jean F. Watson Bequest Funds with grants from the National Fund for Acquisitions and the National Art Collections Fund, 1996). The 1960s are generally considered to have been one of Davie's strongest periods, when he was producing work of a power and intensity comparable with his leading European and American contemporaries. Several works by Davie have also been acquired by the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.
Western art unattributed:
IV. Andiron surmounted by a figure of Jupiter. Venetian, probably seventeenth century. Bronze, 118.7 cm. High, the figure of Jupiter 55.5 cm. High (National Gallery of Scotland, purchased in 1997 with the aid of grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the National Art Collections Fund). One of a pair of andirons supplied by an unidentified Venetian foundry (although they have been attributed to Niccolò Roccatagliata) to the Soranzo family, whose arms appear on the escutcheon. The pair was acquired in Venice by John, 3rd Earl of Bute in 1769-71. They were adapted by Robert Adam to serve as candelabra, placed on specially designed pedestals in the drawing room at Luton Hoo.
Western art unattributed:
IX. Half-unicorn of James IV, minted in Edinburgh, probably c.1503-04. Gold, 1.9 cm. diam. (National Museums of Scotland, purchased in 1997 with the aid of a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund). This is the only known specimen of its type, which has a reverse design of a letter I (for Iacobus-James) within a large sun.
