200 Years, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh review: 'not quite 200 years'

It may not cover the full 200 years of the RSA’s existence, but there is still much to enjoy in this survey of the remarkable art the organisation has presented to the world, writes Duncan Macmillan

200 Years, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh ★★★★

The Royal Scottish Academy is marking its bicentenary with, amongst many other things, a show called simply 200 Years. If we look back from 2026 to the founding of the Scottish Academy 200 years ago (it became the RSA in 1838 after being granted a royal charter) we could calculate that, even on a conservative estimate of an average of 300 works in each annual exhibition, the organisation has shown some 60,000 works in its annual exhibitions to date. The real figure, however, is probably more, maybe nearer to 100,000, as later in the 19th century the works on show each year sometimes exceeded 1,000.

It would be a very big task to choose an exhibition that could meaningfully represent that number, especially as the Academy only has the lower galleries of the building that bears its name to house this show. Appropriately, however, those galleries do actually follow pretty closely the footprint of the exhibition rooms in the building, then called the Royal Institution, that housed the Academy’s annual exhibitions between 1836 and 1855. In the latter year, it moved into the eastern half of the building that is now the National Gallery, while the fledgling National Gallery occupied the western half. Around 1911 the Academy moved back into the former Royal Institution building. Previously accommodating several institutions, but now housing the RSA alone, its name was changed accordingly. It was also radically altered to accommodate its then sole tenant. We are reminded here though, and it is timely, that in exchange for that deal the Academy which had included the creation of a national collection among its founding objectives (the National Gallery in London had opened just two years earlier) gave to the National Gallery and so to the nation nearly 100 paintings and sculptures and approximately 2,000 drawings.

Avoiding the challenge of the vast field they might have had to choose from, the Academy has decided instead to put on an exhibition that is much more limited in scope. Instead of an ambitious, historical loan exhibition, it simply draws on the artists’ estates the Academy has inherited, the work of living members and a number of loans from or through the Fine Art Society. Everything is for sale, but that is perhaps appropriate as selling its members work has always been the Academy’s primary objective. Nevertheless, the earliest dated work here seems to be a painting by George Harvey from 1856. (Elected in 1864 Harvey later became the fourth president of the Academy.)

Not quite 200 years then, and indeed just half a dozen more paintings are from the 19th century. We are then quickly into the 20th century and thereafter into the work of our contemporaries. That being so, it is really best to overlook the title and assess this show for what it is rather than what it might have been. After all, throughout the year the Academy has promoted a nationwide celebration of its bicentenary. It may therefore be pressure that has meant that it has had to trim its ambitions for this show, originally intended to be a survey of the remarkable art that the Academy has presented to the world over the last two centuries.

Harvey’s picture is a striking image of a sailor perched in the crow’s nest of a schooner, although its title, Auld Lang Syne, doesn’t seem to make much sense. Amongst the other works from the 19th century, Peter Graham’s The Chasm is a dramatically vertical painting of cliffs. Joseph Donovan Adam’s Evening Strathspey is actually a painting of highland cows, a cliché though not such a bad painting. Particularly striking in this early group, however, is a big November landscape by EA Walton with the foreground in shadow as the sun sets behind the woods.

Moving into the 20th century, among a great deal else, a watercolour by James Paterson of grey, shadowy warships glimpsed on Gareloch through a screen of twisted trees is dated c.1910, but seems to hint at the sinister mood of wartime and so might belong a few years later. A beautiful portrait drawing of a boy by David Foggie is actually dated 1914. It is, too, a reminder of what a strong discipline drawing then was. Josephine Haswell Miller was the first woman to be elected ARSA and is represented by a luminous watercolour of Collioure. A beautiful and very characteristic drawing by master draughtsman James Cowie is dated 1940, and a mysterious picture by Robert Henderson Blyth, titled Life with Death, seems to suggest the arbitrary intrusion of war into a peaceful, domestic scene.

Penelope Beaton, a notable teacher remembered with fondness by her students is represented by a lovely, freely painted landscape and a still life, Anne Redpath by a small watercolour of an altar, one of her favourite subjects, and by a still life of flowers, and Joan Eardley by a small Catterline Landscape and an unusual portrait. James McIntosh Patrick, a celebrated painter of landscapes, is also represented unexpectedly by a portrait of an art student. Mary Armour, taught at school by Penelope Beaton, went on to a distinguished career. Her watercolour here of Corslie Hill is really beautiful. It is good to see Bet Low remembered both by one of her striking social realist drawings from the late 1940s and by a beautiful, abstract landscape from later in her career.

William Gillies, of course, left his estate to the RSA and so was a major benefactor and is represented appropriately by five characteristic watercolours. Gillies’s contemporary James Cumming painted some really striking works early in his career and so a date of 1969 for a sombre, semi-abstract pair of figures here does seem problematic. Like Gillies, Elizabeth Blackadder and her husband John Houston left their artistic estates to the Academy. A big, rather abstract still life by her is austerely beautiful, while a spectacular sunset over the sea is a typically bold painting by Houston.

Among artists we have lost more recently, David Evans’s The New Light is a big and typically moody painting of a boy standing half in shadow beneath a wall light. Philip Reeves, a key figure in the history of Scottish printmaking, is rather under-represented here by a very small, but nevertheless elegant collage, while there are three prints by the ever protean, late John Byrne.

Our contemporaries are well represented. Among them in a neat piece of symmetry, the twisted branches of Keith McIntyre’s Resilience Tree echoes the twisted trees in James Paterson’s painting from a century before. In one of his beautiful paintings of Edinburgh, Henry Kondracki paints the skyline of the Old Town beneath the moon. Victoria Crowe, too, paints a night, or at least a dusk scene. After painting Orkney with great success, she has evidently ventured yet further north to the Lofoten Islands, a visit recorded in a big, very beautiful view of mountains caught in a mysterious blue Arctic half light. Graham Fagan is quietly topical with three prints of what are evidently slave ships bound for the West Indies.

There is not a lot of sculpture, but by cutting and polishing, Jake Harvey reveals the inner beauty of some of of our most ancient rocks. Mary Bourne makes a well by cutting a hole in a piece of equally ancient rock and then makes a cup from the stone she has removed. Michale Snowden’s Untitled is a really beautiful but mysterious bronze plaque of a naked man leaning against a tree deep in thought, while a cow he should perhaps be guarding looks back at him expectantly. Finally, Edward Summerton has made a pair of elongated shoes for a clown, but for a clown who wears elegant and plainly very expensive brogues.

200 Years runs until 15 November

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