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Five Centuries of Scottish Art

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The book traces five centuries of Scottish art, showing how the nation’s history shaped its painters and printmakers. It presents major works, highlights Scotland’s distinctive artistic identity, a...
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  • 06 October 2026
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Five Centuries of Scottish Art has its roots in Duncan Macmillan's seminal book Scottish Art 1460-1990, which received many accolades including the Saltire Prize as Scottish book of the year. Now fully updated, this ambitious publication celebrates Scotland's singular place in the history of art and examines how the twists and turns of its specific history have influenced the remarkable work produced by the nation's painters and printmakers in particular.

Starting at the Court of James III, the narrative weaves its way through the Reformation, the Enlightenment, Victorian Scotland, the 20th century and the years following the Millennium. Bringing together first-class scholarship and over 350 beautiful reproductions of key works by a wide-range of artists, the book reveals the depth and breadth of Scotland's artistic heritage and its distinctive artistic identity. Looking beyond Scotland, Duncan Macmillan also makes the case for a distinctive Scottish artistic tradition which, while it reflects Scotland's particular political, social and cultural history, both belongs in, and has contributed to, the wider history of European art.

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Price: £35.00
Publisher: Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd
Imprint: Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd
Publication Date: 06 October 2026
Trim Size: 10.25 X 8.25 in
ISBN: 9781848227583
Format: Hardcover
BISACs:

ART / History / General, History of art

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Duncan Macmillan is Professor Emeritus of the History of Scottish Art at the University of Edinburgh, art critic for The Scotsman and author of numerous books including Scotland's Shrine: The Scottish National War Memorial (2014), The Art of Elizabeth Blackadder (2023) and Scotland and the Origins of Modern Art (2023), all published by Lund Humphries. In 2018 he was awarded the Sir Walter Scott Medal of the Royal Society of Edinburgh for his outstanding contribution to the appreciation of Scottish art and its place within the European tradition.

Foreword, Gareth Fisher; Introduction; Part 1: The Later Middle Ages and the Reformation; 1. The Emergence of a Modern Nation - James III, IV and V; 2. The Reformation; 3. A Country without a Court; 4. An Age of Transition; Part 2: The Enlightenment; 5. A New Art - Portraiture comes of Age; 6. The Good Old Bards - Artists, Poets and the Primitive Ideal; 7. The Birth of Scottish Landscape; 8. Portraits of the Enlightenment: Raeburn and his Contemporaries; 9. The Poetry of Common Life: David Wilkie; 10. Genre, History and Religion: Wilkie’s Later Work and his Influence; Part 3: The Victorian Era; 11. Artists of the Mid-Nineteenth Century; 12. The Romantic Landscape; 13. The High Victorians; 14. East and West: The Rural Scene; 15. The Claims of Decorative Art: A Crisis of Conscience; Part 4: The Modern Age; 16. The 1890s - The Opening of the Modern Era; 17. The Colourists; 18. Modern Romantics - James Cowie and the Edinburgh Group; 19. The Scots Renascence - Artists from between the Wars; 20. The Second War and the Post-War Period; 21. The Past Fifty Years - An Old Guard; 22. Reflections on Recent Decades; Further Reading; Index