The submitted publications are concerned with the historicisation of late-modern Scottish visual art. The underpinning research draws upon archives and site visits, the development of Scottish art chronologies in extant publications and exhibitions, and builds on research which bridges academic and professional fields, including Oliver 1979, Hartley 1989, Patrizio 1999, and Lowndes 2003. However, the methodology recognises the limits of available knowledge of this period in this national field. Some of the submitted publications are centred on major works and exhibitions excised from earlier work in Gage 1977, and Macmillan 1994. This new research is discussed in a new iteration, Scottish art since 1960, and in eight other publications. The primary objective is the critical recovery of little-known artworks which were formed in Scotland or by Scottish artists and which formed a significant period in Scottish art’s development, with legacies and implications for contemporary Scottish art and artists. This further serves as an analysis of critical practices and discourses in late-modern Scottish art and culture. The central contention is that a Scottish neo-avant-garde, particularly from the 1970s, is missing from the literature of post-war Scottish art. This was due to a lack of advocacy, which continues, and a dispersal of knowledge. Therefore, while the publications share with extant publications a consideration of important themes such as landscape, it reprioritises these through a problematisation of the art object. This approach distinguishes itself from Scotland’s later twentiethcentury art histories, including Macdonald 2000. The secondary concern is the reception of late-modernist Scottish art in relation to Scotland’s independent national development. Particular attention is paid to the discourses within Scottish art which relate to political developments up to the 1979 devolution referendum in relation to the imaginative practices which develop in the 1980s and beyond. The publications explore how such political and cultural contexts contributed to models of self-determination and collective agency during this period, within which artistic and curatorial identities are formed through association, affiliation and belonging.

Contents: 1: Introduction and critical synthesis. 2: Tartan pimps: Gordon Brown, Margaret Thatcher and the new Scotland (Argyll Publishing, 2010). 3: Fickle man: Robert Burns in the 21st century (Sandstone Press, 2009). 4: The red cockatoo: James Kelman and the art of commitment (Sandstone Press, 2011). 5: Demolition proof: an art work at Glasgow Green station (New Glasgow Society, 2013).

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This thesis suggests that a range of major and some minor Scottish nineteenth-century artists’ approaches to figurative art, c.1800-1900, were informed by, and in some cases decisively influenced by, the prevalence of naturalism as fostered by the Trustees’ Academy, Edinburgh. The Trustees’ Academy was selected as a case study for this thesis due to its prominent position in art education as a leading Scottish institution, particularly for the first half of the nineteenth century. Despite scholars noting the far-reaching influence of certain nineteenth-century Scottish artists, such as David Wilkie, discussions of Scottish figurative painting predominantly focus on the personal development of artists’ oeuvres or artists, and grouped generally by style or chronology. Moreover, there is no dedicated published study on the nineteenth-century history of the Trustees’ Academy and its pedagogical methods; similarly, the discussions of Scottish naturalism have formed part of larger contributions related to specific artists and movements. This thesis presents new research from unpublished archive papers related to the Trustees’ Academy in the National Archives of Scotland, and it adopts a contextual and comparative approach by exploring the history of the TA and its pedagogical approaches in relation to wider trends in Scottish art and as relevant in England and abroad. Following discussions established by Duncan Macmillan and John Morrison, it suggests that naturalism developed in Scottish figurative painting as a conceptual motif and as a stylistic tool. The conceptual strand was rooted in poetry, which explored both the ‘Celtic’ and ‘pastoral’, with each being evocative of a romanticised, ‘natural’ way of life. This thesis proposes that naturalism, as a style, was more fully developed in the nineteenth century, in part developed by artists’ pursuit of personal depictions of Scotland’s land and people. Naturalism, as posited by this thesis, was part of Scotland’s wider search, post-Union, for its national identity within its ‘union-nationalist’ framework. By elucidating this new approach in Scottish artists’ depictions of the figure, this study aims to enhance our understanding of Scottish nineteenth-century systems of art education and approaches by artists to the model, and to contribute to research on Scottish national identity in nineteenth-century painting.