This dissertation seeks to explore how national identities were manifest in eighteenth-century Scottish art. Understanding national identity to be a cultural and political phenomena, it considers symbols of national identity and examines in aesthetic and economic terms how the fine arts were both implicated in, and capable of expressing, the significant changes in national identity apparent in Scotland following the ’Forty-Five. The first chapter concerns itself with the issue of art and identity in Scotland between cl750 and 1800, and surveys the relevant literature, before introducing other significant issues pertinent to this research: the Enlightenment and Improvement. Chapter two recognises that previous studies of Highland portraits have examined them from an ‘external’ perspective. It investigates the implications of this for the viewer, and proceeds to analyse them from an ‘internal’ perspective intended to reveal the sitters’ motivations, to conclude that they are aristocratic images of authority, and its loss. The construction of the myth of the Highlands is thus expounded visually. If these symbols offer little evidence for an identity in flux, it is questionable whether individuals’ portraits can express national identity. Yet such a claim, it will be argued in chapter three, can be made through the desire to collect and order portraits by nation, and its relation to the Enlightenment discourse of the role of the individual in forming civil society. In this context, in chapter four, the aesthetic qualities of Allan Ramsay’s 1753-4 portraits will be argued as having been of particular significance to their Scottish sitters, being formed by Ramsay’s participation in Enlightenment Edinburgh society. Evidence for this position will be adduced through his paintings and writings, though the influence of physical setting is also considered. Finally, in chapter five, a study of Edinburgh art markets in comparison with those of English provincial cities addresses the question of whether Scotland was a nation, or province of England. The synthesis of existing literature and an original survey of art-related newspaper advertising reveals the Edinburgh market to be distinctive, though increasingly reliant upon London. The co-existence of local and national culture is found to be an important dialectic in the market, just as the dialectic between Scottish and British culture was found to be so generally in this dissertation. In conclusion, chapter six argues that while Scottish art must be considered as part of the history of British art, the desire amongst Scots to be part of a British nation was a significant force in shaping Scottish visual culture.

This thesis examines the works of three ‘forgotten’ British artists, working from the late nineteenth century and well into the 1920s. In a period which saw momentous changes associated with the onset of modernity, artworks appeared to speak of revivalism, tradition, even nostalgia, rather than the new. Thomas Cooper Gotch, Robert Anning Bell and Frederick Cayley Robinson shared an interest in the spiritual, the unseen and immaterial, which they expressed through representations of women, placing faith, broadly, in ‘the feminine’ as synonymous with humanity’s neglected ‘spirit’ in the modern, materialistic world. The eclectic and contradictory nature of the artworks examined, their complex and ambiguous representations of womanhood and female spirituality were expressive of the condition of modernity in its rich, varied forms. These artworks are analysed in the context of an important historical moment for the feminist movement, since all three artists addressed the explosion in female agency related to contemporary feminism, the ‘gender crisis’ and the Suffragette movement. By placing artworks in this context, I have attempted to bring women, their presence in the public sphere and visual culture, their discovery of a ‘feminist voice’ in this period, into the frame. Women imagined invigorating movements, from the confines of the domestic interior into the airy heights of mountain tops, using languages of righteousness and joyous expectancy, and the artworks examined provide visual analogues and commentaries on these feminist possibilities and new imaginative aspirations. While all three artists mediated the visual ‘types’ of womanhood available within art languages, they created quite distinct images of women. Representations range from Gotch’s female Messiah, where woman’s spiritual power originates in her innocence and purity, Bell’s images of Amazonian strength allied with a closer female relationship with nature, to more occult versions in Cayley Robinson’s paintings, related to theosophy. The artworks participated in a tremendous moment of hope for women in their endeavours toward autonomy and fulfilment. In presenting women’s spiritual role as humanity’s redeemer, these paintings reveal how art may envisage intangible forms of spirituality and emancipatory possibilities.

This thesis will seek to illustrate the social and cultural role which the European Fallow Deer has played in the period 6000 BCE – 1600 CE by investigating cultural depictions of the animal. These cultural depictions take various forms, in material culture, iconography and literary works as well as in its conceptions and classifications. Taking specific examples of practices throughout the eras, each will be examined in regard to the historical, cultural and ecological contexts and the fallow deer itself. Although many depictions, especially from earlier eras would appear scant, and later depictions are very geographically and culturally specific, the perception of the deer by cultures is a worthwhile and meaningful exploration. This present work gives particular attention to the ancient Greeks, the Thracians, the Romans, and the medieval British, who all appeared to invest heavily in the species and in its cultural depictions and movements. Depiction of fallow deer will be discussed from the Neolithic period, through the medieval until the 17th century at around the time the medieval emparkment and sovereignty systems ended. Whilst fallow deer has become a staple for the many deer parks of Europe, and has been introduced across the world, historical research into the human approaches and efforts shown towards the animal by species and classifications has been minimal. As part of an AHRC funded project, this species of deer has been subject to intensive study. It is hoped that this research will complement the project’s work and that a better understanding of the human perception and efforts regarding the animal may be attained.

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The topic of my research is the irrational and the ways it was accommodated through the visual arts of the modern era. In particular, I explore this theme through the relationship between Dionysos and Apollo. Ever since Nietzsche's 'Die Geburt der Tragodie' (1872), the polarity of the two gods has been codified in Western culture. Yet while their discrepancy as opposites has been widely discussed, they are two sides of the same coin, sharing similar traits since Antiquity. Beginning with an introduction on the cultural climate of the nineteenth-century, I argue that Nietzsche's principles had been anticipated by the exponents of German Romanticism and found earlier sources in the Humanism of fifteenth-century Italy, when Plato's writings in praise of 'madness' were rediscovered. While investigating significant aspects of Western cultural heritage, I trace the sources of Nietzsche's ideas, confronting these with examples from the visual arts. To this end, I first re-consider the ancient Dionysos and his transformation in the Middle Ages. I then analyse which aspects of the god were favoured in the Renaissance and which Dionysian narratives were re-produced. Within this framework, I assess the multifaceted character of the god and the meanings he acquired according to different periods, places and requirements. `Bacchus, id est vinum' recites a popular formula, but from Michelangelo to Caravaggio and beyond, this was not the only Dionysian guise to be known in the modern era. While often represented as a merrymaking god of nature, either alone or participating in Bacchanals and his Triumphs, darker aspects could be chosen to represent his world. It is the madness and disorder, as well as the reasons for their revelation (or omission) in specific contexts that I explore, in the belief that they provided the roots for Nietzsche's dualistic formulations and many a modern coniunctio oppositorum.

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The thesis examines the trope of anamorphosis as a formal dimension of art practice and as a critical tool for exploring subjective vision. Anamorphosis is a technique of perspective that produces a distorted image that may only be corrected and made coherent when viewed from a specific angle. In order to re-form an oblique anamorph, it is necessary to view the image from a position that is markedly different from the conventional, frontal viewpoint. This process of eccentric viewing relies on the observer of the work to actively locate the viewing position that will re-form the image and confer meaning. The beholder of anamorphic images becomes aware of herself as a viewing subject and consequently, this act of viewing affirms the construction of vision as reflexive and self-critical. The thesis takes as its point of departure the claim of the influential art critic and theorist, Rosalind E. Krauss that the art practice of the German-American artist Eva Hesse, specifically the work, Contingent, 1969, represented a reinvention for its own time of an anamorphic condition through a mutual eclipse of form and matter. Krauss deploys the device of anamorphosis as a means of addressing the problematic of the relationship between the categories of painting and sculpture, and the debates into which Hesse's work intervened during the late 1960s. The thesis outlines the history of anamorphosis and its relation to geometric perspective from its genesis in the Renaissance to contemporary artists' engagement with anamorphic strategies of disruption. The psychoanalytical model of vision proposed by Jacques Lacan deploys anamorphosis as an exemplary structure in the elaboration of the gaze. The thesis discusses various dimensions of the anamorphic in art practice since 1970, with reference to works by Hannah Wilke, Richard Hamilton, Rachel Whiteread, Christine Borland and Shirazeh Houshiary.

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En trend jag sett i reklam och utformning av produkter (vissa av dessa konsumerar jag såklart själv) är ett tydligt mänskligt tilltal, jag är målgruppen och jag blir glad när någon är snäll mot mig.  Mycket grejer i utförande, tilltal och estetik liknar sånt man skulle kunna hitta om man utifrån tittar på en autonom vänsterrörelse eller DIY-rörelse. Stark, slagordsliknande text, underdogpositionerande, text och bild gjort i nåt som liknar potatistryck eller andra enklare grafiktryck man kan göra själv i hemmet, tvångsmässigt användande av ordet revolution.Det blir någon slags schablonbild av vad dom tycker att en autonom vänsterrörelse är, eller en schablonbild av vad dom tycker att DIY är och hur det ser ut. Dom försöker härma och efterlikna så himla, himla mycket men når inte riktigt dit. Istället för att prata om att reklam är något dåligt, när till och med reklamen själv ofta säger att reklam är något dåligt som man är trött på, vill jag göra på ett annat sätt. Istället för att prata om att jag är arg på hela approprieringsprocessen, att det kanske trubbar något fint och viktigt motstånd eller kamratskap som finns och måste få finnas, är att kanske göra likadant som ”dom” gör. Jag gör mitt bästa med att anamma ”deras” språk, ”deras” stelsnälla låtsade kompistilltal, fräschör, smygnationalism, kontorsvärld, corporate storytelling. Jag kommer försöka så himla, himla mycket men jag kommer inte riktigt nå dit. I mitt arbete frågar jag mig hur jag kan göra något skojigt med något jag tycker är jobbigt? Det jobbiga är alltså när företag snor uttryck och anda från gräsrotsrörelser och aktiviströrelser för att sälja mer prylar. Syftet är alltså att det ska bli något skojigt.