Portraiture, as a natural extension of Enlightenment interest in human nature and individual experience, remained the dominant mode in painting until well into the 19th century, and nowhere more triumphantly than in the work of Henry Raeburn (1756-1823). Raeburn’s pursuit of the spontaneous, uncontrived capture of his perceptions and responses on canvas combined with formidable technical assurance to create paintings that again refer resonantly back to the glories of Rembrandt and his contemporaries, while simultaneously pointing ahead towards Impressionism.

A reappraisal and reassertion of the Scottish Enlightenment’s radically far-reaching influence, at home and abroad, has been the axis for much of the recent scholarship challenging the presumed marginal status of Scottish culture. In a visual arts context (as well as others) this 18th century ferment of ideas can also be linked to Scottish artists’ persistent preference for the exploration or illustration of abstract concepts in concrete, identifiable forms. Broadening the terms slightly, the understated Georgian elegance of Edinburgh’s New Town district, both in its individual buildings and its overall layout represents the largest physical realisation of this ideal.

As with a literary tradition that stays loyal to old-fashioned notions like narrative and characterisation, such naturalistic proclivities have tended to court disdain in the modern and – especially – post-modern era. Viewed in their historical context, however, such Caledonian traits can be interpreted not as reductively simplistic, but as a distinctively complex, considered and exacting approach to exploring or synthesising different facets of human experience. As a long-pervasive strain within Scotland’s artistic traditions, this rootedness in the actual has also served as a consistent although highly adaptable aesthetic and philosophical base from which new trends and outside influences have been received.

As the 19th century drew towards a close, the evolution of these traits diverged into two distinct, though linked, schools, broadly associated with the east and west of Lowland Scotland. Behind both lay the still-reverberating impact of the Disruption of 1843, which had brought to a head the long-simmering conflict between the state and individual religious freedom, and triggered the secession from the Church of Scotland by almost half of its National Assembly members. Partly because the new Free Kirk that was thus founded has since earned a reputation for repressive ultra-conservatism, these events are remembered today essentially as a doctrinal dispute, but at the time progressive opinion was substantially behind the schismatics, who were seen as taking a nobly self-sacrificing stand in defence of individual conscience, social responsibility, and spiritual over material advancement.

With the forces of modernisation rapidly altering the social fabric of both manufacturing and agricultural communities, the political resonances of these issues made themselves felt in the work of a group of painters associated with East Lothian. Arthur Melville (1855-1904), W D Mackay (1844-1924) and James Campbell Noble (1846-1913), among others, specialised in rural scenes that combined pre-Raphaelite attention to detail with a rigorous lack of sentimentality, along with French and Dutch influences.

Across the country, hard on their heels came the so-called ‘Glasgow Boys’- a label acquired in the group’s own lifetime - who included James Guthrie (1859-1930), William Kennedy (1859-1918), W Y Macgregor (1855-1923) and E.A. Walton (1860-1922). Although linked to the Lothian school via concurrent developments in France and Holland – as well as those Scottish habits of keeping one’s artistic feet firmly on the ground – the dramatic directness and earthy intimacy of paintings such as Guthrie’s A Hind’s Daughter, or Macgregor’s The Vegetable Stall, derive an extra charge from their appearance during Glasgow’s heyday as a world industrial city. This new mood of social engagement was not to the prevailing tastes of the Royal Scottish Academy, and 1891 saw the establishment of an alternative exhibiting body, the Society of Scottish Artists.