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Artists tell Rachael Cloughton about their favourite works from Scotland’s permanent
collections
B E S T I N S H O W
GARRY FABIAN MILLER ON GUSTAVE LE GRAY’S MEDITERRANEAN SEA: SÈTE (1857) At a time when photographic emulsions were not equally sensitive to all colours of the spectrum, most photographers found it impossible to achieve proper exposure of both landscape and sky in a single picture. Gustave Le Gray created his seascapes by printing two negatives on a single sheet of paper (one exposed for the sea, the other for the sky), sometimes made on separate occasions or at different locations. Le Gray’s marine pictures caused a sensation not only because their simultaneous depiction of sea and heavens represented a technical tour de force, but because the resulting poetic effect was without precedent in photography. Garry Fabian Miller: Voyage, Dovecot Gallery, Edinburgh, until Mon 7 May.
VICTORIA CROWE ON JAMES COWIE’S A PORTRAIT GROUP (1933) I very much like the work of James Cowie, a most individual painter and a great draftsman. Much is written about his analytical and measured approach, but what also comes across in his painting ‘A Portrait Group’ is the mysterious nature of this group of i gures. Psychologically distanced from one another, they are focusing on an unseen event behind the viewer. In the landscape behind, aspects of rural life go on: a red-coated hunter on a white horse rides across the i eld, white smoke or steam (from a hidden train?) l ows across the farmland, a bird swoops down like a dive bomber, top left, while clothes or drapery l oat above the group, breaking the horizon. These moving elements heighten the intense detachment and stillness of the i gures, creating a subtext which is both mysterious and disconcerting. Victoria Crowe: Beyond Likeness, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, Sat 12 May–Sun 18 Nov. 1 Apr–31 May 2018 THE LIST 121