Edinburgh, Romanticism and the National Gallery of Scotland

An explanation for the formation of the National Gallery of Scotland is proposed which affirms the priority of local conditions of cultural production. In the absence of a fecund tradition of art patronage in Scotland, the modernization of Edinburgh's art field in the early nineteenth century depended on the activities of civic elites. The Scottish model of art museum development resembled the later American model more than it did the earlier French one. What was particular to Edinburgh, though, was a strong form of Romanticism in the early nineteenth century. The romantic landscape trope indexed the security of bourgeois power by the 1830s. But its own role was to act as a catalyst in the formation of collection-oriented and professional art institutions, and of a gallery going public in the capital.