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Nigel Leask on Viccy Coltman Viccy Coltman. Art and Identity in Scotland: A Cultural History from the Jacobite Rising of 1745 to Walter Scott. Cambridge Social and Cultural Histories Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Illustrations. xviii + 302 pp. $99.99, cloth, ISBN 978-1-108-41768-6. Reviewed by Nigel Leask (University of Glasgow) Published on H-Albion (July, 2020) Commissioned by Jefrey R. Wigelsworth (Red Deer College) Viccy Coltman’s book tackles the issue of Scot‐ tributes of identity. Approaching the question tish national identity (prickly as a thistle) in visual through visual culture, she claims, will “invest ‘the and material culture, from Culloden to the death of old epistemology of identity’ with a renewed ana‐ Jacobitism’s most celebrated elegist, Sir Walter lytic purchase that embraces different regimes of Scott. Coltman, who is a professor of art history at representation and alternative taxonomies” (p. the University of Edinburgh with a particular inter‐ 12). Most of the book is dedicated to the analysis of est in portraiture, sets out to question an essential‐ images and objects (lavishly illustrated, it contains ist notion of a “Scottish School of painting” as a thirty-three colored plates): but Coltman has also unified national tradition based on vaguely de‐ delved deep into the literary archives to draw on fined ethnic characteristics (p. 16). Underlining the contemporary correspondence and travel ac‐ role of Scots in establishing British identity in the counts that provide a crucial commentary on the century after union (a by-now familiar argument), “silent witnesses” of images and objects. Coltman draws on a wide range of theoretical per‐ Part 1 is divided into three chapters addressing spectives, while expressing reservations with some the artistic construction of Scottish identity in Eu‐ postmodernist theories of identity. For instance, rope, in London, and in colonial India. The first Linda Colley’s influential Britons: Forging the Na‐ chapter, on portraits of aristocratic and gentle‐ tion (1992) was a model for this kind of Scoto- manly Scots on the Grand Tour, opens with a dis‐ British historiography, but Coltman is critical of cussion of Pompeo Batoni’s marvelous 1766 por‐ Colley’s overdependence on binary oppositions: trait of the swaggering, be-kilted Col William Gor‐ “self-definition depends on antithesis, identity on don, featured on the cover of Coltman’s book (also counter-identity” (in other words, Protestant Eng‐ a poster boy for the National Museum of Scot‐ lish, Scots, and Welsh “Britons” defining them‐ land’s recent Scotland Wild and Majestic show). As selves against Catholic French or Spanish “others”) well as the Batonis, there is some purposeful analy‐ (p. 6). Citing Dror Wahrman’s thesis in The Making sis of bodily pose and sartorial style in portraits of of the Modern Self (2004), Coltman offers a messier touring Scots like James Boswell, Dr. John Moore but more historically nuanced picture, accepting and the Duke of Hamilton, Lord Hope, and the Earl Wahrman’s notions of gender and class but adding of Breadalbane. Mrs. Piozzi (Hester Lynch Piozzi) diverse national, occupational, and political at‐ described Scottish Grand Tourists as a “national H-Net Reviews phalanx” always on the lookout for their fellow Scotland, marked by the rising popularity of the countrymen, but Coltman prefers to emphasize Highland tour in these decades (p. 103). the tour’s supplemental role in initiating young Chapter 3 travels east to colonial Bengal, fo‐ elite Scots into British, and indeed European, iden‐ cused on Johann Zoffany’s portrait of “Claud and tities (p. 23). Boyd Alexander with an Indian Servant,” painted Chapter 2 turns to Scots in London, opening in the early 1780s. Mining Alexander’s correspon‐ with analysis of Richard Newton’s racialist satires dence, the chapter traces Claud’s rise from a hum‐ “A Flight of Scotchmen” and “Progress of a Scotch‐ ble clerk in the East India Company’s accountancy man,” a reminder that the “national phalanx” was office to paymaster general. Claud’s multiple iden‐ also a protective gesture in the Scotophobic me‐ tities in India overlap as a Scot, a Briton, a Euro‐ tropolis around the time of Bute’s administration. pean, etc.: but the zenith of his fortune saw his re‐ Her fine-grained account of the Perthshire archi‐ turn to Scotland in 1786 as a wealthy “Nabob,” and tect George Steuart’s London career reveals the his purchase of the Ayrshire estate of Ballochmyle limits of national partisanship, as Steuart’s com‐ from Sir John Whitefoord, an impoverished scion missions for his patron the Duke of Atholl aroused of Scotland’s traditional gentry. In fact, Claud had the rivalry of the Scottish brothers Robert and purchased the estate in 1783, and Zoffany’s portrait James Adams, “the Adelphi.” Professional rivalry depicts him with his brother Boyd at the moment here outweighed the sort of Caledonian partisan‐ they received the letter from home confirming the ship that threatened Newton. In perhaps the Ayrshire purchase, framing the transformation of strongest chapter in her book, Coltman shows the colonial loot into social capital back home. The important role played by London in the mid-eigh‐ chapter ends with a discussion of Claud’s establish‐ teenth century’s “discovery of Scotland,” not only ment of a cotton-spinning factory at Catrine in by English or Welsh traveler/artists like Thomas partnership with David Dale, an instance of a per‐ Pennant but also by native Scots like George and sonal fortune amassed in the colonies being in‐ his brother Charles Steuart, who was commis‐ vested in local “improvement” (122-23). Coltman sioned in the 1760s to paint an astonishing series misses an interesting Robert Burns connection of waterfall views in the dining room at Blair Cas‐ here, though, relating to the Ayrshire Bard’s song tle (p. 67). The chapter ends with a meticulously re‐ “The Bonny Lass o’ Ballochmyle,” addressed to searched account of the rebranding of the duke’s Claud’s daughter Wilhelmina. Burns’s amorous ad‐ picturesque Dunkeld Hermitage as “Ossian’s Hall” vances (and epistolary approaches) spurned by in the early 1780s, making it the leading attraction the Alexanders, he commented waspishly on the on the Highland “petit tour.” Steuart’s painting of family’s arriviste status: “ye canna mak a silk- the blind Gaelic bard parted at the tug of a pulley, purse o’ a sow’s lug” (you can’t make a silk purse opening upon a vertiginous mirror chamber of col‐ out of a sow’s ear). ored glass, reflecting the spectacular falls of the The second part of the book turns to some Black Lynn. Excavating Steuart’s correspondence more familiar aspects of Scottish art and identity with the 4th Duke, Coltman also describes the cre‐ in the period. Chapter 4 addresses Jacobite materi‐ ation of the custom-made, lyre-backed “Ossianic” al culture, necessarily drawing on the exhaustive furniture manufactured in London and shipped to scholarship of Murray Pittock and Neil Guthrie. the Highlands. The familiar story of Anglo-Scottish Coltman focuses on a fascinating medley of Jaco‐ jealousy needs to be balanced by a “reciprocal bite objects, including textile relics, engraved glass‐ traffic of cultural exchange” between London and es, punch bowls, and jewelry, mainly held in the collection of the National Museum of Scotland. (In 2 H-Net Reviews places the writing here succumbs to jargon: “an ar‐ Scott’s fiction than to any transhistorical qualities ticulated bodyscape embodying the objectscape of Scottish creativity (p. 203). Throughout the book that is Jacobite material culture” [p. 145].) She Coltman is at her critical best in discussing portrai‐ refers to the Manchester provenance of a number ture, and she devotes the latter half of the chapter of Jacobite mementos, with the suggestion that this to physiognomy rather than topography, partly be‐ would warrant further investigation. (The city was cause Turner’s illustrations of Scott’s writings have in fact a hub of English Jacobitism, where the been recently studied by Gillen D’Arcy Wood and “Manchester Regiment” was raised on November Sebastian Mitchell. She convincingly demon‐ 29, 1745, under the command of Col Francis Town‐ strates (contrary to Wood) Scott’s keen sensibility ley. As English rebels, the Mancunians suffered par‐ to visual culture, manifest in the pains he took to ticularly severe punishment after the collapse of orchestrate portraits of himself in the guise of a the Rising, nearly all the officers and men being ex‐ “Borders Bard” at home in his “pic-nic dwelling” of ecuted, and the three hundred or so men of the reg‐ Abbotsford. She analyzes Sir William Allen’s por‐ iment transported to the colonies.) Chapter 5 offers trait of Scott in his study, surrounded by his an illuminating account of “the King’s Jaunt,” “gabions” or antiquarian knick-knacks, pouring George IV’s state visit to Edinburgh in 1822 staged- over Mary Queen of Scots’ proclamation of her managed by Sir Walter Scott. Drawing on rich vis‐ marriage to Darnley (p. 250). ual documentation by Alexander Carse, J. M. W. The book’s brief conclusion addresses the gen‐ Turner, David Wilkie, and J. W. Eubank, Coltman esis of the Scott Monument in Edinburgh, a Gothic seeks to position the royal visit in what Peter de extravaganza commemorating the “the wizard of Bolla calls “the domain of the scopic” (p. 179). the north,” consecrating his native land as “Scott- There is also some great analysis of caricature by land,” the perfect emblem of Scottish “art and Charles Williams and George Cruikshank, who par‐ identity” (pp. 258-59). But this romantic image is, as odies Henry Raeburn’s striking contemporary por‐ the final pages underline, a treacherous indicator traits of Highland chiefs, and the obese Hanoveri‐ of the nation’s cultural identity, even if it did but‐ an king’s unfortunate experiment with the kilt, for‐ tress the myth of “a Scottish school of art.” Colt‐ merly a symbol of Jacobitism.
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