Exhibitions Huon Mallalieu

EXHIBITIONS HUON MALLALIEU A TASTE FOR IMPRESSIONISM Royal Scottish Academy to 30th November LEON MORROCCO Royal Scottish Academy to 28th August

The long, weary, saga of Edinburgh’s tram system has been trumped.

At the Scottish National Gallery, construction work finally began in 2018, the year it was supposed to have been completed. The latest prediction is that the building on The Mound will reopen in a year’s time.

As a result, exhibitions have had to find other locations, of which the most convenient is the Royal Scottish Academy immediately next door. The Upper Galleries are housing the National Galleries’ principal summer offering, the Impressionist show, while the Lower celebrate one of the Academy’s own luminaries.

The Impressionists caught the attention of Scottish collectors while the English were still scoffing. In fact, it is probably more accurate to say Glaswegian collectors, and to credit one man in particular for opening their eyes. The dealer Alexander Reid (1854-1928) ‘was without question the most innovative British dealer of this period’. From 1886 to 1889, he worked in Paris and shared an apartment with the Van Gogh brothers. Vincent’s portrait of him shows them to have been remarkably alike.

Reid opened his Glasgow gallery, La Société des Beaux Arts, in 1889 – the name declared the stock – and three years later bought his first Impressionists. He cultivated a taste for them among the city’s new rich, many of whom were shipowners or shipbuilders such as Sir William Burrell.

This was art that appealed to husbands and wives alike, and often the wives took the lead; Fantin-Latour’s flower pieces were favourites. Notable among these couples were Elizabeth and Robert Workman and, a little later, Rosalind and Alexander Maitland, whose magnificent collection came to the National Gallery of Scotland in the 1960s.

All the big names of ‘long Impressionism’ are here, from Millet to Matisse. A Taste for Impressionism has a salutary sting: as the market thrived, fakes flourished. The show includes a few of these, which are unidentified to test visitors’ powers of discernment.

Even though he has not lived in Scotland since 1979, the colourful landscape-painter Leon Morrocco, Edinburgh-born son of Alberto, is one of the RSA’s longest-standing members, having been elected an Associate in 1971 at 29.

To mark his 80th birthday, he is rightly being celebrated as one of the most important Scottish painters of his generation.

Above: Olive Trees, Vincent van Gogh, 1889. Left: Icare, Henri Matisse, 1947. Below left: Vision after the Sermon, Paul Gauguin, 1888. Below and bottom: Green Hill behind Gourdon and SelfPortrait with Lobster, Leon Morrocco