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VISUAL ARTS REVIEW: The National Gallery of Scotland

19 Mar 2009

Gordon Haynes

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Visual Arts

The National Gallery complex on Edinburgh’s Mound is the capital’s top free visitor attraction. Walk through Playfair’s stripped classical, red sandstone portico, bear left and there, occupying an entire wall in a gallery of monster canvases each doing the same, you will come face to face with £50 million worth of Titian. Saved for the nation, by the nation, Diana and her nymphs surprised by Actaeon was painted in about 1556, quite probably at the same time as the Archbishop of Canterbury was being burned at the stake for treason.

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Gordon Haynes

About the Author

An erstwhile applied arts practitioner and teacher, Gordon is an art lover (and buyer) who lives in an Art Deco world. He's a graduate and associate of MCAD and ex-faculty of ECA. One time Chief Landscape Architect at Edinburgh District Council, his designs range from a woodland in Fife to the largest roof garden in Europe and the restoration of Alloa's 'Versailles on the Forth'. Further afield, his portfolio includes a zoo in Nigeria, the green bits of a hotel in Brussels and visualisations for a city extension and reclamation scheme in Beirut. In a move that some called crazy, he relinquished a multi-million pound Millennium Project and fled to the Highlands to run a 1920s lodge as a hotel. He has written for many journals and also written a booklet Glen Moriston: a heritage guide, for the Glenmoriston Heritage Group. He’s been batting at no. 3 for England since about 1957.