A Wide New Kingdom / The Celtic Revival in Scotland

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A Wide New Kingdom Installation View
Installation view, ‘A Wide New Kingdom / The Celtic Revival in Scotland’, 2014. Image courtesy Talbot Rice Gallery, The University of Edinburgh

Towards the end of the nineteenth century visionary artists, musicians and writers in the Celtic nations were inspired by their native art, myth, folklore and song to create a new and exhilarating international movement, variously known as the Celtic Twilight, the Celtic Renaissance, and the Celtic Revival. Scotland enjoyed its own cultural flowering, with artists, composers, poets, Gaelic scholars and folklore collectors throughout the country rediscovering and recreating Scotland’s Celtic heritage for a new age.

Bringing together for the first time a fascinating selection of material connected with the Scottish Celtic Revival,  'A Wide New Kingdom' offers an opportunity to explore this neglected but intriguing chapter in Scotland’s cultural history through paintings, illustrations, photographs, books, manuscripts and historic film footage. 

Exhibition Guide

Published on the occasion of 'A Wide New Kingdom / The Celtic Revival in Scotland' at Talbot Rice Gallery, The University of Edinburgh. 

Texts are available to view below or download.

A Wide New Kingdom: The Celtic Revival in Scotland
Rìoghachd Ùr Fharsaing: An t-Ath-bheothachadh Ceilteach ann an Albainn

A wide new kingdom in the minds of men – John Duncan, Anima Celtica

Towards the end of the nineteenth century artists, writers, musicians, and scholars began to explore their Celtic inheritance and place it at the centre of a new cultural vision. The international Celtic Revival movement drew people together in a shared artistic and intellectual endeavour. They were inspired by medieval hero tales, by the intricate art of ancient sculptured stones and illuminated manuscripts, and by the living legends, songs, and traditions of the Celtic lands.

A Whole Lost World of Culture | Saoghal Làn Cultair ’s e Caillte

Scottish artists and intellectuals played a major part in this pan-Celtic movement, alongside their Irish, Manx, Welsh, Breton and Cornish counterparts. While scholars tracked down and popularised medieval Gaelic manuscripts and antiquities, publishing them in richly illustrated volumes, folklorists sought out Highland traditions, tales and songs that they hoped might shed light upon an ancient Celtic past. This quest for a restorative Celtic spirit was a response to what they perceived to be a tawdry and materialistic modern world.

Like many others drawn to the Hebrides in search of a supposedly ancient and unspoilt Gaelic culture, the singer Marjory Kennedy-Fraser made repeated collecting expeditions to the Western Isles. She used the latest technology to record traditional Gaelic folksong. Transcribed, translated, and recreated as art song, her romantic Songs of the Hebrides (1909–21) would go on to captivate a worldwide urban audience. Alexander Carmichael collected folklore in the Hebrides for over half a century. In Carmina Gadelica (1900), assisted by his daughter Ella, a pioneering female scholar of Celtic, he reworked traditional blessings and incantations to create a treasury of Celtic spirituality. It remains the single most important book of the Scottish Celtic Revival.

Picture, Song and Story | Dealbh, Òran is Sgeulachd

The intertwining of story and image is key to many works of the Celtic Revival. It is visible in its decorative arts, its richly ornamented and illustrated publications, and the flamboyant Celtic and Highland costumes worn in pageants and tableaux. It is particularly striking in the work of the painter John Duncan, whose personal interest in Gaelic and the Hebrides drew him to subject-matter derived from early Gaelic narrative, including the Skye warrior-princess Aoife, the Children of Lir, and the Fomorians, mythical settlers of Ireland.

The integration of different artistic spheres in the Celtic Revival comes through clearly in responses to the tragic tale of Deirdre, one of the earliest medieval Gaelic tales. Alexander Carmichael’s polished recreation of an oral Gaelic folktale version was published in gilded Celtic Revival bindings, with an exquisite frontispiece by John Duncan. Marjory Kennedy-Fraser’s arrangement of Deirdre’s Farewell to Scotland, partly adapted from a poem in one of the earliest Gaelic manuscripts in Scotland, became one of the most popular of her art songs.

To recover the ideals enshrined in Gaelic Mythology, Heroic tales, Ballads, Folk Tales, Proverbs, Folk Lore. To set these forth anew in picture, song and story – John Duncan

A Wide New Kingdom reflects the work of artists, musicians, writers and scholars who were inspired by their native art, myth, folklore and song to create a new international movement.

 

Paintings by John Duncan (1866–1945)

  1. Aoife (no date) Oil on Canvas

This female warrior appears in a number of medieval Gaelic tales; she was the mother of the Irish hero Cú Chulainn’s son Connla, conceived after a battle while the hero was undergoing his weapons training in Scotland. The story of Connla’s tragic death at the hands of his father was hugely important for Celtic Revivalists in Ireland. In this painting, Duncan emphasises the Scottish dimension of the narrative by placing the figure of Aoife in a distinctively Highland landscape.

City Art Centre: The City of Edinburgh Council Museums and Galleries

  1. The Riders of the Sidhe (1912) Tempera on Canvas

The Aes síde, or fairies, in medieval Gaelic tales, were supernatural beings who lived in fairy mounds. In Duncan’s painting they are presented as allegorical figures bearing symbolic gifts to mankind.

The McManus: Dundee Art Galleries and Museums

  1. The Taking of Excalibur (no date) Oil on Canvas

Drawing from the wider world of Celtic and Arthurian legend, Duncan shows the young King Arthur receiving his sword Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake.

City Art Centre: The City of Edinburgh Council Museums and Galleries

  1. Tristan and Iseult (1912) Tempera on Canvas

In this scene from the tragic story of the Cornish knight Tristan and the Irish princess Iseult, the lovers are shown just about to drink the love potion which will eventually bring about their doom.

City Art Centre: The City of Edinburgh Council Museums and Galleries

  1. Unicorns (1933) Tempera on Canvas

This work is a reminder of Duncan's wider interest in the legends and myths of western cultures. It also reflects his sense of the Celtic Revival in Scotland as part of a wider European movement of cultural revival.

University of Edinburgh Art Collection

  1. Anima Celtica (1920) Oil on artist’s board

This dream-like fantasy is a visual manifesto of Duncan’s Celtic Revival aims; the central figure, an embodiment of the Celtic spirit possibly modelled on Ella Carmichael, sits surrounded by scenes drawn from Gaelic narrative and folklore. Duncan uses the same image to illustrate his poem ‘Anima Celtica’ in The Evergreen

The National Trust for Scotland

  1. The Glaive of Light:

In many Scottish and Irish Gaelic folktales, the magical ‘sword of light’ or claidheamh solais is wielded by the hero against ogres from the otherworld. In the early twentieth century, the name was used for the title of the influential Irish nationalist newspaper published by the Gaelic League.

University of Dundee Collections

  1. The Children of Lir (1924) Tempera on Canvas

Oidheadh Chloinne Lir (The Fate of the Children of Lir) was one of the medieval Gaelic tales known as the ‘three most sorrowful tales of storytelling’. In this story the children of King Lir are magically transformed into swans by their jealous stepmother, and wander around Ireland in this form for nine hundred years.

The McManus: Dundee Art Galleries and Museums

  1. The Messenger of Tethra (1910) Tempera on Canvas

This young and beautiful woman, a messenger from the Formorian King Tethra, appears in the medieval Gaelic tale Echtra Condla (the Adventure of Connla) to entice the hero away from home and family to live in the Otherworld. Duncan was drawing upon the work of the French philologist and Celtic scholar Marie Henri d'Arbois de Jubainville, who saw her as a messenger of death. The blossoming branch and the souls in the form of birds are traditional Otherworld motifs.

Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery Trust

  1. The Formors (or, The Power of Evil Abroad in the World) (no date)

The Formorians appear in the medieval Gaelic Lebor Gabála Érenn (Book of Invasions of Ireland) as monstrous giants, some of the earliest inhabitants of Ireland. Duncan’s source, de Jubainville, saw the Formorians as the gods of death and of night. The figures here are said to be caricatures of Duncan’s fellow members of the Edinburgh Arts Club.

The McManus: Dundee Art Galleries and Museums

 

Books, Periodicals, Music

  1. Alexander Carmichael (ed.), Carmina Gadelica (Edinburgh: T. & A. Constable, 2 vols, 1900).

This rich compilation of prayers, blessings and charms, adapted from original Gaelic texts recorded by Alexander Carmichael (1832–1912) and illustrated with Celtic lettering designed by his wife Mary Frances Macbean (1838–1912), was a seminal text for the Celtic Revival in Scotland and beyond.

Private Lender

  1. John Stuart, The Sculptured Stones of Scotland vol. 2 (Aberdeen: Spalding Club, 1867).

Stuart’s work helped to draw attention to the quality of Celtic work from the eight and ninth centuries. This second volume was a pioneering contribution to the Celtic Revival, with an elaborate illuminated initial based on work from The Book of Durrow. Stuart also provided a source for the initials Mary Carmichael designed for Carmina Gadelica.

Lent by Murdo Macdonald

  1. J. Romilly Allen and Joseph Anderson, Early Christian Monuments of Scotland (Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 1903)

Another key visual analysis of Celtic design, and direct inspiration for George Bain’s Celtic Art: The Methods of Construction (Glasgow: William McLellan & Co, 1951).

Lent by Murdo Macdonald

  1. James Drummond, Sculptured Monuments of Iona and the West Highlands (Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 1881).

This significant work drew attention to the work of the sculptors of the Scottish Highlands in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, work that again became key to the artists of the Scottish Celtic Revival, not least the Iona workshop of Alexander and Euphemia Ritchie in the early years of the twentieth century.

Lent by Murdo Macdonald

  1. The Evergreen: A Northern Seasonal (4 vols, 1895–7).

Patrick Geddes set up his publishing company to create this artistic and intellectual manifesto of the Celtic Revival in Scotland. Its title was a homage to the anthology compiled by the Edinburgh poet Allan Ramsay (1686–1758), whose house formed the nucleus of Geddes’ visionary University Hall. A showcase of art, story, and poetry, accompanied by articles on science and on society, The Evergreen aimed to inspire and to renew the nation.

Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh and Murdo Macdonald

  1. Marjory Kennedy-Fraser (ed.), Songs of the Hebrides (London: Boosey & Co., 3 vols, 1909–21).

Kennedy-Fraser’s art-song collection remains the best-known legacy of the Scottish Celtic Revival. A controversial figure because of her appropriation and recreation of Gaelic originals, she is now being reassessed as a major song-collector, having recorded over 500 songs during her expeditions to the Hebrides.

Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh

  1. John Francis Campbell, Popular Tales of the West Highlands vol. ii (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1860)

This ground-breaking collection of Gaelic folk-tales was a significant source of material for Scottish Celtic Revivalists. The binding lays the foundation for later visual statements of Celtic design.

Lent by Murdo Macdonald

  1. John Francis Campbell (ed. George Henderson), The Celtic Dragon Myth (Edinburgh: J. G. Grant, 1911).

An example of popular scholarship repackaged as art. Campbell’s pioneering folktale synthesis, edited, translated and introduced by Carmichael’s protégé the Rev. George Henderson (1866–1912), was illustrated by the young portrait painter Rachel Ainslie Grant Duff (1891–1937).

Private Lender

The Celtic Library, co-edited by Patrick Geddes and William Sharp, brought together Celtic design and literary subjects in a publishing project that demonstrates the interconnectedness of Celtic Revival artistic and literary practice. John Duncan and Helen Hay contributed cover and end-paper designs.

  1. William Sharp (ed.), The Centenary Edition of Ossian (Edinburgh: Patrick Geddes, 1896)
  2. Elizabeth A. Sharp and J. Matthay, Lyra Celtica: An Anthology of Representative Celtic Poetry (Edinburgh: Patrick Geddes,1896).

Two key anthologies published by the charismatic polymath and éminence grise of the Scottish Celtic Revival, Patrick Geddes (1854–1932), under the auspices of writer and journalist William Sharp (1855–1905). Sharp’s introduction defending the Ossianic epics of James Macpherson (1736–96) was judged unpersuasive; the anthology Lyra Celtica, however, bringing together ancient and contemporary poems from the Celtic lands, proved a major success for Geddes’ Celtic Library.

  1. ‘Fiona MacLeod’, The Sin-Eater and Other Tales (Edinburgh: Patrick Geddes, 1895) The Washer of the Ford (Edinburgh: Patrick Geddes, 1896), From the Hills of Dream (Edinburgh: Patrick Geddes, 1901)  

Saturated with gloomy mysticism, the books composed by William Sharp as his Highland alter ego Fiona MacLeod are very much of their era. Their fin de siècle Hebridean symbolism was, however, avant-garde for the time.

Edith Windgate Rinder, The Shadow of Arvor (Edinburgh: Patrick Geddes, 1897)

A collection of translations and reworkings of Breton legend by William Sharp’s lover and muse, demonstrating the Revivalists’ interest in pan-Celtic topics.

Lent by Murdo Macdonald

  1. Alexander Carmichael (ed.), Deirdire and the Lay of the Children of Uisne (Edinburgh: Norman MacLeod, 1905).

The tragic love story of Deirdre of the Sorrows inspired many Celtic Revival artists. Carmichael adapted for publication a text he had recorded from John MacNeil (c. 1785–1875) in Barra, elaborating and archaicising the language for an urban readership. John Duncan supplied the ornate frontispiece.

Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh, and Murdo Macdonald

  1. Celtia (1901–08).

In order to encourage the Celtic languages and literatures, and to ‘foster mutual sympathy between the various Celtic nationalities’, the Pan-Celtic Association organised yearly Congresses, supported by its journal Celtia.

Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh

  1. An Ròsarnach (1917–30).

The irregularly published An Ròsarnach was one of several Gaelic periodicals funded and edited by Ruaraidh Erskine of Marr (1869–1960), one of most influential Gaelic activists of the early twentieth century, with the aim of encouraging high-quality serious journalism and literature in the language.

Lent by Murdo Macdonald

  1. The Celtic Review (1904–16).

A remarkable achievement in bringing together Scottish Gaelic and international Celtic scholarship, and a beautiful publication in itself, the Celtic Review was edited in Edinburgh by Ella Carmichael Watson (1870–1928), daughter of the folklorist Alexander Carmichael.

Lent by Donald Meek

 

Photographs, Film and Soundtrack

Additional visual materials are featured in the resource room at the far end of the Georgian Gallery, with additional information.

Thanks to Scottish Screen Archive, Drummond Young & Watson, Elizabeth Cumming and Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh.

Listening points for audio are end of the main room with a full track listing and notes available.

Thanks to Dutton Epoch and Stuart Eydmann.

Curators: Abigail Burnyeat, Stuart Eydmann, Murdo Macdonald, Domhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart