The Scottish Landscape: Romance to Reality
Dovecot Studios, 10 Infirmary Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1LT
Friday 5th February – Saturday 22nd May 2027
Dovecot Studios and The Fleming Collection present another major new exhibition that unpacks public and private images of Scotland from the 16th century to the present day. Through painting, print, photography, sculpture and textile, The Scottish Landscape: Romance to Reality explores the role artists have played in creating, challenging and changing perceptions of the Scottish landscape.
At a time when 70% of tourists say Scottish scenery is a key reason for their visit, this exhibition brings together more than 80 key works and looks beyond the picturesque
to question how contemporary artists are highlighting the impact of capitalism and the climate emergency on the landscape for future generations.
The exhibition features work by Pieter Bruegel, Alexander Nasmyth, J.M.W. Turner and Joan Eardley with contemporary artists Peter Howson, Frances Walker, Thomas Joshua Cooper and Victoria Crowe, among others.
It is the third exhibition in a highly successful partnership between the world-renowned Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh and The Fleming Collection, the finest collection of Scottish art outside public institutions, which saw record breaking visitors to the exhibitions Scottish Women Artist in 2023 and The Scottish Colourists in 2025.
Theo Albano, Director of the Fleming Collection comments: “Few nations have shaped the artisticlanguage of landscape as profoundly as Scotland. From the Enlightenment and Romanticism tocontemporary environmental practice, this new exhibition is an opportunity to question and explore how far artists have created a myth of Scottish beauty or a compelling vision of how ourfuture landscape might evolve.
“The exhibition is organised in six sections: The Birth of a Myth; The Romantic and the Sublime;Whose Land; Changing Tides; Scotland Abroad; and Our Changing Landscape.
“Visitors will beencouraged to bask in the beauty of the Scottish landscape while questioning whether artistshave played, and whether they continue to play, a responsible or a dangerous role in promotingScotland’s untamed beauty.
“Within each broadly chronological section, the curators TheoAlbano and Heather Carroll, Dovecot Exhibitions Manager, juxtapose one or more works fromother periods to highlight recurring themes of environmental change, artistic intervention,political memory and cultural imagination.”
Celia Joicey, Director of Dovecot Studios, comments: “The Scottish Landscape: Romance toReality exhibition is a rich opportunity to look through the eyes of artists at the detail of our physical surroundings and, through the process of looking, to develop our own imaginative and emotional response.
“This collaboration with the Fleming Collection is an urgent call forengagement with art and landscape, comparing artwork across four centuries and in a range ofmedia, to protect them for future generations.”
The Scottish landscape has seen itself play a starring role in the arts for over 400 years.
From Pieter Breughel’s idealised engraving of the Bass Rock in 1560 to the Highlands setting for the latest reality series of Celebrity Traitors, Scotland’s natural beauty is a calling card to artists, tourists and cinemagoers the world over.
The Scottish Landscape: Romance to Reality exhibition will be accompanied by an events program featuring curator-led tours and talks by artists and historians including James Knox, andAlice Strang.
A fully illustrated book accompanying the exhibition will also be available.
