The Monarch of the Glen is saved
IN NOVEMBER last year I drew attention in this column to the likelihood of one of Scotland’s most stunning picture being placed on the open market.
There was good news from Edinburgh the other day confirming that The Monarch of the Glen painting is not now to be auctioned to the highest bidder but will remain on public display after a successful £4 million fundraising campaign.
Thank you, Oban Times readers, as I know many of you wrote to the Scottish culture secretary asking her to halt the sale and sent donations towards its purchase.
This famous work, painted in 1851 by Sir Edwin Landseer, featuring the image of 12-pointer stag in a misty Highland corrie, has been bought by the National Galleries of Scotland.
Diageo, the drinks company who had loaned the painting to the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh for the past 17 years, announced its intention to dispose of half of the expected £ 8 million asking price to help it remain on public view in Scotland.
A fundraising drive was launched last year. With help from Diageo, the National Lottery, the Art Fund, the Scottish Government, private trusts, foundations and, above all, the public, the painting has been secured.
Sir John Leighton, NGS director-general, said: ‘ We are thrilled that we have been able to secure this iconic work for the national collection.
The enormous support from the public has been incredible with donations coming from all over the world and from the length and breadth of Scotland and the United Kingdom.’
David Cutter, Diageo’s senior Scottish director, said: ‘We are very happy to have partnered with the NGS and to see the positive outcome of that with the Monarch of the Glen passing into permanent public ownership in Scotland for the first time in its history.
‘There are plans for it to go on tour around Scotland with funding from the National Lottery and the Scottish Government.’
I hope the tour will take it to Lochaber’s exclusive Resipole Gallery lying below the deer-filled, misty corries of Sunart, which enjoys an international reputation for its high quality mountain and moorland pictures.
Landseer often stayed at Glenquoich in West Inverness-shire where he used its hills and rocks as a backdrop for this king of paintings. Edward C Ellice, the laird of Glenquoich, wrote in his important ‘Place-Names of Glengarry and Glenquoich’ ( published 1930) of an incident involving Landseer.
Ellice recorded: ‘Sir Edwin Landseer being at Glenquoich [in 1861], I allowed him to take to the hill, the old tracker dog, Rifler. He was a cross between the deer and foxhound and the best tracker I ever knew.’
Landseer wounded a stag early in the day above Derelochy and loosened the dog. Both disappeared and couldn’t be found until much later when some men working on the road below, told Landseer that they had spotted both going into a steep-sided burn which they had not come out of.
On investigation, Landseer found the dog lying asleep beside the dead stag and sketched the scene which he later presented to his host.
The overwhelming response to the fundraising not only underlines the technical brilliance of the picture but also establishes the admiration held by the public for red deer which are now being pushed towards extinction by certain conservation groups to make way for long- dead species in so- called Living Landscape projects.