The Celtic Revival was a movement in the late 19th century, early 20th century that embraced
literature music and art, which was looking towards Scotland's ancient past in order to find
inspiration to create contemporary works of art that sort of redefined a Scottish identity. It's a
very romantic movement which argued really against the modernisation of culture at the time.
People are painting murals, they're making jewellery, they're doing book binding, they're doing
tapestries, they're carving and crafting objects. A passionate interest in pattern and colour.
When it comes to working with paintings like this the joy that I get is the detail, is getting close
to that detail, is looking at the technique how have they created something so beautiful
through simple brush work. It's all infused with the spirit of ancient Celtic design,
braiding, knot work, the culture of the ancient past.
In this period of history we have a zeitgeist. We have the Celtic Revival, we have the Glasgow
School of Art under Fra Newbery and we have contemporary trends in Art Nouveau across Europe
coming together. Artists are looking to Scotland's ancient past to nature and they're looking to the
ideology of the arts and crafts movement to create beautiful objects. Patrick Geddes is really the
key figure I think in the Celtic Revival. So he's a sociologist, a botanist, he's a town planner,
he's a, he's a great thinker and he instigated the Edinburgh Social Union where he encouraged the
renovation of buildings across Edinburgh and he also encouraged the creation of murals and public
works of art and the idea was pushing against the relentless momentum of industrialisation.
Civilisation is all about the machines it's all about individual people just becoming part of
a vast workforce. I think for the Celtic Revival art could be a small object, it could be the the
leather, the tooled leather binding of a book that anyone could hold. The main artists in the
Celtic Revival movement would be John Duncan, Phoebe Anna Traquair and also Robert Burns who
created beautiful illustrations for the Evergreen magazine. John Duncan was an artist born in Dundee
and he was a painter, he created beautiful images which were largely inspired by Celtic folklore,
mythology, fairy tales, legends and he incorporated into those paintings Celtic design,
knot work, Pictish stone carvings. We're in the Mansfield Place church at present,
now called the Mansfield Traquair Centre, named in honour of the artist who decorated the walls.
Phoebe Anna Traquair took eight years to paint this some of the walls are over 20 meters high,
quite astonishing. There is apocalyptic imagery on the two highest walls plus scenes from the
Old Testament and scenes from the New Testament which are painted in a style which is more akin
to illustration but also has references to Italian Renaissance mural painting as well. She also used
artist putty to give texture like gesso which she would then apply gold leaf over and in places you
can actually see where her tiny little fingers have worked very energetically the plaster and
in fact the whole decoration has a certain energy about it. This is really an astonishing building
to come into. Eight years takes us through to 1901 those are really extraordinary years in her life
and career, because she begins making beautiful illuminated manuscripts - the works of Tennyson,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Gabriel Rossetti. She is also producing the most wonderful four
embroideries which are in the National Gallery called The Progress of a Soul. Her murals tended
after her life to be in buildings which were closed to the public, no one saw them for more than
50 years. I think probably although those murals disappeared after her death they are probably
her greatest legacy. As a paintings conservator at the National Gallery I'm privileged to have
access to paintings from the 13th century to the current day. With these paintings we're very lucky
they're in fantastic condition that also has to do with the medium that's been used egg tempera is a
very hardy material so apart from really a little bit of surface cleaning we don't really have to
do that much. So what we've done with these paintings is take the opportunity to analyse them. We have
an infrared camera here, infrared reflectography allows you to move through the paint layers to
see what's underneath. Duncan for instance, the infrared shows a very precise under drawing and
when you look at the finished artwork, the finished painting, there's very little deviation from that,
that drawing. It became a case of then filling in that drawing if you like with the paint
and staying very true to his original design. You know he really knew what he wanted to do he's very
specific about it and and that is sort of typical of of the movement, you know, and also typical of
say other techniques such as embroidery and the illuminated manuscripts that Traquair was, was working
with you can't really deviate that much from your design when you're working with such detail.
Here we had an appetite for respecting, admiring, looking after and studying the ancient art that
was part of our family and I think that was quite a radical shift. I mean now we take it for granted
that objects that were created centuries ago that were created by communities that lived
in the same landscape we experience are not only close to us but they are worthy of being treasured.
I think back then that was an emerging idea and you know all of these artists were
stunningly talented but they're all linked by this curiosity about how you could turn an idea of
Scotland's past into a kind of contemporary art that was relevant to society today.