Genius Fan

I’ve been back and forth to Edinburgh over the past week and taking any opportunity I can to get an eyeful. I dived into the Scottish National Portrait Gallery on Queen Street for 10 minutes the other day and went straight to the first floor to look over onto the Processional Frieze. Whenever I visit I do the same: tear up the stairs to walk around the balcony and I always seek out my hero, James Boswell (1740-1975).

Boswell in the Frieze of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery

Bowell’s just one of 155 wonderful portraits that fill all four faces of the balcony wall over the gallery foyer. It’s difficult to tell how high the portraits are, maybe 1-1.5m in height, and though I have only sketched them from the waist up…they’re actually all full length. They’re colourful and painted in great detail. For example James Watt (1736-1819) is shown cradling a prototype steam engine and Admiral Adam Duncan (1731-1804) is holding a telescope. For the sake of the design, figures have to overlap one another, and Boswell loses out to two seafaring men, Duncan and adventurer James Bruce (1730-1794). I’d like to have seen Boswell holding his globally famous biography The Life of Samuel Johnson. But only his head and shoulders are shown. That priority may reflect the way people felt about Boswell back when the frieze was painted.

William Hole and his frieze of Scottish heroes

William Hole (1846-1917) was an English artist working in Scotland at the end of the Nineteenth century. In 1897 he was spotted by John Findlay, owner of The Scotsman, and commissioned to paint a “processional frieze of Scottish worthies”, according to the gallery website. They may be worthies in the Nineteenth and Seventeenth century, but the characters of the Eighteenth…we know this by now, are Heroes.

Hole cleverly designed the frieze, which starts with a portrait of Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), looking to his left (our right), followed by another 154 characters…as though Carlyle is looking back in time. Each person is slightly earlier than the previous and we pass from the Nineteenth century, back in time through the Eighteenth, Seventeenth and further back to the beginning, a man from the Stone Age. The 155 characters fill the four faces of the balcony surrounding the foyer. The Stone Age Scotsman is staring at the back of Thomas Carlyle’s head…though a portrait of Caledonia separates the two.

Visit the Gallery to see the frieze

If you get a chance, pop in and see the frieze. And look for Boswell. He’s there, trying to be seen above all the fame surrounding him. I suppose we should be grateful that he’s included. Boswell had a bad rap in the Nineteenth century and artist William Hole did well to overlook that and include him. Had he not done so, I would be planning a secret, nighttime entrance with a step ladder to paint his portrait myself.

Processional frieze figures, Part 1

• Thomas Telford (1757-1834): Pioneering civil engineer, builder of roads, bridges, harbours and tunnels. Nicknamed the ‘Colossus of Roads’ (lol), the town of Telford named after him
• James Watt (1736-1819): Inventor and mechanical engineer, improved the Newcomen steam engine, making it more efficient and so was significant in driving the Industrial Revolution
• Robert Adam (1728-1792): Architect and interior designer, gave us the ‘Adam Style’ of neoclassicism which influenced design in Europe and America
• James Bruce of Kinnaird (1730-1794): Explorer and travel writer, discovered the source of the Blue Nile in 1770, nicknamed The Abyssinian Traveller
• James Boswell (1740-1795): Lawyer, author three superb works: (1768) An Account of Corsica, The Journal of a Tour to that Island; (1785) Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson; and (1791) The Life of Samuel Johnson – the greatest biography ever written
• Admiral Adam Duncan, 1st Viscount Duncan of Camperdown (1731–1804): Naval commander and victor at Battle of Camperdown (1797), hugely significant in French Revolutionary Wars
• William Robertson (1721–1793): Historian, minister and leader of the Scottish Enlightenment 
• William Cullen (1710-1790): Leader and educator in medical practice and physician of Enlightenment figures
• Adam Smith (1723-1790): Father of modern economics, author of The Wealth of Nations (still influential after 250 years)
• David Hume (1711-1776): Greatest philosopher to have written in the English language, feted by French philosophes and feared by the religious establishment
• Duncan Forbes, 5th of Culloden (1685-1747): Lawyer, senior Scottish legal officer, helped the British government suppress the 1745 Jacobite rising.
• Lord George Murray (1694-1760): Leading Scottish Jacobite general and important strategist for Bonnie Prince Charlie and his 1745 rebellion

NOTE: There are more figures in this Eighteenth century section and I’ll highlight them in a coming post.