There is a real cornucopia of exhibitions on show at Edinburgh's City Art Centre, but if you have only a little time visit the floors given over to the Colourists and a splendid exhibition tracing the history of Dunedin and Otago landscape art.
On show are works which trace the development of Dunedin and New Zealand, taking us from the romanticism of artists such as George O'Brien to the modernity of Robin White.
Developing a topographical tradition that had begun with the surveyors, O'Brien's sweeping views down towards Dunedin present a seeming paradise, a sharp contrast to Robin White's Harbour Cone, almost Pop Art in its simplicity, while Colin McCahon's landscapes are elemental and mammal-like, arching the Otago peninsula like a cat.
To our eyes, these works describe a land very different from our own, but when the settlers arrived they brought Scottish habits with them and built a Scottish town with Edinburgh street names, taking the old Celtic name Dunedin. Traced in early photographs, we see the development of a city and country at once familiar and foreign.
On a high mountain lake a formal curling match takes place - in the city, Princes Street is a calm idyll of Victorian architecture, but around the buildings in views to the hills and the water the bush thrusts through, eager to reclaim its land.
It is fascinating to view this show, every work providing more knowledge, more awareness of the culture and history of this superficially similar but in reality incredibly alien land.
Unlike the settlers of New Zealand, the Colourists did not have to travel so very far to find their new land. In the early years of the twentieth century first Fergusson, and soon Peploe and Cadell, travelled to France. Almost instantly their palettes changed to bright shining shades, capturing the heat of the sun, the colours of houses and clothes, the atmosphere of their new life.
Fergusson had the grandest ideas - his full-length portrait of Anne Estelle Rice, surrounded by huge flowers, contains a nod both to Hornel and Matisse, while his Torse de Femme is a magnificently fluid nude, mature and assured.
Peploe, visiting Royan with Fergusson, painted the harbour, lighting on the
many jostling patterns of
hulls and masts, picked out in a riot of colour.
For Cadell it was the influence of Cezanne and, travelling further south, he paints Cassis in slabs of oil, the white heat reflecting
from hard stone, before returning home to paint the elegant women of Edinburgh in their homes.
Leslie Hunter visited his own haunts - Venice and the south of France. His influences range far and wide, marking his paintings. His is the most exciting for he was a free spirit, keen to experiment, piling colour upon colour in one work, and barely outlining forms in another.
This is an exhibition to relish, with works on loan from not only particular collections, Perth's Fergusson gallery and Kirkcaldy Museum and Art Gallery, but even Lord Irvine who has seen fit to lend three.
n Southern Lights and Full of the Warm South are at City Art Centre Edinburgh until October 3.
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