Race to save 'outstanding' watercolours for Scotland

Published on Thursday 17 September 2009 22:05

IT WAS the T in the Park of its day, a medieval-style jousting tournament for a crowd of 100,000, complete with banquets, musicians and knights.

Now a last-ditch effort is under way to save 20 historic watercolours that recorded the event, laid on by the Earl of Eglinton in Ayrshire in 1839, The Scotsman has learned.

UK culture minister Barbara Follett has imposed an export bar on the paintings, after they were bought by a major US art institution.

The UK committee reviewing art exports described the paintings as being of "outstanding significance" to Scottish social history and the shaping of Victorian taste, "so closely connected with our history and national life that their departure would be a misfortune".

The move gives a British buyer until November to match the 85,000 price and keep them in this country.

A top UK art expert is leading efforts to raise the funds in Edinburgh and Ayrshire. "They are an amazing group of 20 watercolours, which are incredibly fresh depictions of this extraordinary event, rather close to what might be a modern music festival," said James Knox, managing director of the Art Newspaper and a trustee of the National Galleries of Scotland.

"They should be saved for Scotland. They are incredibly vivid portrayals of all the leading players there, the flower of London and Scottish society."

Painter James Henry Nixon joined the throngs arriving at Eglinton, near Ardrossan, by train and paddle steamer. Tents collapsed under a torrent of rain that drenched spectators. Knights and horses ended up slithering in mud.

The event was part of the Victorian fascination with all things medieval and Scottish, powered by the writings of Sir Walter Scott, a year after Queen Victoria's coronation and a decade before she bought Balmoral.

"It was a kind of T in the Park of early Victorian times, when the earl decided on a whim to stage a medieval jousting tournament in Ayrshire," Mr Knox said. He suggested that a "block-buster" exhibition of the paintings could also feature the armour, shields, fabric and trophies made for the event.

Little is known about Nixon, who worked for a London stained-glass firm. His watercolours were passed down via the family of Lord Eglinton's half-brother, and rediscovered in England only this year.

After they were shown for sale by London art dealers Abbott & Holder, experts were surprised no Scottish institution stepped forward to buy them. Their price is modest compared with that of most museum artworks.

The Apollo art magazine questioned in its latest issue why these "precious historical documents" were not snapped up by a Scottish archive. "The sad truth is that modern Scotland is not comfortable with the Romantic origins of Scottish nationalism," it concluded.

The National Galleries of Scotland "recognises the historical significance of these pictures and hope that there is a way that they can be kept in Scotland", a spokeswoman said. "We are looking at how we can be involved."