 Welcome everyone. My name is Mark Hallett, I'm going to be chairing the research seminar over the next hour. We'll just wait for a moment or two while we get all of you in so that we have a full audience before we start properly. Great to see so many of you signing on. It's a tribute to the interest and the importance of this project. We've got so many people participating and we can see the numbers racing up already going beyond 70, 80 now today. So welcome and again, can I just ask for your patience for a few more seconds while we just wait for everyone to log in, zoom in, and then we'll start properly. Great, but I think because we've got such a packed schedule today, I think I'll begin. So welcome everyone. My name is Mark Hallett, I'm the director of the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Arts and I'm really delighted to be hosting today's research seminar, our online research seminar, which focuses on old ways new roads travels in Scotland 1720 1832 which was a really exciting major interdisciplinary scholarly project that led to a substantial exhibition and a book of essays, dealing with exactly the subject of the impact of of a transformation in the transport infrastructure in Scotland on the landscape and on the imagery of that landscape in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Really pleased to say that I'm really pleased that to have supported the publication of PMC helps support the publication of the book, and really like to promote and recommend it to you all as a fantastic book of essays on a really interesting subject and very reasonably priced at only 20 pounds I think we're going to have a link for you to that book if you should like to order it. So the project was due to lead to an exhibition that was due to take place at the Hunterian in Glasgow in 2021 had to be postponed for obvious reasons, but it took really interesting and innovative online expression instead. So again, we'll put a link to the online version of the exhibition into our chat function today. So, definitely again worth recommend a rough recommend that you explore this online exhibition. So today what we're going to have a three 15 minute presentations from the three major players in the project and do our beverage who's a curator at the Hunterian. Then we'll have a presentation from John Bone Hill who teaches art history at the University of Glasgow, and then finally we'll have a presentation from Nigel Leesk, who's Regis professor of English language and literature at the University of Glasgow to. And, and we'll be talking about the making of the projects of the exhibition and of the book. Now, both John and Nigel will focus down on a strand of their research, particularly focusing on the imagery and poetic representation of waterfalls in from the period. So they'll tell us about how this project evolved and then give us a glimpse into one of its findings. Before we start, I just wanted to turn to a few housekeeping notes, if I could. So they're combined, the three talks will, we hope last approximately feel 45 minutes. I've asked everyone to try and keep to time and so that there is time for Q&A afterwards. Then when we get to that point. And certainly even before that, even as if questions suggest themselves to you, as you're listening to our three speakers, you can type in immediately a question that we can relay on to them afterwards, please use our Q&A function to do that. I would say this session will be recorded and will be made available to the public through our recordings site on our website. And if you need close captioning it's available, just click the CC button on your screen to enable captions. So without further ado, I'm delighted to turn over to Anne to introduce the topic to us so over to you and thank you so much for joining us today. Well, thank you and good afternoon everybody. So I will just set my screen so that it is shared. I hope you can see it now. Brilliant. And first I would like to thank the Paul Mellon Centre of course for inventing John Nigel and I to reflect on the making of old ways new road on its planning aims and scope. So within the next 15 minutes, I would like sorry I'm being distracted I'm setting myself a timer because I want to not go over the 15 minutes. I'd like to briefly summarize what the publication and it's accompanying online exhibition are about hinting at the collaborative cross disciplinary nature of the research and writing involved. I will highlight the goals and aims we devise as we develop the project. Next I will talk to you about through the making of the publication that went hand in hand with the refining of the exhibition content and themes. Before underlying underlining very quickly a couple of potential research topics touched upon by the publication which would deserve further attention. And hand over to john and Nigel and as Mark was saying, both intend to dive deeper into some of the themes at the heart of old ways new road. As they each tackle from their own perspective, a key motif running through much of the art poetry and travel writing produced in the latter part of the 18th century, in response to the Scottish landscape. That is the taste for waterfall. So, what is always new road about. Well, in a nutshell. Oh, gosh, that's my cup sorry my computer does that regularly which is very frustrating and I haven't found the way to deal with it yet to spare with me. It has to happen now of course it happens every three or four hours. There we go we're back. Like to move on. There we go. So what is always new road about. Well in a nutshell, it draws on the output of key travelers from soldiers, various and scholars to artists, writers and leisure tourists to consider the connection between the military occupation of 18th century Scotland, and the beginning of modern tourism. It offers a new insight into the experience of travellers as they explore Scotland and its landscapes by considering their responses to four key things, which you can see on the online exhibition slide on your slide there. So this is from my phone because I couldn't take a screenshot on my computer so you're getting the phone version of the exhibition there. So this is from our antiquities, natural history, custom and improvement and pictures prospects and literally landscapes. How does that do it well it does it through books, maps, works on papers, paintings and a host of all the materials. Together, these show how travellers, artists and writers depicted Scotland at a crucial period of social and economical change. This also demonstrates how the massive road and bridge building program carried out by the William Hitch and Hanoverian Monarchs in order to pacify the country, opened up access to some of the most remote parts of the country, especially the highlands and islands. Hence the title of the project, as old ways made way for new roads, which in turn facilitated a new understanding of these old ways, whilst accelerating their disappearance into the midst of time. What the language contained within the project is the many visions of Scotland generated by this opening of the country that would help help to shape the land, its people and its economy across the 18th and 19th century, and in some instances, right up to the present day. For those among you wondering how the concept behind this project came about the recording of the online book launch that can be found on the online exhibition might be of interest. This is a variable from cross disciplinary conversations between John and Nigel, when they decided they wanted to share their interest in 18th century topography and travel with a wider audience, both academic and public. This really was the initial aim of the project. So they came up with a concept of a show that would bring together a literary and visual depictions of Scotland in the long 18th century, which they presented to the Hanterian back in 2018. From the perspective that proposal was definitely appealing. The themes at the heart of the exhibition are very relevant to the Hanterian, whose genesis dates to the long 18th century, and is very much grounded into the spirit of enquiries that characterizes many of the early travelers to Scotland. The exhibition includes a wealth of material relevant to the projects, and you can see here a snapshot of the sort of material that can be found in the university collections. And there is also a very comprehensive and extensive collection of 18th and early 19th century travel writings and literary publications, many that include views of Scotland in the university archive and special collection department. And the second set of goals for this project, which came out of the first conversations we had when we sat down to work out on how to take this exhibition proposal forward. There were broadly and in no particular order to promote the richness and multidisciplinary nature of the university of the university's collection in the long 18th century to encourage new ways of looking at these collections by adopting a multidisciplinary approach, to create an environment in which specialists from different fields could come together, just as Nigel and John had done under their own initiative already. And that would help us to explore further the research questions at the heart of all ways new road. Now this fitted perfectly with the Hanterian strategy policy and its emphasis on collaboration, innovation and multidisciplinary. To move on to the making of the exhibition, I should mention one last aim which was for for it to remain true to its academic genesis, whilst ideally being accessible to a wider, more generalist public. So how did we go about achieving those also modest goals and what were the challenges. Well for from the world go time was the biggest challenge. We had more or less 18 months to come up with a publication and the exhibition, not a lot of time, particularly considering all three of us were already involved with major project projects. One of our first steps was to look at potential help. This was the form of creating work placement students. We also turned to grants, of course, and whilst unsuccessful when it came to our career to research grant application to the Paul Miller Center in 2019. We were very grateful to be allocated a publishing publication grant by them the following years. It was made for his three months curatorial post which was financed by the Johnson sisters environment fund. Without the Paul Mellon Center grant and I'll issue you to curatorial assistant to took on the mammoth task of dealing with images. The publication we are discussing today would have looked very different. There is no way we could have contemplated the inclusion of the 200 or so color illustrations that contribute greatly to make it more accessible to a generous public. We took on an unexpected importance when the pandemic raised its ugly head, and the exhibition had to turn on from a to onto an online exercise was as a physical one. The final piece of the puzzle in terms of external funding was a general grant from the Gordon Fraser charitable trust that allowed a deal to be struck with a publisher. We started to look at the potential content of the exhibition and its publication. This was done partly through two workshops aimed at creating an environment that would allow us to have together a multidisciplinary group of academics freelance researchers and colleagues from cultural institutions such as archiving special collections of course here at the University of Glasgow, but also the National Conservatives of Scotland to name but one facilitated by the Center for Scottish and Caltech and Celtic studies that were vital in bringing all the ways new road to life. From the beginning we were inspired by the example of James Holloway and Lindsay Arrington's 1978 discovery of Scotland exhibition in the National Gallery of Scotland, which we discussed with James over lunch in the Edinburgh House. He supported our endeavor, but he also generously agreed to give a plenary talk full of practical advice at the first workshop, meant to present relevant material in the university collections, and to introduce a proposal to attendees selected for their knowledge of the topics covered by always new road. Attendees were all generous with their time, their feedback and their contacts. Besides allowing us to tighten and refine our approach, the workshop also resulted in a few research trips. As we started the process of tapping into a wide community of creators, librarians, scholars and private collectors. We found that they were often that they often already knew exactly where we were after could make suggestions of their own, and we're more likely to become involved in one way or another. We're thinking here about the rich program of online talks that took place last year, and are accessible through the online exhibition. It was fun to jump around Scotland, sometimes as far as London even some of the works from private collections featured in the book, rarely if ever seen publicly before have added a unique touch and on your screen you have just a little snapshot of the kind of works that we were able to borrow from private collections. And we're pleased to Blair in very and cannot castle dunk held bullhill monster it panic a curse, and we're welcomed by a new base collectors in their wonderful townhouses and plants, where we spent many happy hours exploring their collections. Yes, where the British library home to the great Roy to the Roy great map and the drawings executed by Sir Joseph banks throat man during that tour of the Western Isles on their way to Iceland in 1772. The British Museum of course with his sandy drawings and cordial album. The National Museum of Scotland, where we found portable knickknack reminiscent of the type of accessories intrepid travelers at the heart of the show would have taken with them. And then we went to the National Gallery of Scotland, Scotland, which ended up being one of the largest contributor to the exhibition in terms of objects. Paula class, when Nigel realize that John Knox Highland lock you which we can see at the bottom left side of your screen was related to his better known landscape with Teresa Catherine in the National Gallery of Scotland just above above sorry, and Glasgow museums where we were shown the little known watercolor by Turner of Stirling Castle, as well as a royal but I can Nicole garden, and a bro where we saw an array of plants specimen collected in the highlands and islands in the 18th century. We were also developing plans for the publication and responding we were fortunate to be able to work with Berlin, who have a claim to in the ways a book ended up being shaped to start with we were thinking along the lines of a traditional exhibition catalogue with several essays, addressing key themes from writing the Scottish tour to the part played by actual and imaginary forms of travel in making Scottish scenery a subject of landscape art from the technology of the old ways and garlic Scotland to panoramas and from roads bridges and landscapes to the material culture of travel, or a comparison with the emergence of domestic tourism in both wells and islands. These would have been followed by a section with photographs and exhibition catalogue style descriptions of all objects to be included in the exhibition five rooms. But after feedback from Berlin, we quickly moved away from this format towards a model inspired by Scotland mapping the nation, a wonderful book if you don't know it, that would consist of chapters, among which would be disseminated long label type text highlighting star objects within the exhibition. When the chapters were firmed up, we started looking at how to best write this text stressing star objects, and quickly agree that what was needed here were sections that would capture the essence of the five main rooms that around which the exhibition would have involved. And those are, you've heard them before Scotland as a theater of war antiquities natural history, custom and improvement and literary landscapes and pictures prospects. In the next section, markedly different from the chapters, we agreed that they should rely heavily on the object selected to illustrate each theme, and that if an object did not fit in the narrative of the section, it should be out of the exhibition basically. The result is a heavily pictorial book, which supports the points around which the exhibition evolves as much with words as with images. This seems to fit working in from an institution whose founder William Hunter believed that images speak better than words. Once we knew exactly where we were going with the publication, we organized a second workshop that brought together all the authors from Glasgow's Christina young to Hugh cheap Frederick Frederick, our Britain Johnson, Christopher Dingwall, Vicki Coltman, Finola OK, and Marianne Constantine. This allowed us to ensure that everybody knew what other contributors were intending on doing as always starting to turn the synopsis into chapters. Aiming to encourage chapters and essays to connect as much as possible. It was helpful to to hone one last time the way we hooked the book would look. I will spare you the mad rush to get all texts edited, etc, and the added difficulties of trying to meet deadlines in the pandemic when everything suddenly comes to a standstill, as I'm sure this will sound all too familiar to many of you. I want to say at this point I was tempted to rechristen the whole project new ways long worlds. Before I head over to John, I think I have just about time to squeeze in a couple of potential areas for future research. One of them is vinegar cast collections and this is why I picked those two particular pages from the publication to show you what it looks like. In fact, they include an album of drawings with illustrations from James Newton, as well as a number of drawings known as a penicillin drawings that are on long term loan at the Hantean. Now our plan was to have a workshop that would bring specialists from different fields to look at them from different points of view. But it did not happen so we're hoping to revisit that into sometime in 2023, but following recent recent conversations with the owners of the panic house collections, which includes much more than that and is quite multidisciplinary in its nature. It seems that there may be a possibility to expand on our understanding of its formation and of its history. There is a significant collection in the history of collecting in Scotland as well. So we hope to encompass fields as diverse art, music, Roman archaeology, core mining and environmental issues, to name but a few. Central research questions concerning the cultural, political and intellectual history of Scotland. It has the potential to become a rich and rewarding project, and would be a wonderful legacy to always new road. To pick up on the in depth study of the interaction between travel writers and Scottish artists, authors and poets with a view to revisit our understanding of the evolution of the Scottish school of landscape and of its impact. Thank you for time and now I will hand over to John and stop sharing. Where has it gone. There we go. Thank you. I hope you can all see my screen now. That's great. Thanks, John. Thank you. As I said, by way of introduction, Nigel and I are now going to think about a particular strand which came to prominence during our research in this project, which is as a depiction of waterfalls and the taste for waterfalls, not only in poetry and painting but amongst tourists and in the landscape design of the period. We're going to be focusing in particular on the Apple States in Perthshire. Situated in Highland Perthshire, Apple House, or what's now known as Blair Castle, was a major landmark on what was known as the Petty Tour, the shorter of the two domestic tours of Scotland in the period. Built on the confluence of the rivers Gary and Tay, the ancestral seat of the Murray Dukes of Apple, the heart of a vast sprawling estate of rolling farmland and rugged hill sides. Together with our guiles in Verrari and the Elf of Bredleburn's Teymouth, the Apple Estate showcased the progress of the Scottish landscape, as well as its rich historical heritage. Among Athol's attractions was an expansive designed landscape illustrated wonderfully in James Stoby's map of Perthshire in 1783 in both this inset view on the left and the detail of the map around the house on the right. The Apple's attractions included the bridges, buildings and statuary of the so-called Hercules Garden and the 50 planted wilderness of the area known as Diana's Grove. In striking contrast with the cultivated and busy policies of this area, where the stylistic mele saw vernacular tradition jostle with classical and exotic accents in the form of buildings and bridges in a shinoiseries style. A short walk along the riverside path took the visitor out to the barren rugged setting of the York Cascade, the most spectacular of the several falls of Fender, not four miles away, though the still more dramatic falls of Brewer. Several local landowners had established such elemental features as design set pieces in the middle decades of the 18th century. Their scenic developments at places such as Tama, and also the jukes of Athol, other estates of Dunkel, 20 miles from Athol, made them key coordinates in the imaginative geography of the region. With considerable associative power, the waterfalls that obsessed both landowners and tourists alike animated the landscape, filling it with movement and sounds. Their energy of course also harnessed to power a range of industry from pulling to mining operations, the improvements that enabled in many ways the development of the scenic attractions. Not surprisingly, artists and writers were also drawn to the drama of the channel violence of the cataracts and the agency of nature they represented. Athol born and a Gallic speaker, the now obscure painter Charles Stuart brought a distinctly local eye to such scenes. Beginning in the mid 1760s, Stuart produced a remarkable and perhaps unique series of distinctly watery landscapes for the first floor of the dining hall of Athol house itself, and which all remain situ. Hung against the pale green walls and framed by a elaborate stucco work, rich in flowers and foliage as well as militaristic motifs, they all featured sights on Athol lands. Three of the scenes are all set in and around Dunkel, showing its cathedral ruins, a waterfall and a view from agricultural land along the river Tay. Shifting focus, the other two pictures portray sites close to Athol itself, depicting the Fender and Brewer Falls. The sequence that displays the owner's commitment to the regional landscape, celebrating the economic and social benefits brought by its improvement. And the cast of characters taking a sketching artist, tourists, gardeners, fieldhands and others, all playing out their roles in the progress of the landscape. Then brought together with the, sorry, your Nate plasterwork of the room, Stuart's pictures sealed a complex allegory on the arts of war and peace. Borrowing a motif of Roman origin, the plasterwork above the marble chimney piece took the form of a temporary field monument to a fallen warrior, encircled with trophies of war and heraldic emblems of the Murray family's Sovereignty. The imagery celebrated the military past that secured the flanking scenes of present day progress, pastoral peace and Georgic abundance furnished by Stuart. Yet for all the marked unity of mood and iconographic coherence of this decorative scheme, it had been some 30 years and making. Work on it at first begun in the late 1740s, when the Athol's ancient baronial seat was extensively remodeled. Garrisoned with Hanoverian troops and besieged by Jacobite forces during the 45, the house sustained considerable damage, but rather than order its repair, the second due at the fabric modernize. Originally a banquetting hall the new dining space was part of a professional processional suite of West facing state rooms fitted out of careless expense. Work was complete by 1753, but the wall panels went and fills for more than a decade. In 1764, sorry, Stuart spent several months serving effectively as painter and resident to John Mary, the new third Duke of Athol, giving drawing lessons and taking views in preparation for the filling of these panels. Although he was London based, Stuart was dependent upon kinship based patronage networks originating in his native, Earthshire. He worked for successive dukes of Athol, but he also enjoyed favour with the Earl's of Bredelman and the Earl of Butte and his son-in-law Sir James Louther apologies for the quality of these images here which show examples of Stuart's work for Butte and for Louther respectively. While he is now better known architect brother George Stuart, the artist tells and moved outside this restricted but enormously powerful group of patrons, who also grant, and it's, I think also because of their protection that Stuart's ambitions were also relatively modest is practice being almost entirely restricted to the making of a state views. As popular elsewhere in Britain since the restoration, the taste for views of landed estates was far slower to emerge in Scotland. Only indeed taking shape, once the customary allocation of land as a token of kinship, whereby territory was held in trust, gave way to a more overtly commercial form of ownership secured by legal title. In the current century, however, Highland landowners especially come to recognise a state portraiture as a potent means of expressing their dual modern standing as both clan led and property gentleman. The views of the landed estate would largely determine the pictorial image of the Scottish landscape after 1760 or thereabouts, taking it out and packaging it up as a domain of aristocratic grandeur and power. Other pictures as Stuart's Apple scheme demonstrates were far from solely focused on the house and gardens. They were just as likely to address other assets and signs of ownership, which is features of the work in the state including farms, fields and woodland, or else antiquities and natural wonders, such as the falls of the Western scheme. Sequences were employed to comprehend this diversity of scenery. But they also in other words instances plotted a path through a particular landscape positioning the viewer before a set of changing sites and scenes, but they conveyed a sense of movement as much through time and space. This was a way of telling as well as seeing, and it was invariably tied in this respect to some moment of transition, usually change on the ground in some form of an architectural or landscaping project, but also in terms of charting lives, matters of connection and pedigree land and life. The outlines are strongly biographical relating both individual and longer running dynastic histories. Stuart's commission marked Don Murray's inheritance of the Athol estate and title on the death of his uncle and father in law the second tube. The latter had been anxious to protect his nephew and air from his brothers by legacy. Lord George having been participant in the risings of 1719 and 1745, leading gorilla rays on Athol and overseeing the siege of his ancestral seat. Suddenly Stuart's pictures point up his patron's concern to honor and extend his immediate predecessors legacy, notably the ambitious program of improvements. The second you could be done held, we'd laid out tree line walks along the tag and incorporated the riverside ruins of the cathedral into the designed landscape. The oil sketches from Stuart 1764 trip to the Highlands are exhibited at London Society of Artists the following year. Their samples essentially for the Athol dining room scheme, a more orderly, garden like view of the cathedral being worked up from one of these sketches. This took in scenes on the river brand on its tumbling passage through the forested coast of Craig vinyan. They show the fast flowing burn around what's known as rumbling bridge and where it crashes over the blackling falls. The work after this latter study was assigned a prominent place in the Athol dining room being precisely placed as by the door frames rather as the visitor enters the room by the doorway of the room. In this makes a kind of the scheme makes a kind of playful witty piece of theatre that deliberately recalls the architectural frame of the view that the painting captures. Ahead of its delivery, this picture was also shown in London in 1767, where it is titled in such a way as to situate the viewer really quite precisely. View of the waterfall 50 foot high from the hermitage in the Duke of Athol's gardens are done held. Built in the late 1750s as part of the wider transformation of the Craig vinyan hillsides, the hermitage was a decidedly theatrical viewing station set on a rocky outcrop overlooking the blackling falls. It was at this stage a relatively elementary but far from makeshift structure being decorated with prints framed by moss roots and shell work that amplified the scenic associations of the falls. Interestingly, tourists were welcomed from the beginning, the numbers already large enough for the gardener James Johnson to have to introduce ticketed entry in 1762 to keep out what he called the lower class goat way people. Written in the 1750s, Sir John Dalrymple's loose thoughts on gardening, a manuscript which circulated widely amongst Perthshire statomes, looked to counter the obstacles to aesthetic appreciation of such scenery that earlier writers had set out. He did this by highlighting the effective charge of falls such as those seen on the river brand. Highland terrains were one of four capital situations that are important characteristic of the British Isles being generally ill inhabited, however, they had too much the appearance of dead life, he thought. The landowner with a high regard for the splendor of his ancestors could not help but be fired by the challenges such a landscape. Making features out of natural cascades, Dalrymple argued, would rouse and animate the viewer, raise them from the stupor with which the view of great injury resubject objects creates. Stuart's view of the blackling falls attempts to render these effects in paint while its display in London brought its drama to a wider audience. Indeed, Stuart's don't tell pictures which he paired with the use of Tamer were the first views of Highland scenery shown at exhibition in London. Their appearance and the long series of other views of these places that Stuart sent in subsequent years, gave them a kind of national profile that also predated published accounts by several years. Indeed, the display of Stuart's pictures in London was part and parcel of a wider concern led by Athol to develop aperture in the wider region as a touring landscape worth viewing and writing about sketch and painting. First published in the early 1760s, James McPherson's hugely popular translations of Ocean also ensured Stuart's pictures had a resonant top quality and provided London audiences with a new appreciation for the grandeur of the scenery featured. Through that literary lens, they recall the topographical combinations of cataracts, caves and crags, haunted by the ghosts of noble warriors that figured Oceanic space. In the Athol dining room, the association with Ocean introduced a poetic melancholic note, a lament perhaps for a lost world that chimed with its themes of war and peace. It amplified the meaning of its parade of local scenes staking out Athol lands as a native classic ground, a historical status reinforced perhaps by the artist's references to oral tradition. According to Dalrymple, Salvatore Rosa favoured terrible and noble natural situations, mountainous Highland terrains, where there were few signs of life. But while Stuart's picture recalls the sublimity of that old master's terrible scenes, the attempt to render the thunderous cascade of the blacking falls at such close quarters had, I think, few precedents. Moreover, Rosa's familiar narratives of travellers set upon by lawless Banditi are also replaced by figures of a different caste. They're small, but occupying a rocky promontory above the falls are traditionally dressed with classically posed Highlanders, a shepherd and his deceitful female companion dressing the diss staff who introduced a kind of emblematic note, the formerly unruly peoples made civilised by the forces of commerce and polite taste. Twelve months later, Stuart was to exhibit another picture destined for the Athol dining room that reinforced this image, surveying the Tate Valley from the Torvald farmstead on the lowest slopes of Craig vinyan. It's an image of Georgic abundance of harvest and a content walk course. Such scenes refuted perhaps the image of a bleak, treeless Highlands, people by scrawny ghouls familiar from virulently anti-Scottish satire of the 1760s. Indeed, instead they reinforce the vision of those like Thomas Pennant who saw the Highlands instead as a remedy for the ills of metropolitan culture and society softened by commerce and imperial expansion. Here the designed landscape was harnessed to the broader project of the remaking of the Union after the 45. It's worth saying that several years passed before Stuart was able to complete the Athol dining room scheme following the delivery of that Torvald view. When he was recalled by the fourth Duke who had inherited the title on the sudden death of his father in 1774, the focus was the Athol landscape. The view of York Cascade and a romantic viewing cascade on the Brewer were again exhibited publicly ahead of the installation, the first in 1777, the other 12 months later. Unlike the labourers of the Dunkel pictures, it's gentile, leisure figures admiring and sketching the views that now take centre stage. While stock characters in the landscape are part of the time, their presence conferring a polite and scenic status on the scene. Before them, in this case, it also dramatises the act of viewing that I think indeed animates all of Stuart's Athol pictures. We might imagine that the figure seated at bottom right before the falls of Brewer to be the fourth Duke himself, sketching out his designs on this site perhaps, which would indeed, as Nigel will tell us now, was shortly to be improved by an extensive planting programme. Let me just stop my share there and hand over to Nigel. I need to unmute. Hello, everybody. Thanks, John. Some of the images that John has shown us will reappear in my brief talk now to shade my banks with towering trees. Robert Burns at Blair Athol September 787. In a letter of, in a letter of 25th October 1787 Burns, who was basking in his celebrity as airshares heaven talk climate poet, were called a 22 day 600 mile tour of the Highlands, which he'd recently made with his friend Willie nickel. I've done nothing else but visited cascades, prospects, ruins and druidical temples, learned Highland tunes and picked up scotch songs, Jacobite anecdotes and these two months. Burns is a list of activities. He gives an excellent indication of some of the prime motivations of his Highland tour, which played an important role in his bid for patronage as we'll see in a minute, but also regarding the song collecting, which, to which he devoted most of the remainder of his, his sadly short life. Notable also as the importance burns gives to visiting cascades here. We've reached with a high profile in old ways new roads as we've been as we've been hearing, and actually burns wrote songs or poems celebrating some of the major waterfalls on the Highland petty tour. The Falls of Monès and Aberfelde, the Falls of Akharn, Tamouth, the Falls of Brewer at Blair Athol and the Falls of Foyers near Loch Ness. During the spare tour journal kept by Burns now held in the Birthplace Museum at Allaway. I'll focus on the circumstances inspiring the composition of one of these waterfall poems entitled the humble petition of Brewer water to the noble Duke of Athol. It's a poem with particular resonance for our ecological age. It was the fruit of his brief sojourn at Blair Castle or Athol House as it was known, which links nicely with John's description of Charles Stuart's paintings in the drawing rooms of Athol House. Traveling up Wade's military road burns and nickel arrived at the in Blair Athol on 31st of August, the poet carrying a letter of introduction to John Murray fourth Duke of Athol from Professor Hugh Blair in Edinburgh. Burns, but not his friend, nickel was invited to sup and sleep at Athol House, as you put it. And on route to the castle he was given a tour of the garden by his airship friend, Reverend Josiah Walker, tutor to the Duke's son, who recollected the poet's enthusiastic appreciation of their beauties. I had often, like others, experienced the pleasures which arise from the sublime or elegant landscape, but I never saw those feelings so intense as in Burns. When we reached a rustic hut on the River Tilt, where it is overhung by a woody precipice from which there is a noble waterfall, he threw himself into a heathy seat and gave himself up to a tender, abstracted and voluptuous enthusiasm of imagination. In his journal for a journal entry for Friday the 31st of August, Burns noted, suck with a duchess, easy and happy from the manners of the family. The Duke apparently was temporarily absent. The next day, Saturday 1 September, the poet visited the scenes around Blair, fine but spoiled with bad taste. Tilt and Gary Rivers, or Gary Rivers, falls on the Tilt heather seat, riding company with Sir William Murray and Mr Walker to Loch Tummel. And here are those lines as transcribed in the poet's hand in the original tour journal held in Allaway. We might note in passing here Burns' criticism of the bad taste of the policies at Blair, doubtless referring to the neoclassical formalism of the Hercules Garden and Dinah's Grove, and you can see the statue, you can see John and Christopher Dingwall. This is one of the pleasures of preparing old ways and your roads during our visit, our research visit to Blair Athol a couple of years ago. Following the Duke's return on Saturday, Burns was entertained at dinner in a full company which included members of the Athol family, the children performed highland dances before supper, as well as being introduced to Robert Graham of Fintry, where as his future excise patron would play a major role in Burns' subsequent career. Walker described how it is the heaven taught plan and appeared to be in this aristocratic company. The Duke's fine family attracted much of his attraction, he drank their healths as honest man and Bonnie Lasses, an idea which was much applauded. How do you stay one more day at Blair? Burns would have met political heavyweight, Henry Dundas, who was also touring the Highlands to rally political support and Dundas has been in the news a lot recently as the great delayer in relation to the debate about the abolition bill in Scotland and in Britain. So that with fishing on the River Gary on Sunday morning, Burns' friend Nicol insisted on pressing on and Burns made excuses to the Duke on the feeble grounds that he had a headache. If Burns' journal was forthright in criticising the Duke's taste and landscaping his estate, his criticism was more tactfully expressed in his poem, The Humble Petition of Brewer Water. It's really the most accomplished of the poems he wrote on his Highland tour. It was composed on Sunday the 2nd September after the two travellers visited the falls as they departed from Blair on the military road en route for a snowbound dull windy. It was dispatched to Josiah Walker from Inverness on the 5th of September. Rhyme, Burns wrote, Rhyme is the coin with which a poet pays his debts of honour or gratitude, what I owe to the noble family of Athol, I shall ever proudly boast. The note to the poem's title states that Brewer Falls and Athol exceedingly picturesque and beautiful, but their effect is much impaired by the want of trees and shrubs. Although Burns couldn't have known it, Reverend William Gilpin had criticised the Falls of Brewer a few years earlier as scarce worth so long a perpendicular walk. One of them indeed is a grandfall, but it's so naked and it's accompaniments that upon the whole it is of little value. Quite possibly, Burns had viewed this painting by Charles Stewart on the upper and lower falls of Brewer that we heard John discussing, set in the richly stuccoed green dining room where he dined with the Duke and his family the night before composing the poem. Stewart's view shows a rocky bare landscape with only the occasional tree leading precariously over the spectacular waterfall. In the poem, Burns personifies the Brewer water, giving it a voice in delivering its ecological petition to the Duke. Although critic Peter Wormack notes that the river's facetious self-deprecation in line four in describing itself as Athol's humble slave is wittily similar to literary patronage. The Highland River, although confident that he is worth going a mile to sea at line 32, is mortified to have disappointed Poet Burns because half my channel was dry. He accordingly petitioned the Duke to plant trees on the banks. With then my noble master pleased to grant my highest wishes, he'll shade my banks with towering trees and bony spreading bushes. Delighted doubly then, my lord, you'll wander on my banks and listen, money a grateful bird, return your tuneful thanks. The poem delights on the pastoral delights of Woodland where songbirds might sing, shepherds weave their crown of flowers and lovers meet, their embraces screened by fragrant birks. Woodland here symbolizes shade, shelter, protection and above all noble patronage. The woodlands around the fall might also shelter some musing bard who would be inspired to rave to my darkly dashing stream, horse swelling on the breeze. And that word raving there suggests spontaneous effusion and the oceanic mode inspired by the waterfalls torrent. And Burns here picks up a constant concern of the 18th century, a highland tour narrative, the treelessness of the 18th century landscape, and both Dr. Johnson and Pennant have a lot to say about this. The humble petition seeks figuratively to shore up the Duke's status and future lineage through tree planting, enhancing both the aesthetic and commercial value of the Aztala states, as well as contributing to the patriotic project of providing a reliable domestic supply of naval timber. Burns probably knew that in 1877 the Fourth Duke was in the midst of a massive project of planting millions of large seedlings with a view to secure the naval timber to supply the nation into the distant future. In the poem's penultimate stanza, Brewer even gives the Duke known as Plunter John a lesson in some of the technicalities of planting. Let lofty furs and ashes cool, my lowly banks all spread, and view deep bending in the pool, their shadows watery bed, that fragrant berks and woodbines dressed, my craggy cliffs adorned, and for the little songster's nest, a close and barren thorn. I'll conclude with the reception, a very brief comment on the reception of the poem as well received by the Duke, and the success of Burns's petition entered tourist lore. For example, the blacks picturesque tourist guide to Scotland in 1840, described the falls as covered with plantations formed by the late Duke of Athol in compliance with the request of Burns in the well known petition. Christopher Dingball has recently questioned this account, arguing that it was only Robert Burns's death in 1796, which spurred the new plantation at Brewer. For this reason, the planting and landscaping should be seen not so much as a direct and immediate response to the poet's petition, but rather as a memorial to the man who'd shared the Duke's table 10 years earlier. Neither had the Duke taken Burns poetic advice very literally. The planting the falls of Brewer in 1803 for the sake of Burns, Dorothy Wordsworth noted that both sides of the stream to a considerable height were planted with furs and larches intermingled, children of poor Burns's song. For his sake, we wished that there'd been the natural trees of Scotland, birches, ashes, mountain ashes, etc. However, 60 or 70 years hence, there will be no unworthy monument to his memory. The Duke could follow the spirit, but not the letter of Burns's poem planting what the Wordsworths and maybe Burns himself regarded as exotic larches rather than native trees around the falls of Brewer. Thank you very much. I will now stop share. Thanks so much Nigel. Thanks to all our speakers for a really interesting set of talks. So what we'll do now is I'll will, can I encourage all those watching to submit questions, if you've got them on any aspects of what you've heard, and to any of our three speakers or to all of them. Can I just start by asking, maybe starting with you John and then with Nigel about this notion of the naked nakedness of the landscape that is pointed out and I mean it's really interesting looking at Stuart's pictures. I mean they're unfamiliar to me and no doubt they were pretty unfamiliar to you when you first encountered them. And to you I mean, in relation to comparable images of extremely kind of craggy waterfalls and landscapes. What what what pictorial models were there for you suggesting that they weren't and are those images ones in which you're trying to deal with a rather unfamiliar and unrepresented kind of landscape in the in the in the in the conventions of grand landscape painting. I make the suggestion in the in the book actually that the most obvious immediate model, the Stuart was George Barrett's paintings of powers court, which had been exhibited in London in 1764. He was gone display, you know, the year before Stuart's works do. And, and I, and those are the first Irish landscape shown in London, and Barrett I think then goes on to establish himself as something about a painter of the Celtic fringe, taking on Welsh views, before Wilson test, taking on Scottish views as well in a long series of paintings, some of which was straight in the catalogue for the key tags. So I think there's that kind of immediate precedent as well, but it does strike me that this this is a view which takes you much closer in than any other kind of certainly Barrett does, or any of the more obvious rows that like. And how about literary models Nigel for this imagery of the kind of sublime waterfall is there are there things that that was so was it was an image was there a poetry of such scenes circulating in the English language for instance in the, in the mid 18th century or is this something that really only emerges later emerges from the Grand Tour, you know, from from Alpine to as emerges in Europe with a fascination with Italian and Alpine cascades in the 17th. There's a baroque interest in that, in that topic isn't there. But I think the taste in Britain really develops in response to the domestic tour after the middle of the 18th century. And it's quite clear there aren't, you know, there aren't just aren't pretty many waterfalls in, in, in Southern England. And so, only when tourists are, you know, keeps describing his first arrival in the Lake District and his first experience of a waterfall, and probably the nearest thing you get to a waterfall in London is the artificial cascade in Vauxhall Gardens, which is a, you know, kind of mocked up fake one. And I think it makes a huge impact on on on poets and writers. Sorry, I was going to say that they are developed remarkably early Scotland as scenic attractions, the, the instances of viewing houses being set up right really early in the 18th century. Yeah, next. So some questions, some questions are coming in now. A question that may have been asked before, but I think it's really an important one clearly from Margaret Campbell's asked, how were these artists and patrons of the concept of the sublime that's one of the questions we've got here. I mean, how were they really actively working with that concept in their, in their writing or in their imagery do you think. I'm ready to start very quickly by suggesting that you know that that obviously Berks inquiry into the sublime the beautiful is a key text published around about 7059. But it's also worth pointing out in Scottish context that it's exactly contemporaneous with publication of the poems of Ossian from 1760 onwards. I think actually, you know, there's Berks theoretical kind of articulation of this, but Ossian actually is a practical lesson in the sublime, and certainly it's the, it's the key text for all travelers in Scotland in the period after 1760s john was was mentioning. I think it exists before that but I think it really, it is the key, it's a key watershed text for the sublime. I mean, that was one of the points I hope they're made in the talk really is that I think that Ossian gives them a kind of way of appreciating those kind of scenery in a way which wasn't there before. You know, it's worth bearing pointing out of course that earlier writers about the Scottish landscape. Most famously and Edmund Burke, for instance, but rather, but you know, famously dismissive of a landscape, finding its horrors, almost something which you can't reduce to a picture. You know, Johnston much more recently, you know, a sterile waste is how he describes. Yeah, yeah. No, it's fascinating. We've got the question we've. There's a question from Hazel Armstrong which is about the location of Stuart's work at the display of students work in London so you're saying john it's in the Society of Artists exhibitions that he's displaying his work. And Hazel was just really wondering about the character of those exhibitions and the and the kind of impact they'd have made there. Yeah, interestingly, Stuart only ever exhibits at the Society of Artists is not one of those who ever go to the Royal Academy, and later on in the dying days of the Society of Artists becomes a kind of major player there. And I think that, again, one of the things that strikes me about Stuart is that he does have this kind of very, very close capital each network that he never really ever goes outside of in a way that many other artists of this period just don't know most. You know, painted the Scottish landscape in this period, exhibiting views at the Society of Artists, sometimes of the same states called William Tompkins an alien English artist who really chanced his arm going up in Scotland, working a series of states, working people I think have used taking, you know, and then comes back down to England never travels in Scotland again. Stuart is reworking the same sites again and again over a number of years. And his exhibition history over a 20 30 year period is just the same sort of half a dozen of states again and again. And he knows that in particular as well to his brother George Stuart who also enjoys their faith. Can I ask a question to Anne, and run into all of you about both the benefits and the and the losses of the move to the online exhibition I'm sure at one level all of you are terribly disappointed that that was the case but are there ways in which the online exhibition format has really been revelatory in terms of what the possibilities it might offer do you think or is that is it still feel that it has the potential to be something bigger. Yes, no, I would say, well, the disappointment was huge as you can imagine, because we were all really looking forward to see those objects that we've been working on for the last couple of years coming together and it would have been a really stunning exhibition without a doubt. But the challenge of transferring a physical exhibition into something that would work online was an interesting one we were very keen not to just you know paste the text panels and labels because the design of the exhibition was ready I mean we were ready to go. It really was at the last minute, we were keen to find a way of making the most of actually having a digital platform rather than a physical space. And it allowed us to introduce a couple of different ways of exploring the exhibition so you can be explored through the rooms, as it would have been physically, but also through time. Through and timelines that kind of give you a different approach, and also through the publications themselves. So it allows people to get lost really, if they have a bit of time in the exhibition and to go from one work to another, in a way that they wouldn't necessarily have been able to do in the physical space. So people were hoping that it would become a platform for further discussion so for example, there is a blog section and there is also a section that is about essays. Both contributed essays to it and we've been inviting, or we invite anyone who would like to contribute an essay to do so. And it's been used as a platform for online talks, large time online talks as a rich array of talks on all the different topics at the heart of the exhibition that are still available now so in terms of legacy and exhibition last for only three months. This is up for five years and then we will revisit whether what happens to it but it's there for a long time. And once we've managed to snag all the last detail details details for examples is still eight photographs missing because they've been victim of backlog of photography. I think it's a really useful research we were also hoping it could be used for teaching so Nigel's course on romanticism is available there as well so it should be of use to students and to those who are interested. I certainly have been using it for teaching and the tremendous resource things like the timeline are absolutely invaluable for structuring a seminar on the on domestic tourism in this period. And I should be able to click and zoom into the images is fantastic so I think students have really enjoyed it. I think it has encouraged you and to think about doing this for all your shows that you have as well as the physical show that you have something like this I mean it's simply a question of resource that you have the online parallel show, even if you only do it as it were after the show, you don't want to stop people coming to the show but even if you have that something that lives on thereafter or are there lots of issues around permissions and so on that make that difficult. Yes, it's an interesting questions because the actual working on the online exhibition has taken. It took us seven or eight months to pull it together. Now partly because the hunt and doesn't really have the structure to do these sorts of things so it was taken on by our exhibition manager with leech and myself, and we more or less work solo on this during the pandemic. It still happens that we were able to do so because a lot of things that come to the stand still so we had the time to do it, but it does take an awful lot of time and the ways that we tackle this online exhibition is slightly different from what we've done before. There's more thinking it requires more time, and there are the issues of course as to whether institutions that will let us have images from their collections are happy to have those images available for five years on our website so they're all sorts of practical issues as well. In an ideal world, I think it would be wonderful to be able to have an online exhibition that looks at the materials that would be in a physical exhibition in a slightly different way, which adds another layer in practicality. Well, it's it's a lot of work and we kind of need a team to sort of do these sorts of things for us because we had to be jack of all trades, we said I really you know it was. Yes, it was it was a very interesting challenge but it was a challenge nonetheless. Thank you. I realize all that we're out of time. We've carried on the conversations about this whole about the project about the online exhibition aspect of it, and also just carried on following up the conversations that we began with you Nigel and john about the waterfall about the imagery and the, and a poetry of the Scottish landscape but it's clear from our chat box that people have found it really stimulating that they're, I'm sure there'll be a spike in sales of the book, following this event. I was just mentioned I think Eva was we had one comment talking about how amazing that it has survived, and it has this online legacy that for many people hundreds of not thousands of people she says, wouldn't have been able to who wouldn't have been able to come to the exhibition had it been held in person have now been able to enjoy it and really explore it, virtually if not in the flesh so there are benefits clearly as well as losses to this, this this process of translation and and movement across to the to the virtual. But can I just say huge thanks to all of you it's really brought this project back to us all, and live to us all again so I think it'll encourage a widespread investigation of the site and of the book by all of those who visited it today so thanks all three of you so much for a really interesting set of presentations much appreciated and see you all again soon I hope.