Sir Walter Scott >>

Colvin includes Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) in his pantheon of poets descended from Ossian. Scott took up Ossian's mantle, and enthusiasm for his poetry spread like wildfire across Europe. Colvin bases his portrait of Scott on the classical bust of Scott by Bertel Thorwaldsen, which is now in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. It is superimposed onto an architectural ruin set against a black night sky . Perhaps we are to think of Scott's recommendation that we should view the ruins of Melrose abbey by moonlight for the full romantic effect. The configuration of the stones also recalls the Scott monument in Edinburgh.

Littered around the base, as if in mockery of the heroism of the austere portrait, are some irreverently playful items. Broken biscuits, emblematically frivolous in their confectioners' pink and white, are strewn among the rubble. Colvin invites our meditation upon our predilection for putting images of Scotland's great literary figures onto biscuit tins. He also includes a Jimmy hat, that 'sardonic emblem of modern Scottish identity…[which] has become an ironic reference to cultural and national independence.'(Normand) Colvin is reminding us that it was Scott who, on the occasion of the visit of Geroge IV to Edinburgh in 1822, stage-managed the event and decked-out the entire population of the city in spurious tartan. The tartanry that is the legacy of this event means that, 'Highland culture and history has become picturesque entertainment and the dissenting aspects of the Celtic world, with Ossian as its most pertinent representative, become a tourist's trinket.'(Normand).

Robert Burns >>

Colvin has painted the head of Robert Burns (1759-96), based on the drawing by Archibald Skirving (1749-1819), based in turn on the famous portrait by Alexander Nasmyth (1758-1840) onto the landscape of Blind Ossian. The work contains references to Burns's poems - red roses, green rushes, a red heart -all scattered in a wasteland, like personal effects scattered through the dust and rubble of a bomb site, testimony to a life and to a culture destroyed.
Burns, the national bard, is present as the son and heir of Ossian, because of his romantic sensibility. The notion of Burns as an uncultivated, 'natural' poet - and thus the eighteenth-century equivalent of Ossian - was propagated during his lifetime. His contemporary, Henry Mackenzie, called him 'the Heaven-taught ploughman.' Inevitably, a mythology grows up around such a remarkable product of nature and heaven, and there are differing perceptions of Burns. Which is the real Burns? The republican who applauded the French Revolution, or the sentimental Jacobite of his best-loved songs. Ossian, it has been suggested, provided Burns with 'a literary pose, in which he could express his feelings of pride, ambition and sensitivity without giving himself away directly.' ( David Daiches).

Portrait of James Macpherson >>

The final work in the exhibition is a reprise of the starting point - the controversial figure of James Macpherson (1736-96) the 'translator' of the poems of Ossian. The portrait is based on that in the collection of the SNPG which, not having been painted ad vivum or from life, is not strictly speaking an 'authentic'portrait. That it is a copy, by an unidentified artist, of a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, is strangely appropriate. The irony is not lost on Colvin.

In his portrait of Macpherson, Colvin has created what Normand calls ' a compound forgery.' The image is placed against the backdrop used for the Maori and 'Blind Harry' of Fragments but this time, rather than paint the portrait onto the backdrop, he has used 'Photoshop' to insert onto the set a portrait, manipulated to resemble a painted work by Colvin the image-maker. As Normand writes ' This is Colvin's forgery, created to reprise the spectacular, surreal, and infamous debate surrounding Macpherson's life and work'.

Postscript
As a final irony, it has subsequently been disclosed by the artist that this is not an 'authentic' Calum Colvin forgery after all. It was made, at his request, by someone else. So it too is a fake.

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