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Source: Landscape painting in Scotland

Landscape painting in Scotland includes all forms of painting of landscapes in Scotland since its origins in the sixteenth century to the present day. The earliest examples of Scottish landscape painting are in the tradition of Scottish house decoration that arose in the sixteenth century. Often said to be the earliest surviving painted landscape created in Scotland is a depiction by the Flemish artist Alexander Keirincx undertaken for Charles I.
The capriccios of Italian and Dutch landscapes undertaken as house decoration by James Norie and his sons in the eighteenth century brought the influence of French artists such as Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin. Students of the Nories included Jacob More, who produced Claudian-inspired landscapes. This period saw a shift in attitudes to the Highlands and mountain landscapes to interpreting them as aesthetically pleasing exemplars of nature. Watercolours were pioneered in Scotland by Paul Sandby and Alexander Runciman. Alexander Nasmyth has been described as "the founder of the Scottish landscape tradition", and produced both urban landscapes and rural scenes that combine Claudian principles of an ideal landscape with the reality of Scottish topography. His students included major landscape painters of the early nineteenth century such as Andrew Wilson, the watercolourist Hugh William Williams, John Thompson of Duddingston, and probably the artists that would be most directly influenced by Nasmyth, John Knox. In the Victorian era, the tradition of Highland landscape painting was continued by figures such as Horatio McCulloch, Joseph Farquharson and William McTaggart, described as the "Scottish Impressionist". The fashion for coastal painting in the later nineteenth century led to the establishment of artist colonies in places such as Pittenweem and Crail.
The first significant group of Scottish artists to emerge in the twentieth century were the Scottish Colourists in the 1920s. They were John Duncan Fergusson, Francis Cadell, Samuel Peploe and Leslie Hunter, who placed an emphasis on colour above form. The group of artists connected with Edinburgh, most of whom had studied at Edinburgh College of Art during or soon after the First World War, became known as the Edinburgh School. They were influenced by French painters and the St. Ives School and their art was characterised by use of vivid and often non-naturalistic colour and the use of bold technique above form. Members included William Gillies, John Maxwell, William Crozier and William MacTaggart. William Johnstone was one of the artists most closely associated with the Scottish Renaissance, an attempt to introduce modernism into art and to create a distinctive national art. Stanley Cursiter was influenced by the Celtic revival, Post-Impressionism and Futurism. Later in his career he became a major painter of the coastline of this native Orkney. Other artists strongly influenced by modernism included James McIntosh Patrick and Edward Baird, both of whom were influenced by surrealism and the work of Bruegel.
In the post-war period the English-born Joan Eardley explored the landscapes of the Kincardineshire coast and created depictions of Glasgow tenements and children in the streets. Scottish artists that continued the tradition of landscape painting and joined the new generation of modernist artists of the highly influential St Ives School were Wilhelmina Barns-Graham and Margaret Mellis. Husband and wife Tom MacDonald and Bet Low with William Senior formed the Clyde Group, aimed at promoting political art and producing industrial landscapes. John Bellany focused on the coastal communities of his birth. The coastal theme would also be pursued by artists such as Elizabeth Ogilvy, Joyce W. Cairns and Ian Stephen.