In early May of 2017, Linda Sorensen and I vacationed in the UK, with art museum visits in Edinburgh and London. The Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh was most enjoyable. Its deep and impressive collection includes treasures from the Italian Renaissance and the Dutch Masters, and a sizable collection of French Impressionist and Post Impressionists. Many Scottish and British artists were represented, including British painters Thomas Gainsburough, John Constable and Sir Edwin Landseer.

The paintings below are all from the Scottish National Gallery and much of what is written about them comes from the museum's exhibition placards.

Sir Edwin Landseer's The Monarch of the Glen is one of the most famous British paintings of the 19th century. It encapsulates the grandeur of the Scotland's Highland wildlife and is a symbol of Scotland's independent national spirit. Originally, this painting was planned as part of a series to be displayed in the House of Lords, but was sold to a private collector. Over the years, it was admired and gained fame during the late 19th century when it was reproduced in prints and eventually in the 20th century, it was used in advertising. When this painting was offered to the Scottish National Galleries in 2017 for £4,000,000, a national campaign was created to raise the funds. Once acquired, a four city tour across Scotland was planned so Scots could revel in their new national treasure.

Titian's Diana and Callisto is a mythological work from the Italian Renaissance showing the goddess Diana casting out her attendant Callisto for being pregnant. Later, Jupiter transforms Callisto into the constellation, The Great Bear. The painting is an example of how Titian was a master of the human figure with color and light, and of how he used his fingers as well as brushes to apply the paint. The painting is co-owned by the Scottish National Gallery and the National Gallery in London and is shared for exhibit in both locations.

Rembrandt van Rijn, Self Portrait. Rembrandt probably produced more self-portraits than any other artist in history. Over the course of his painting career, his self portraits record changes in his appearance over more than 40 years. This portrait done in the late 1650's was a difficult time for him as he was declared bankrupt. He was forced to auction his grand house, his extensive art collections and studio effects.

Sir Peter Paul Ruebens' portrait, A study of a Head, is of St. Ambrose, a fourth century archbishop of Milan. He was banned from the cathedral by Emperor Theodosius after the massacre of his subjects in Thessalonica. Ambrose demanded Theodosius repent for ordering of the massacre and when he did not repent, barred the Emperor from receiving the Eucharist. Rubens created this portrait using a live model. He kept paintings such as this in his studio and reused them for reference when creating other paintings.

Dutch painter Jan Van der Heyden, while on an extended visit to Cologne, made drawings of the city. When back in Holland, he created View of Cologne, with Carthusian Church and St. Pantaleon. The figures in this early work are probably by another painter, Adriaen van de Velde with whom Van der Heyden collaborated frequently. This painting was allocated to the National Galleries of Scotland by HM Government. They acquired it from a citizen who gave up this painting in lieu of the inheritance tax he owed.

Considered as the founder of the landscape painting school of Scotland, Alexander Nasmyth was fascinated with architecture, design and engineering. In Princes Street, Building of the Royal Institution, he captures in epic fashion the dynamic transformation of Edinburgh into an sophisticated urban center. The construction to the right is of the Royal Institution Building, a center of the city's burgeoning cultural life.

Thomas Gainsborough is considered one of the most important British artists of the late 18th century. He painted quickly with easy strokes and a light palette. He found great satisfaction creating landscapes. He was a founding member of the Royal Academy. River Landscape with View of a Village is described as the Great Cornard village in Gainsborough's native Suffolk, but is now thought to be an imaginary scene.

The Vale of Dedham shows an area close to Constable's home. He painted many scenes of this area. In 1821, he wrote to a friend, "I should paint my own places best." This painting shows a water mill on the River Stour. The village of Harwich and the Stour estuary lie beyond.

Rev. Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch, aka The Skating Minister is one of Scotland's best known and beloved paintings. Rev. Walker was a friend of Henry Raeburn. He was minister of the Conongate Kirk, and a member of the Edinburgh Skating Society. They usually met on the frozen lochs of Duddingston on the outskirts of Edinburgh. This is a very large painting.

The National Gallery of Scotland has a couple of paintings by Americans.

Frank Edwin Church's spectacular scenes of America were immensely popular in Europe during the late 19th century. Niagara Falls from the American Side was exhibited to great acclaim in Paris in 1867 and a year later in London. Frank Edwin Church was a central figure in the Hudson River School, and is best known for his large landscapes with an emphasis on realistic detail and dramatic light.

John Singer Sargent was an American by birth, but only because his parents were American. He was born in Florence, Italy, and lived as an expatriate most of his life. The last 24 years of his life, he kept his home in Chelsea in London. He traveled widely throughout Europe, the Middle East and America. He was exceptional at painting in watercolor, but his focus professionally was painting oil portraits. Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, today is one of his best known portraits. Lady Agnew's confident straight no-nonsense gaze shows strength, while the lavender sash gives her an undeniable regal quality. In person, this painting is most striking.

Berthe Morisot was a well established French painter. While still in her twenties, she participated multiple times in the Salon de Paris and the annual exhibition of the Academie des Beaux-arts. She was born in 1841, a year after Claude Monet. In 1874 at the age of 33, she joined the other rejected "impressionists," Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley for what is now known as the First Impressionist Exhibition. Woman and Child in a Garden shows Berthe Morisot's daughter Julie Manet with her nurse.

Post Impressionist Vincent Van Gogh is among the most famous painters in Western Art. In a feverishly crazed short career, he created over 2,100 works, including 860 oil paintings. His colors were bold and dramatic with impulsive and highly expressive brushwork. Suffering from mental instability, he mangaged to cope, finding art as an expressive outlet. Although he never knew success during his brief life, he left a legacy of beauty and wonder.

One of his earliest paintings was The Potato Eaters, now at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. This is a narrative painting, showing a humble peasant Dutch family having a dinner of potatoes. Head of a Peasant Woman was a study for that painting. Van Gogh used the services of Gordia de Groot as his model, and she appears in both paintings.

Van Gogh was masterful in his ability to depict color. Although the peasant woman's cap appears to be white, it isn't. It only appears white against the darker tones of her face, blouse, and the wall behind her.

Plum Orchard in Blossom, Arles (below) is one of a series of orchard paintings done by Van Gogh which he created while in Arles in Provence. In a letter to his brother Theo, Vincent intended this painting to be an outer wing of a triptych of blossoming trees. In the background to the right is the local gasworks.

While a resident at the asylum at Saint-Remy in Provence, Vincent painted a number of canvases of olive trees. Vincent believed olive trees symbolized the region, and he was drawn to them as they were associated with the story of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Much of this pigment in Olive Trees was applied directly from the tube. The stabbing and swirling strokes generate a feeling of agitation, compounded by the steep sloping hill in which the trees are rooted. In person, this painting was gripping and impactful. Its energy demanded me to pause for a long moment with awe and wonder.

Edgar Degas was a ballet fan. He often attended ballet performances at the Paris Opera House, but he preferred to paint scenes of dancers rehearsing or waiting to go on stage. His paintings are compositions from his imagination augmented by his memory. Dancers' many ballet poses offered Degas to explore the human figure in graceful and expressive ways. Before the Performance is a typical example of Degas' use of saturated colors.

Paul Cézanne was a transitional artist, bridging Impressionism and Cubism. He took what Impressionism gave him, altering conventional approaches to perspective and the underlying structure of objects in a composition. His repetitive brushstrokes are highly characteristic and are clearly recognizable as his. Critics did not like his work, but Camille Pissarro and Parisian art dealer Ambroise Vollard were among the first to buy his paintings. Later, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso said, "Paul Cézanne was the father of us all."

Montagne Sainte-Victoire is a scene from Cézanne's home in Aix-en-Provence. This hill, just south of Aix overlooks the Valley of the Arc and was one of Cézanne's favorite locales. In this painting, the white ground acts as the equivalent of white paper in Cézanne's watercolor paintings, giving this canvas an unfinished appearance.

The Big Trees is an example of how Cezanne's paintings were transitional from Impressionism to Cubism. The intertwined branches of the trees in the upper third of the painting create a spacial ambiguity, and anticipate cubism. This painting is from the later years in Cezanne's career. During this period he experimented with different approaches with rocks, trees and vegetation as his subjects.

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Dedrick Brandes Stuber is known for his California landscapes; seascapes, mountain landscapes, and desert scenes.

His atmospheric tall willowy eucalyptus trees in a pastoral setting with a farm, or with a small town with a particular church at their bases or in the distance, have been identified as having been done in and around Elsinore, California in the 1920’s.

He also enjoyed painting scenes of tall ships sailing or in harbors and of blooming deserts with billowing clouds. Like many of the LA artists, he made painting treks to Arizona to paint the Grand Canyon or Monument Valley.

Urban scenes with complex brushwork skillfully suggesting forms of homes and their yards, probably in and around Los Angeles are particularly prized by collectors.

The bright colors of his skies and the forms of his clouds are distinctive as well as certain other characteristics of specific types of his works.  A painting with his stylized clouds is in the collection of the Smithsonian and is pictured to the right.

Dedrick Stuber was born in New York, and attended the Art Students League.  He studied with Bridgman (Charles J.), Julian Onderdonck, and Clinton Peters, and was influenced by Barbizon painters Camille Corot and Charles Francois Daubigny.  He moved to California in 1920, but there is evidence that he had made an earlier trip, because there is a 1915 painting called "Silver Mining" in a private collection. He preferred painting plein air at sunrise, when it was cool and shady.

His work resides in the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., the Pasadena Art Museum, The Fleischer Museum of Scottsdale, Arizona, and the Irvine Museum. 

His work is associated with the following galleries:  Wilshire Galleries, Barker Brothers, Newhouse Galleries.  He was a member of the Laguna Beach Art Association, the Glendale Art Association, the Painters and Sculptors of Southern California, and the Painters and Sculptors Club. Sources:  AskArt; Edan Hughes books; The Redfern Gallery website

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