The Hunterian has been rehung: the entrance gallery has paintings in double rows with no labels (as they would have been displayed in previous centuries), and the curators have included a few empty frames to represent whatever the viewer wants to think they might represent. Viewing the works thus becomes a more active experience for the gallery-goer (or a more frustrating one, possibly, judging from some of the comments I overhead).
Since I managed to nab one of the information booklets and was reassured that old favourites (Cadell, Fergusson, Paterson) were still there, I approved of the rehang.
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I’m not sure that I like The Patriot by David Evans – and I have no idea why it has that title – but it is intriguing. The hyperreal style and the slightly distorted three-quarters profile (to include both eyes?) is offputting and almost lizard-like, and what’s the meaning of the broken marble top and the empty, open drawer? And Hunter’s apples – like Cézanne’s they should be falling off the plate. Fergusson’s Voile Persan is one of several I’ve seen over the last couple of days that blur the outlines of women and flowering nature. I’m becoming more drawn to Eardley’s landscape paintings: this is both thickly layered paint and the sea at Catterline on a blustery day.