Charlotte Rostek & James Holloway (11:00)

Charlotte Rostek, previously curator at Dumfries House, has written a triumphant book on the often-neglected Scottish Women Artists. This is a tale of redoubtable artists from 18th century pioneers to the 1880s breakthrough ‘Glasgow Girls’, to the (largely forgotten) early modernists, to icons such as Joan Eardley, Anne Redpath and Elizabeth Blackadder, who, despite the dominance of ‘male painters, critics, collectors, curators, hanging committees and teachers’, placed women artists at the heart of the story of Scottish art. Rostek concludes with the generation of Turner prize winners and Venice Biennale stars who now represent Scottish art internationally.

As director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, James Holloway was the first to recognise the importance of representing women, as subjects and as artists, in the collection, notably buying the only self-portrait of Eardley. He also commissioned cutting-edge painter, Gwen Hardie, for his private collection of Scottish art which he records in his memoir based on his collector’s diary kept over 45 years. Expect tales of nail-biting auctions, of ‘stalking’ prized works and scholarly discoveries while creating his incomparable collection.

Chaired by James Knox