Cairngorms museum exhibits rarely-seen Landseer art

A new exhibition is showing rarely seen art by Victorian painter Sir Edwin Landseer

A new exhibition explores Victorian artist Sir Edwin Landseer's romanticised imagery of the Scottish Highlands.

London-born Landseer's "high society" commissions included paintings for Queen Victoria, while Monarch of the Glen, which depicts a magnificent red deer stag in Glen Affric, is among his most famous artworks.

While animals featured in much of Landseer's pieces, he also portrayed the Highlands as a place of romance and adventure.

In reality, the region, along with other parts of rural Scotland, were experiencing clearances with people being forcibly moved off land to make way for large-scale sheep production or other uses.

Grantown-on-Spey's museum has secured support to exhibit some of Landseer's rarely seen art, painted while he was in the Cairngorms.

At one point he was a guest of aristocrats the Duke and Duchess of Bedford.

Animals featured in much of Landseer's work

The Duke and Duchess of Bedford's properties in Glenfeshie in Cairngorms

Grantown Museum manager Dan Cottam said: "It will be a wonderful opportunity to get up close and personal with an incredibly talented artist, a household name in his day, whose position in society meant he played a hand in shaping the way people see the Highlands and Highlanders to this day.

"We are giving today's Highlanders a chance to see some of Landseer's original paintings and sketches which are rarely seen in public and tell the story of the land that inspired him and his relationships with the influential people who shared his passions in and of the Cairngorms."

The exhibition runs until 30 September

The exhibition includes paintings from the Royal Collection, Woburn Abbey and University of Dundee, as well as works on paper from private collections and photographs from the museum's own collection.

The loans have been supported by the Weston Loan Programme with Art Fund, a UK-wide funding scheme that helps smaller and local authority museums to borrow works of art and artefacts from national collections.

Grantown Museum's exhibition runs until 30 September.

All images copyrighted.