View cart Tam o’Shanter
Illustrated by Alexander Goudie
Format: Individually numbered edition comprising 1 volume casebound in real cloth with protective slipcase.
Size: 297x390mm
Extent: 144pp
Price: £100.00
ISBN: 9781841586717
'Of all the publications marking Burns's 250th anniversary, the most luxurious is Birlinn's sumptuous Tam o’Shanter' - The Herald
'Alexander Goudie’s Tam o’Shanter paintings represent an unparalleled achievement in 20th-century Scottish painting' - The Scotsman
'Beautiful' - Scotland on Sunday
'Deserves to be ranked among the best illustrative cycles in Scottish Art' - Sir Timothy Clifford
TO SCOTS THE WORLD OVER, Tam o'Shanter - funny, scurrilous, gloriously inventive - has achieved iconic status. Full of marvellous images, it waited over 200 years for the partner who could realise the vision in the words. That partner was Sandy Goudie, who described Tam o'Shanter as 'a gothic tale, strewn with vivid and awesome images'. His cycle of Burns paintings, worked on for many years, captures all the facets of this marvellous poem and are full of energy and life.
Originally planned to be bought as a cycle by the National Gallery, the bulk of the paintings now reside in Rozelle House in Ayrshire. However, Sandy continued to work on Tam until the end of his life and for the first time this book matches together Burns peerless poem with the full range of Sandy's paintings and drawings.
Two specially commissioned essays by Professor Edward J Cowan and Professor Alan Riach of Glasgow University provide the literary, historical and folklore background to the work and its relations to Alexander Goudie's paintings, and the author's son, Lachlan Goudie, provides a biographical essay which sets the Tam o'Shanter paintings within the context of his father's career.
Alexander Goudie RP. RGI. is widely acclaimed as having been one of Scotland's finest figurative painters. He was born in the Renfrewshire town of Paisley in 1933. He studied at the Glasgow School of Art under William Armour, David Donaldson and Benno Schotz. For many years he was a tutor at the school, before dedicating himself to his own studio work. As a portraitist his sitters included Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Lord Chancellor Lord Mackay of Clashfern, Billy Connolly and a host of other figures drawn from the worlds of politics, commerce and entertainment. He died in 2004.