Ossian, Wolfe and the Death of Heroism

Abstract

In 2002, the Scottish photographic artist Calum Colvin exhibited Ossian: Fragments of Ancient Poetry at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh. Colvin produced a group of 25 large pictures of meticulously constructed sets with sizeable sculptured elements and an eclectic selection of props.¹ The exhibition began with a projection of the mythological poet Ossian onto stone ruins (Figure 4.1). Through the opening sequence of nine photographs, the bard and the ruins are lit from different angles in orange and blue to produce a shifting chiaroscuro effect. Ossian gradually fades from view to be replaced in one image by the angel from Dürer’s engraving Melencolia I, and in the next by two greyhounds. There is a sequence of painted portraits of Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott, followed in two images, rather curiously, by a Maori warrior with traditional tribal markings. The warrior transforms into a bonneted figure which resembles the twentieth-century Scottish music-hall entertainer Harry Lauder. The final picture is an eerily lit image of Ossian’s translator James Macpherson (1736–96). Colvin’s photographs are initially sparse and elegiac, but become increasingly cluttered with assorted objects (mostly highly coloured, in contrast with the sombre palette in which the central figures are depicted). The pictures feature tartan boxes, an illuminated globe, iced fairy cakes, electric fires, bath towels from Rangers and Celtic football clubs, a discarded plastic saltire, an antique slide projector, a record player, marshmallows, mugs, miniature whisky bottles, a paperback copy of Douglas Hurd’s nationalist thriller Scotch on the Rocks, an oriental fan and an LP cover for the accordion folk duo The Tartan Boys of Bonnie Scotland (Figure 4.2).