Who Is The Real Monarch?

The lingering ideas of Victorian romance have devastated our mountain ecosystems, argues Jim.

HAVE you ever seen The Monarch off the Glen? I don’t mean any old red deer stag posing against a backdrop of Highland clichés – I mean the actual painting by Edwin Land seer which was saved for the Scottish nation in March this year by a remarkable fundraising campaign.

The owners, Diageo, agreed a price of £4 million with the National Galleries of Scotland, rather than put it up for auction where it might well have made £8 million.

Contributors included the Heritage Lottery Fund (£2.65 million), the Scottish Government (£100,000) and a public appeal (£266,000) in which donations came from every corner of Scotland, many corners of Britain beyond Scotland and some unlikely corners of the world such as Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Anchorage, Alaska. All this for a large painting of a red deer – it’s 165.8cm by 171.2cm, roughly 5ft 6in square in old money – better known for its capacity to sell whisky, soup, shortbread, butter and much else rather than for its contribution to the reputation of Scottish art.

“Four million? Really?” I thought. “For that overblown dollop of Victoriana?”

Yet at the time of the sale, a National Galleries of Scotland statement included this: “…for many it encapsulates the romance of Scotland’s natural wonders.”

And who can argue with that? That is exactly what the painting does. That is why it still turns heads, sells whisky by the gallon and shortbread by the ton.

I fear we have Queen Victoria and Sir Walter Scott to blame. Their romancing of Scotland’s natural wonders pretty well screwed up the Highlands for the next 200 years. We reap their legacy still.