'Art history is very much alive,' says Lachlan Goudie

The enthusiasm of the artist as he explain the very human tale that links us with our predecessors is infectious.

On BBC Scotland from Wednesday, he presents new four-part series The Story of Scottish Art. Travelling from Orkney to Linlithgow, France to Italy, the son of figurative painter Alexander Goudie, who grew up immersed in the art world, makes a few surprising discoveries along the way.

“I lived in Rome for a year when I was 19. I did many of the things lots of artists from 300 years before had done themselves: I sketched and drew, I learned about art history,” he explains.

“In one particular gallery, the Villa Borghese, where I had spent many days sketching, I had never noticed in one of the rooms above my head there were all these frescoes by the Scot Gavin Hamilton. I didn’t even know who he was.

“Making this series was an opportunity to revisit that very place and instead of looking at all the great classical sculptures that were there when I first went, I looked up.”

The most ambitious television series about Scottish art in recent times, it covers 5000 years, from the earliest Neolithic art to the present day.

Seeing it through the eyes of an artist, is tells the compelling story of our social and political history.

“When I undertook the research and read the books that gave me one insight. The minute you go to these places and encounter the works of art, the stone circles, the little stone sculptures, the paintings, it’s actually quite emotional and moving,” he says.

“You realise this story has been going on for a great deal of time and the wonder of art is that it allows you to connect with the generations of people who have lived and worked in Scotland. That can take you back thousands of years.”

Another revelation for Lachlan came in Orkney where he is filmed with the Westray Wife, an ancient figurine found on the beach there, and the oldest sculpted human figure in Britain.

He describes the tiny piece of cut stone as “talismanic”.

“It was such a small and simple thing and yet on its surface you have these very subtle inscriptions to indicate the eyebrows, the eyes – a face of a figure,” he adds.

“This was an object that had been created 5000 years ago and my sense began to grow that these people, our ancestors, are not simply barbarians trying to survive in the world, they were similar to us in the sense that they had space in their imagination for aesthetics, for things that looked beautiful, the way they decorated their homes and their pottery.

“Why should they be that different? Why should we have the sense that we are the humans who know all about interior décor or making life look pretty?”

With political developments over the past year, from the referendum vote to the rise of the SNP, this has never been a better time for Scots to consider their history and take stock.

Art holds a mirror up, so that we can see ourselves, says Lachlan.

“Art history isn’t the dead thing you go to look at in art galleries and stare at things behind glass. It’s very much alive.

“We are in a period where the definition of an artist has exploded, we can work in any medium, any discipline. You can still argue that you are creating art.

“I think in Scotland we have had a real empathy with figurative painting. Since the days of the Enlightenment, when Allan Ramsay first emerged onto the scene as a Scottish portrait painter and became the first great Scottish artist.

“If you ask people about Scottish art, they’ll probably say the Glasgow Boys or the Colourists. Those artists do still resonate in our cultural imagination to the point that they have continued to influence artists. You see this kind of fluid, exuberant approach to the canvas and the work of Joan Eardley, just as you see it continuing in the work of an artist like Alison Watt.”

Scottish art shows that we have never been an insular nation. We have taken inspiration from our landscape, mythology and local history, and most importantly, from exploring other cultures.

“One of the big lessons for me and one of the aims of the programmes was to bring the subject not just to people who perhaps don’t regularly go into art galleries, also to people who think the idea of Scottish art is a minority subject that only applies north of Hadrian’s Wall.

“It’s not great because it’s Scottish, it’s fantastic because it’s the work of brilliant artists who are intelligent, emotional and powerful.”

The series showcases some of the best art on display around the country. From Kilmartin Glen in Argyll to Stirling Castle.

Lachlan, who grew up in Glasgow, has a particularly soft spot for The Macnab, a portrait by Sir Henry Raeburn on display at Kelvingrove in Glasgow.

“It’s a bit of a theatre piece, a charade, the character in the painting you think is a ridiculous shortbread Highland chieftain, a cliché, but actually by the time the portrait was painted this guy was completely bankrupt,” says Lachlan.

“He was the father of 32 children, a deflated figure. Look in the eyes of this man, the trauma in his face.

“Raeburn was a great, great artist, he could make someone look proud and grand but he could also do what painting is important for: he could look behind the surface and reveal some of the reality and the character in his subject.”

The Story of Scottish Art, from October 7, BBC2, 9pm