This exhibition marked the 80th birthday of one of Scotland's greatest artists, Ian Hamilton Finlay. For the first time, Inverleith House in the Royal Botanic Gardens joined forces with Ingleby Gallery to stage 2 major exhibitions of Finlay's work. These, together with an exhibition curated by Ingleby Gallery at the Scottish Poetry Library of rare early prints from Finlay's Wild Hawthorn Press, presented a long-awaited insight into the work of a man now widely and internationally acclaimed as one of the leading artists of his generation.
Ingleby Gallery's exhibition, L'IDYLLE DES CERISES, centred around a proposal commissioned for the gallery garden conceived by Ian Hamilton Finlay and Pia Maria Simig (in collaboration with Peter Coates) relating to the eponymous text by J.J Rousseau. Preparatory drawings and sculptural maquettes were presented alongside two other groups of works: one devoted to previously unseen sculptures relating to the French Revolution, a favourite subject of Finlay's, and another celebrating his many garden proposals on Revolutionary themes.
