AN exhibition will explore how Scotland became associated in the popular imagination with images of bagpipes, tartan and rugged Highland heroes.

Wild and Majestic: Romantic Visions of Scotland presents over 300 items, including a souvenir from the execution of Lord Lovat, a first edition of poetry supposedly by Gaelic warrior-bard Ossian and a mourning pin Queen Victoria had made to commemorate John Brown, her servant at her beloved Balmoral retreat.

The National Museum of Scotland’s exhibition explores efforts made to preserve Highland traditions in the wake of post-Jacobite persecution and how Scotland’s ties with the Romantic movement led to the birth of its tourism industry and inspired the Hanoverian royal family’s changed outlook on the country.

Spanning the defeat of the Jacobites at Culloden in 1746 to Victoria’s death in 1901, Wild and Majestic seeks to “uncover the relationship between romance and reality” and how popularised images of Scotland and the Highlands have roots in history.

Curator Dr Patrick Watt, says the exhibition, which is sponsored by Baillie Gifford Investment Managers and presented in partnership with Sabhal Mor Ostaig, covers a fascinating and contested period of history.

“There are competing claims, still, over the extent to which those symbols of Scotland we see today are Romantic inventions, or authentic expressions of an ancient cultural identity,” he says.

“Right at the start of that period, you have a country which is changing rapidly. With the end of the last Jacobite rebellion, a bunch of restrictions were put in place on people living in the Highlands. We wanted to unpick how we got from that part of history to this romantic, idealised view of Scotland.”

The period includes key events such as the Highland Society of London’s successful repeal on the ban on Highland dress in 1782, King George IV’s visit to Edinburgh in 1822 and the beginnings of the Highlands as a tourist destination.

Queen Victoria’s trips to Scotland were part of that first wave of tourism. With the purchase of the Balmoral estate, her ideas about Highland culture were widely popularised.

“Her death in 1901 seemed a fitting place to bookmark the exhibition,” says Watt. “If you think in terms of our national dress, when you go to buy a kilt or hire one, it’s the same kind of style that Queen Victoria was having made for her servants at Balmoral in the 1870s and 1880s. She very much standardised this idea.”

As well as royalty, other prominent names to feature among the vast number of objects on display include Sir Walter Scott, Robert Burns, artists such as Ingres, landscape painter John Knox, Turner and Henry Raeburn, composers Ludwig Van Beethoven and Felix Mendelssohn.

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READ MORE: Our top selections from Wild and Majestic

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Also included are items relating to poets William and Dorothy Wordsworth and Lord Byron, whose 1807 poem Lachin y Gair (Lochnagar) is quoted in the exhibition’s title.

Among other prominent Scots to feature are Ossian author-translator James Macpherson, folklorist Alexander Carmichael and David Stewart of Garth, the soldier-historian credited with creating the modern Scottish regiments.

On display will be a banner from the 84th Regiment, often known as the Royal Highland Emigrants. Though comprised of Scots who often had Jacobite sympathies, the regiment fought for the British government during the American War of Independence. Strikingly, its banner features Gaelic wording.

“From items like the banner, it’s quite clear that Gaelic and other Scottish symbols are being readily accepted in the British Army,” says Watt. “In the late 18th century a high proportion of Scottish males are serving and you see things like dirks and claymores, these symbols of martial Scottishness, being incorporated into the British Army. This is where the whole Romantic image of the Highlander develops.”

June 26 to November 10, National Museum of Scotland, Chambers Street, Edinburgh, £10, £7.50 and £8.50 concs. Tel: 0300 123 6789. nms.ac.uk/wildandmajestic #wildandmajestic