AFRINGE merry-go-round, or a house of mirrors? The comings and goings on Edinburgh's festival scene are enough to spin the brain.
It began when the "Wizard from Oz", former Fringe marketing manager Martin Reynolds, returned to Scotland earlier this year after a spell at the Sydney Opera House. Stopping briefly at the Edinburgh International Festival, he then parachuted back in
to the Fringe press office just as Duncan Fraser, the marketing manager there, left the box-office chaos for a job at the Adelaide Fringe.
This week Reynolds takes up a new post as marketing chief at Festivals Edinburgh, selling city razzmatazz around the world. Currently manning the Fringe press office is another former Fringe marketing guru, Reynolds's former colleague Owen O'Leary. The Diary is glad to see these old pros are bringing sanity back, but let's take the next natural step and reinstall Paul Gudgin as director…
Capturing a wild lifeTHE Intimate Portrait, opening tomorrow at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, is a stunning showcase of drawings, miniatures and pastels by the likes of Ramsay and Reynolds. Thankfully it will be here all winter to warm us up.
Tucked away on one wall, however, among all kinds of actresses and eccentrics from the 17th and 18th centuries, is one of the most famous transvestites in art history, or indeed any history.
The Chevalier D'Eon – whose full name was Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d'Éon de Beaumont – was a dashing writer, diplomat and spy, who first adopted female attire on secret missions, as spies are wont to do.
Later in his career, he dressed and lived as a woman by royal command, but continued to give ferocious fencing demonstrations in London, wearing the Croix de St Louis he was awarded by King Louis XV.
Drawn by the artist George Dance in 1793, he looks like a frumpy, bonneted, old madame with a medal on her bosom. After his death, an autopsy established his true sex and the surgeon kept one of the testes.
Collection for saleA GREAT British collection goes on show at Mansfield Traquair centre on Broughton Street on Monday. Sotheby's is selling the art collection of the late Sir David and Valerie Scott, who between them bought 240 paintings from 1914 until their deaths in 1986 and 2006 respectively.
The Edinburgh exhibition follows showings in Hong Kong, Sydney, Melbourne, Los Angeles and New York. Highlights include Sophie Anderson's No Walk Today, a classic romantic image of Victorian childhood, bought for 14 guineas in the 1920s and now estimated at £600,000-800,000.
Scottish paintings include a view of Glen Rosa on the Isle of Arran by William Dyce and landscapes of Edinburgh, Fife, Berwickshire, Arran, Tweedsmuir and Roxburghshire.
Celebratory tie-upsBROADCASTER Janice Forsyth and aerial artists All About Nothing entertained at the Music Hall in Aberdeen for the Arts and Business Scotland Awards this week, where gongs were dished out in recognition of fruitful and innovative relationships between arts groups and businesses.
The former chairman of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Tom Thomson, won the A&B Scotland Award for Leadership.
Winning partnerships between business backers and arts organisations included the Bank of Scotland and the Aye Write! Book Festival; Whyte & Mackay (Jura Malt Whisky) for its writers' retreat with Scottish Book Trust; Scottish Widows and Arts@Work; Talisman Energy (UK) and the St Magnus Festival; Bank of Scotland and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe; Henzteeth and the National Library of Scotland; and the Orkney Auction Mart and The Pier Arts Centre. Congratulations to them all.
The full article contains 606 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
