The National Gallery's summer exhibition is always a large-scale blockbuster, and this year is no exception. The entirety of the upper galleries has been filled with Impressionist works and the sheer number of paintings on display is enough to occupy a good portion of time for even the most brisk gallery-goer.

Work from all of the famous names in French Impressionism is presented, along with paintings from contemporaneous and Impressionist-influenced Scottish artists. The Scottish Colourists and Glasgow Boys—probably the two most influential groups in modern Scottish art—are well-represented and the exhibition attempts to elucidate the ways in which they took cues and ideas from continental Impressionism and applied it to Scotland.

More than this, however, the viewer is presented with information on the commercial origins and trade histories of the paintings from Degas, Manet, Pisarro and others which influenced the Scots. Art in the North and economics are, it seems, inextricably linked: as Scotland, especially Glasgow, rose in mercantile importance at the end of the 19th century, a group of wealthy industrialists and businessmen began to collect Impressionist works at a rapid rate. The number of famous and artistically significant works which were originally purchased by these collectors is surprising, a fact which pushes the viewer towards perhaps the most salient point of the exhibition – the fact that Impressionism and Scotland are more closely tied than most realise.

Although the large scale and broad scope of the exhibition leaves it seeming, at times, unfocused or disjointed, the works on display are well worth the ticket price, laying down intriguing and meaningful claims about both Impressionism and Scotland.