Editing Ossian (section)

===Britain, Germany and Scandinavia===
British artists began to depict the Ossian poems early on, with the first major work a cycle of paintings decorating the ceiling the "Grand Hall" of [[Penicuik House]] in [[Midlothian]], built by [[Clerk Baronets|Sir James Clerk]], who commissioned the paintings in 1772.  These were by the Scottish painter [[Alexander Runciman]] but were lost when the house burnt down in 1899, though drawings and [[etching]]s survive, and two pamphlets describing them were published in the 18th century.{{sfn |Okun |1967 |pp=331–334}} A subject from Ossian by [[Angelica Kauffman]] was shown in the [[Royal Academy]] exhibition of 1773, and Ossian was depicted in ''Elysium'', part of the Irish painter [[James Barry (painter)|James Barry]]'s ''magnum opus'' decorating the [[Royal Society of Arts]], at the [[Adelphi Buildings]] in London (still ''in situ'').{{sfn |Okun |1967 |pp=334–335}}

[[File:Nicolai Abildgaard - Fingal Sees the Ghosts of his Forefathers by Moonlight - KMS3986 - Statens Museum for Kunst.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|''Fingal Sees the Ghosts of His Ancestors in the Moonlight'', [[Nicolai Abildgaard]], 1778]]

Works on paper by [[Thomas Girtin]] and [[John Sell Cotman]] have survived, though the Ossianic landscapes by George Augustus Wallis, which the Ossian fan [[August Wilhelm Schlegel]] praised in a letter to Goethe, seem to have been lost, as has a picture by [[J. M. W. Turner]] exhibited in 1802. [[Henry Singleton (painter)|Henry Singleton]] exhibited paintings, some of which were engraved and used in editions of the poems.{{sfn |Okun |1967 |pp=336–338}}

A fragment by [[Novalis]], written in 1789, refers to Ossian as an inspired, holy and poetical singer.{{sfn |Schmidt |2003 |p=976}}

The Danish painter [[Nicolai Abildgaard]], director of the [[Copenhagen Academy]] from 1789, painted several scenes from Ossian, as did his pupils, including [[Asmus Jacob Carstens]].{{sfn |Okun |1967 |pp=339–341}} His friend [[Joseph Anton Koch]] painted a number of subjects, and two large series of illustrations for the poems, which never got properly into print; like many Ossianic works by Wallis, Carstens, Krafft and others, some of these were painted in Rome, perhaps not the best place to evoke the dim northern light of the poems. In Germany the request in 1804 to produce some drawings as illustrations so excited [[Philipp Otto Runge]] that he planned a series of 100, far more than asked for, in a style heavily influenced by the linear illustrations of [[John Flaxman]]; these remain as drawings only.{{sfn |Okun |1967 |pp=338–345}} Many other German works are recorded, some as late as the 1840s;{{sfn |Okun |1967 |pp=335–346}} word of the British scepticism over the Ossian poems was slow to penetrate the continent, or considered irrelevant.