It's a chance in a lifetime to see the new and established rubbing shoulders. And it's too good to miss, says Sally Kerr

During the month of August in Edinburgh you become accustomed to complete strangers thrusting leaflets into your hand, often with reviews attached and all insisting that the play/comic/musical is a ''must see'' item. The implication is that your life will be forever blighted if you pass up this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Let me put in my pound's worth and tell you to go and see Scotland's Art at the City Art Centre, even if all you have is an afternoon in Edinburgh. You won't regret it.

It is not just that around 50 organisations and local authorities have lent paintings and sculptures. Nor that there are more than 200 works on show. No, this show, above all else, offers an opportunity to see some of

the best of Scotland's art, gathered from all over the country and exhibited right in the

heart of the city, just for your pleasure. There are Mackintosh's watercolours, Joan Eardley's Glasgow children, and Alexander Nasmyth's elegant,

classical landscapes.

Hot, Mediterranean Fergussons burn next to classic Cadell interiors. Art is traced from the very first independent artist, George Jamesone, who dominated portrait painting in the early seventeenth century, right up to our young lions (and lionesses) such as Alison Watt, Gary Anderson, and David Mach. There are powerful dark works from the new Glasgow School, painters Stephen Campbell, Ken Currie, and Peter Howson.

Lesser-known painters are also on show. Take, for instance, the artist Sam Bough. A nineteenth-century artist, Bough began work as an engraver, became a watercolourist, then a theatrical scene painter and a famous topographical and

landscape painter. His watercolours made him a pioneer by showing the art world (and society) that this form could flourish in its own right, rather than be a mere ''sketch''.

In Scotland's Art there are two Boughs - Landing the Fish, lent by the Scottish Fisheries Museum, and The Bass Rock After a Storm, lent by St Andrews University. Both are stunning pieces, Landing the Fish because of the detail in the fishing boats dry on the beach and the fisher families hard at work, and the liquid quality of the sky reflected on the wet sand illustrating Bough's awareness of Dutch seascapes.

The Bass Rock piece is much more melodramatic, the rock shrouded in spray, the sea a turbulent mass throwing up the mast of an unfortunate ship. On the right is a rainbow, almost too bright for the scene.

Significant Glasgow Boys' works are on view - Guthrie's Highland Funeral, a massive work from a young artist capturing the dark grief of a child's death, and his To Pastures New, a study of a goosegirl leading her charges out of frame left, a work that fuses Scottish life with European and Japanese artistic influences. Across from this hangs John Lavery's Tennis Party from Aberdeen's gallery, all cool greens and whites. Painted in Cathcart, Glasgow, in the 1880s it depicts a tennis game in mid-shot, the young ladies gathering up their long skirts to hit the ball, the bystanders relaxing around the wooden fence perimeter. It is a masterpiece of horizontals and verticals and a seminal piece for Lavery who by then was moving on from his early interest in realism to becoming a society painter. There are magnificent works from the East Lothian school - William Darling McKay's Turnip Singlers and

Robert Noble's exuberant study of the Castle Orchard at Longniddry. There is a whole corner dedicated to William McTaggart the Elder, including his perfect beach scene, The Wave, from Kirkcaldy Art Gallery and Museum, and downstairs his grandson of the same name has a rich, abstract red seascape.

The high Victorian artists Orchardson and Pettie present their richest theatrical scenes. There is drama with David Scott's triptych on William Wallace and Horatio McCulloch's Glencoe. Duncan Shanks fragmented winter riverscape sits beside David Donaldson's tranquil view of Loch Lomond. James McIntosh Patrick's view of the Tay from his studio window sits at right angles to James Cowie's study of two schoolgirls, a work rich with unspoken narrative.

John Bellany's work, Obsession, a scene of five fishermen like totem poles questioning life and its meaning, and Robin Philipson's Iconostasis - Large Cathedral, offer two alternative approaches to religious quandary, with Philipson's a rich concoction of oils liberally anointed to make the work almost a religious artifact in its own right.

This a show that demands a second and even third visit, but go once at least, and give yourself a visual treat. Afterwards, walk along through Princes St Gardens and up to the National Gallery whose own splendid Scottish collection will help complete your picture of Scottish art history. Then come right up to the present with a visit to the Royal Scottish Academy that is hosting Connections, a show of contemporary Scottish art where each academy member has invited a guest from one of the art disciplines to exhibit. The result is an interesting concoction, best, perhaps, for allowing the visitor to see some young artists such as Faye Phimister and Claire Banks.

As always with a show of this sort, there are some artists missing who perhaps should be there, but it is a pleasure to see the new and the established rubbing shoulders, and it is an impressive reminder of the strength and variety of Scotland's art today.

n Scotland's Art, City Art Centre, Edinburgh, until October 2; Connections, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, until September 19.