Subsequently he was granted travel scholarships to the Middle East and, later, North Italy and the Balkans. He has travelled regularly throughout Europe to visit and paint in watercolour buildings and interiors from the Renaissance to the Baroque. Over several years he worked on commissions for the
National Trust and in 1987 was invited by the Prince of Wales to paint a series of interiors of
Balmoral, later completing a further sequence at
Highgrove in 1994. In 1988 he was commissioned by the
House of Commons to paint four interiors in the
Palace of Westminster. Hugh Buchanan’s paintings are in the Collections of the Queen, Queen Elizabeth the late Queen Mother, The Prince of Wales, the
Victoria and Albert Museum, Edinburgh City Art Centre, the
Palace of Westminster, the
University of Edinburgh, the
University of Aberdeen, the
Bank of Scotland, the
Royal Bank of Scotland, the
Fleming Collection,
Deutsche Bank, the
National Trust for Scotland and the
National Trust for England. In 2002 he was commissioned by the
House of Lords to paint the lying in state of the Queen Mother at the
Palace of Westminster. In 1987 he was one of Ten British Watercolourists shown at the
Museo de Bellas Artes in
Bilbao, Spain. In 1991 he exhibited at the
Lincoln Center, New York. In November 1998 five works by Hugh Buchanan were included in the exhibition
Princes as Patrons: The Art Collections of the Princes of Wales from the Renaissance to the Present Day shown at the
National Museum and Gallery,
Cardiff. In 2005/6 his paintings featured in
Watercolours and Drawings from the Collection of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, at the
Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh and the
Queen’s Gallery, London. In 1994 Buchanan was given a major retrospective by the National Trust at
Petworth House. His work has featured in two limited edition publications with accompanying texts by Peter Davidson:
The Eloquence of Shadows (1994) and
Winter Light (2010). In spring 2000 he was a major participant in
The Art of Memory: contemporary painters in search of Marcel Proust, a theme exhibition which with new contributions by the artists participating travelled to the National Theatre on the South Bank in January 2001. He took part in the theme exhibitions
Roma in 2003,
Lair of the Leopard (2005),
Everyone Sang: a view of Siegfried Sassoon and his world (2006),
РОДИНА: contemporary painters from the West winter in Russia (2008),
That gong-tormented sea: contemporary painters pursue the idea and reality of Byzantium (2009) and
Jumping for Joyce: Contemporary painters revel in the world of James Joyce (2013). Buchanan's exhibition of libraries,
Enlightenment, was shown at the
University of Aberdeen in 2009. In 2010 his exhibition
Words and Deeds explored the archives at
Drumlanrig and
Traquair in the Scottish borders. In 2013,
The Esterhazy Archive, paintings of documents at
Forchtenstein south of Vienna, one of the properties of the Hungarian princely family
Esterházy, was shown at Summerhall in Edinburgh. In the same year he was invited by the
National Library of Scotland to paint a series of compositions of the
John Murray Archive which were exhibited at the Library in 2015. In June 2017 he was invited by The Scottish Gallery to exhibit a major collection of watercolour paintings entitled
New Town in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the
New Town in Edinburgh. The exhibition is devoted to the interplay of light and space both in interiors and in the external architectural features of these Georgian houses. The catalogue of the exhibition contains essays by
Duncan Macmillan, Adam Wilkinson, Director of
Edinburgh World Heritage, Ian Gow, Chief Curator Emeritus of the
National Trust for Scotland and Peter Davidson of
Campion Hall, Oxford. In November 2018, the John Martin Gallery in London hosted an exhibition of his watercolours entitled
Fragments of a Classical Twilight, showing details of late 19th and early 20th century
Beaux Arts buildings in London, in Philadelphia and in Rome, and of the play of light in their interiors. ==Personal life==