The Greats: Masterpieces from the National Galleries of Scotland

“The Greats: Masterpieces from the National Galleries of Scotland” brought more than seventy paintings and drawings from Edinburgh to the Art Gallery of New South Wales as part of the Sydney International Art Series 2015–2016. Spanning four centuries from the Renaissance to Impressionism, the selection drew from across all three institutions of the National Galleries of Scotland and included works by Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, El Greco, Rubens, Velázquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Turner, Monet, Degas, Gauguin, and Cézanne. Nearly all of the works were being shown in Australia for the first time, making the exhibition one of the most significant gatherings of Old Master paintings ever presented in the country.

The Sydney showing was the final stop in an extended international tour. Ten works from the Scottish National Gallery had first been presented at the Frick Collection in New York from November 2014 to February 2015. The tour then expanded to fifty-five paintings at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth (June to September 2015) and at the de Young Museum in San Francisco (March to May 2015), where it was titled “Botticelli to Braque.” The AGNSW presentation grew further still, adding drawings and watercolours alongside the paintings and organising the display across seven rooms, including one recreating the Octagonal Room of the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh.

Vermeer’s “Christ in the House of Martha and Mary” (c. 1654–1655), lent by the Scottish National Gallery, was one of the exhibition’s centrepieces. Unusually large by Vermeer’s standards and his only known painting on a biblical subject, the work entered the Scottish National Gallery in 1927 as a gift from the sons of William Allan Coats. The AGNSW showing was curated by Richard Beresford, Senior Curator of European Art, who positioned the canvas within the exhibition’s broader exploration of how European painters across different centuries rendered light, texture, and the quiet drama of interior scenes.