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Jackie Wullschläger’s personal choice for the National Galleries of Scotland

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This article is part of the FT Globetrotter’s guide to Edinburgh

Opened in 1859, the National Gallery of Scotland is housed in William Playfair’s neoclassical “temple of the arts” near Waverley Station. Last year it was renovated to include larger, brighter spaces and a vast new ground floor devoted to Scottish art from 1800 to 1945, transforming its identity. The proud collection of local works is distinctive, while the small, select European collection includes almost all the great names before 1900: Leonardo and Raphael, Rubens and Rembrandt, Velázquez and Vermeer, Monet and Cézanne. The result is a miniature anthology of Western painting from the Renaissance to the Impressionists. I started with five Scottish paintings and moved on to five European ones.

Plan of the National Gallery in Edinburgh showing Jackie Wullschläger's personal selection of works

1. ‘The Indian Carpet’ (or ‘Red Slippers’), c1942, by Anne Redpath

'The Indian Carpet' (or 'Red Slippers'), c1942, by Anne Redpath: a broadly brushed painting of a red chair and red slippers on a whitish-grey carpet depicting colourful trees and birds.
Anne Redpath’s ‘The Indian Rug’ sets ‘the terms of how European (not English) influence characterises the best works in the collection’ © National Galleries of Scotland. © Anne Redpath Estate. Bridgeman Images

This sumptuous interior with its contrast between exotic rugs and slippers opens the ground-floor exhibition of Scottish art. Redpath was the daughter of a tweed designer, which gave her an eye for colour, texture and varied and exciting surfaces. Her painting is an ideal introduction to the Scottish collection: the echo of Matisse’s decorative arabesques and the canted perspective set the terms for how European (not English) influence characterises the best works here. But, delightfully, there is, painted on the other side of the plywood, a typically Scottish scene, the gentle modulation of the paint. “Border landscape”. New Scottish Galleries/Level 2: Room 1

2. ‘Portrait of a Lady in Black’, c1921, by Francis Cadell

'Portrait of a Lady in Black', c1921, by Francis Cadell: an Art Deco portrait of a woman in a black dress and large hat, wearing white gloves and holding a black fan, against a green and lilac wall on which hangs a painting of a rose.
The subject of Francis Cadell’s ‘The Woman in Black’ was Bethia Hamilton Don Wauchope, an Edinburgh woman who frequently posed for the artist. © National Galleries of Scotland

A typical Edinburgh portrait. In the city’s tea rooms you can still see that mix of elegant middle-aged elegance, reserve and cheerful wit. Cadell makes it striking and modern with flat Art Deco glamour, bold cuts and simplified geometric design, but allowing for sensual details such as the still life of roses, playfully placed to adorn the hat. The setting is Cadell’s studio, Ainslie Place, Edinburgh, which had lilac walls and a black floor; the model, Bethia Hamilton Don Wauchope, 57, was a long-time favourite of his. Sickert admiringly compared Cadell’s “assertion of toughness” to that of Ingres. New Scottish Galleries/Level 2: Room 2

3. ‘Still Life’, c1913, by Samuel Peploe

'Still Life' by Samuel Peploe: a green, yellow and blue cubist style painting of a jug, cups, a bottle of water and a bowl of fruit on a table.
‘One of the most ambitious modernist works produced in Britain before the First World War’: Samuel Peploe’s ‘Still Life’ © National Galleries of Scotland

The Scottish Colourists – Peploe, John Duncan Fergusson, Francis Cadell (see below) and George Leslie Hunter – skipped London and looked to Cubist and Fauvist Paris for influence, leaving their avant-garde Bloomsbury contemporaries far behind. Peploe wanted to create “the perfect still life”; this painting of strong patterns, angular shapes and broad, structured brushstrokes laden with acid yellow and emerald is among the most ambitious modernist works produced in Britain before the First World War. New Scottish Galleries/Level 2: Room 2

4. ‘Margaret Lindsay de Everick, the Artist’s Wife’, 1758-60, by Allan Ramsay

'Margaret Lindsay de Everick, the Artist's Wife', 1758-60, by Allan Ramsay: a mid-18th-century portrait of a woman in a silk and lace dress.
A moment when Allan Ramsay brought a fresh informality to portraiture: ‘Margaret Lindsay de Everick, the artist’s wife’ © National Galleries of Scotland

Ramsay and Henry Raeburn (see below) are the godfathers of Scottish art, both portraying powerful, sympathetic portraits of the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment. Ramsay was also a romantic: in 1752 he eloped with a baronet’s daughter, marking the beginning of a long and happy marriage, though his father never forgave the couple. Here Margaret, dressed in lustrous silk and lace, turns from placing flowers in a china vase to gaze tenderly at her husband (and at us), a moment when Ramsay brought a fresh informality to the portrait. Mound Level/Level 3: Room 20

5. ‘The Minister Skating’ (‘The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch’), c1795, by Henry Raeburn

'The Skating Minister' ('The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Lake'), c1795, by Henry Raeburn: a clergyman in black clothes and hat skating balletically on a frozen lake
Henry Raeburn’s ‘The Skating Minister’ is one of Scotland’s most famous paintings. © National Galleries of Scotland

This balletic silhouette of a figure gliding across a frozen lake, leaving a circle of curving furrows and a froth of ice raised by its blades, is an icon of the National Gallery, so famous that it hangs in the main gallery, as if fame has elevated it to a higher level, beyond the local colour it gloriously celebrates. Confident, moving forward, keeping his balance, undaunted by nature or weather, with a focused, slightly amused expression, the minister embodies the secular virtues of the Enlightenment in endearingly comic form. Mound Level/Level 3: Room 20

6. ‘The Bridgewater Virgin’, c1507-8, by Raphael

'The Bridgewater Madonna', c1507-8, by Raphael: the naked infant Jesus in his mother's arms surrounded by a halo
This “Madonna and Child” by Raphael is one of two dozen paintings on loan from the famous Bridgewater Collection. © Bridgewater Collection, loan, National Galleries of Scotland

Since 1945, Edinburgh has enjoyed the loan of some two dozen paintings from the exceptional Bridgewater/Sutherland Collection, originating from the great Orleans collection that found refuge in Britain after the French Revolution. This is a perfect example of Raphael’s naturalism and spontaneity within harmony and grace: with their parallel gestures and exchange of gentle glances, the Madonna and Child – her hand supporting his body, his hand clinging to her veil – intertwine in an elegant serpentine form, their figures emerging vivid and intimate from the shadowy background. Mound Level/Level 3: Room 16

7. ‘Venus Rising from the Sea’ (‘Venus Anadyomene’), c1520, by Titian

'Venus Rising from the Sea' ('Venus Anadyomene'), c1520, by Titian: the goddess depicted as a voluptuous nude woman immersed up to her thighs in the sea, dripping her long, wet, reddish-brown hair.
Mythological but “a voluptuous woman, splendidly real”: “Venus Rising from the Sea” by Titian

She has the twisted pose of a classical statue, but Titian’s goddess born fully grown from the sea is a splendidly real woman, voluptuous, milky-skinned and rosy-cheeked, painted from life, wringing out her wet auburn hair as she wades through the shallow water. The mythological themes popular in Renaissance Venice inspired Titian’s most sensuous and luminous painting: here and, above all, in “Diana and Actaeon” and “Diana and Callisto”co-owned with the National Gallery in London and exhibited alternately at each venue for five years. When the couple are in residence, Edinburgh is a world-class destination for viewing Titian, with five paintings all originally by Bridgewater. Mound Level/Level 3: Room 15

8. ‘An Old Woman Cooking Eggs’, 1618, by Diego Velázquez

'An Old Woman Cooking Eggs', 1618, by Diego Velázquez: a painting of a woman in a red dress and white headdress tending a pan of eggs in a kitchen, watched by a boy dressed in black and holding a melon.
Velázquez painted ‘An Old Woman Cooking Eggs’ at the age of 19 © National Galleries of Scotland

Edinburgh is also worth a look for this kitchen interior, painted when Velázquez was 19 and displaying such astonishing realism that it makes the everyday transcendent. The play of light and shadow envelops figures and objects in a warm, calm atmosphere, but one imbued with tension by the disconnected gazes and suspended gestures of the old woman and the child. Bright textures (onion skin, bruised melon, curdled eggs, glazed terracotta) enliven every aspect, while suggesting the mutability of earthly things. Mound Level/Level 3: Room 13

9. ‘Fêtes Venétiennes’, 1718-19, by Antoine Watteau

'Fêtes Venétiennes', 1718-19, by Antoine Watteau: a scene of festivities in a bucolic glade alongside a nude sculpture of a woman.
‘The stone is translucent like water, the taffeta shimmers in a last burst of sunlight: Watteau’s ‘Fêtes Venétiennes’ © National Galleries of Scotland

Among many larger images, the silvery glow of Watteau’s small scene of lovers at dusk beneath a sensuous nude sculpture draws the eye. The stone is translucent as water, the taffeta shimmers in a last gleam of sunlight, heads bow beneath curling foliage, and the dance continues. The enamoured musician who beats out the rhythm has Watteau’s delicate features. Mound Level/Level 4: Room 23

10. JMW Turner: The Vaughan Legacy, 1795-c1846

'Heidelberg', c1846, by J.M.W. Turner: a landscape watercolour in diffuse red, blue and white of a stretch of water spanned by an arched bridge and the vague outline of a castle on a hilltop behind it. Groups of figures line the water's banks in the foreground.
Turner’s ‘Heidelberg’, c1846, is one of nearly 40 watercolours by the artist bequeathed to the gallery by Victorian collector Henry Vaughan. © National Galleries of Scotland, Henry Vaughan Bequest

The Victorian Art Collector Henry Vaughan 38 stunning Turner watercolours have left Scotland and will be displayed for free only in January, when the light is at its softest. Because they are so rarely exhibited, they are exceptionally well preserved and vibrant. Everyone has their favourites: mine are the light bouncing off the marble and the water in the “The Grand Canal next to the Salute” and pale palaces shining against the black silhouettes of the gondolas in “Balbi Palace”We only see them one month a year, but the anticipation is also a pleasure, and how gloriously they brighten up the winter. It can also be visited by appointment throughout the year at the Study room for prints and drawings

What are your favourite works of art from the National Galleries of Scotland? Let us know in the comments below. AND Follow FT Globetrotter on Instagram at @FTGlobetrotter

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