SYDNEY—There it was drifting through the magpie song and around the sandstone Art Gallery of New South Wales on a sunny Sydney day, the distinctive misty-laden ministries of the lone bagpipe.
“I thought I was back in Edinburgh,” quipped director of the Scottish National Gallery, Michael Clarke CBE, speaking of young Matthew McGowan, The Scots College student playing his pipes on the gallery steps.
Mr. Clarke, and the lone piper, were launching the major summer exhibition of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, “The Greats: Masterpieces from the National Galleries of Scotland.”
‘The Greats’ presents over 70 works of the great masters from the Scottish collection, and spans 400 years of art from the Italian Renaissance, the Baroque in Southern and Northern Europe, the French and British Enlightenment to nineteenth century Scotland and Impressionism.
Included are religious and mythological subjects from masters like Titian and Botticelli, landscapes, still lifes and portraits from the likes of Velázquez, Vermeer and Constable, and concludes with works from more recent artists like Monet, Gauguin, and Cézanne.
Also included in the collection are over 30 old masters drawings by some of the greatest names in Western art, including Leonardo da Vinci and Poussin.
Mr. Clarke said the drawings were unique to the Sydney exhibition.
“They have been deliberately chosen to compliment the paintings,” he said.
