Six Artworks You Shouldn't Miss at The Greats

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Not everyone has the coin to be flitting off to Scotland, London or Rome to see a European masterwork, but luckily the new exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales is bringing the art to you. Botticelli, Titian, Rembrandt, Monet, Gaugin, Boucher, Watteau — they're the stuff art history exams are made of, but unless you've made a trip to the National Galleries of Scotland, the Uffizi or the Louvre, you mightn't have seen one up close.

Luckily, the Scots are lending a handful of their very best artworks to Sydney's AGNSW for The Greats: Masterpieces from the National Galleries of Scotland. Sure, Leonardo da Vinci sketches and Titian nudes sell themselves, but there's a handful of works you shouldn't miss — they've got some pretty damn awesome stories behind them if you look close enough (please do not actually look behind the paintings).

JOHN SINGER SARGENT — LADY AGNEW OF LOCHNAW

At first glance, American artist John Singer Sargent's 1892 work could be mistaken for the dreaded label: 'lovely'. But this work has a far more interesting story behind it, beyond being a beautiful portrait of Lady Gertrude Agnew, the wife of Sir Andrew Agnew, 9th Baronet. For the subject, the painting launched her as a society beauty. After the work received widespread praise, Lady Agnew would later establish her own private salon in London. Ironically, the costs of sustaining such fine style led Lady Agnew to sell her own portrait to the Scottish National Gallery in 1925. Mink ain't cheap.

SIR HENRY RAEBURN — THE SKATING MINISTER

Considered the 'Scottish Mona Lisa' and listed in a recent publication as one of the 1000 paintings you must see before you die, Sir Henry Raeburn's The Skating Minister is already one of the most Instagrammed paintings of the exhibition. Reverend Robert Walker is the subject in question, and received a whole lot of social thumbs ups for this stunning painting at the time. Minister of the Canongate Kirk and member of the world's first ever figure skating club, the Edinburgh Skating Club, Rev. Walker is pictured on Duddingston Loch. Best PR ever.

JEAN-BAPTISTE GREUZE — A GIRL WITH A DEAD CANARY

Full disclosure, this editor has a love/hate relationship with Jean-Baptiste Greuze. Constantly bringing his 'moralistic' paintings to the Salon from the 1750s onwards, Greuze was a strong believer in 'educational' paintings, hoping to make observers more 'virtuous' after viewing his paintings. It's 18th century, patriarchal France — you can probably see where we're going here. Many of Greuze's genre paintings and portraits meant to 'educate' young women in ways of behaving (classic), especially in the age ol' male-determined realms of promiscuity and sex. This painting in particular was praised at the time for being a metaphorical representation of lost virginity, with a young girl looking forlorn after the fact. In case you didn't get it, Greuze has painted a dead bird in the centre, to sledgehammer the point home. Greuze would repeat this lost virginity metaphor in multiple paintings, interspersed with broken eggs, broken mirrors, broken pitchers. GET IT? DO YOU GET IT? As stunning and technically beautiful as this work of pure realism is, the man and metaphor behind it make this writer want to use a Tardis simply to deliver a firm backhand.

DIEGO VELAZQUEZ — OLD WOMAN COOKING EGGS

Seeing a Velazquez is its own reward, but this one's a doozy. Painted in 1618 when the artist was just eighteen or nineteen years old, Old woman cooking eggs is one of the artist's earlier works, using striking chiaroscuro and figurative realism to illuminate a woman frying up a couple of eggs in a murky darkness. The detail is next-level in this work, from the cutlery to the egg whites. No Velázquez of comparable importance has been seen before in Australia, so you'd better pay it a visit.

FREDERIC CHURCH — NIAGARA FALLS (AMERICAN SIDE)

If you never thought looking at a painting could be compared to watching a whole film, get ready for a cinematic experience with Frederic Church's epic, epic, epic landscape painting. Before the advent of cinema, Church's spectacular paintings did the same job. He would organise one-work shows that travelled throughout the States and display the work in a darkened room with the painting spot-lit. The space where this painting is now hung in the Gallery has been designed to evoke this experience, where audiences can sit, stare and get lost in the drama of the painting.

GERRIT DOU — AN INTERIOR WITH A YOUNG VIOLA PLAYER

You'll have to watch your nose when you get up close to Gerrit Dou's tiny work, this is some serious detail. The father of the so-called fijnschilders (fine painters), Dou was committed to the little things, the tiniest elements ditched in later art movements. According to the AGNSW, this painting is rendered so precisely that you can identify the open book in the painting as popular Dutch songbook at the time De Friesche Lust-Hof (The Frisian Pleasure Garden).

The Greats: Masterpieces from the National Galleries of Scotland runs October 24 to February 14. Tickets are $22 adult, $18 concession and available from the Gallery or the website.