The Art of Golf

Organized by the High Museum of Art and the National Galleries of Scotland, The Art of Golf explores how European and American artists have depicted the royal and ancient game for more than four centuries.

From the seventeenth-century landscapes of Hendrick Avercamp to Andy Warhol's portrait of Jack Nicklaus, artists have approached golf from a diverse range of perspectives. In Scotland—the birthplace of the modern game—Charles Lees presented his masterpiece The Golfers in a heroic scale usually reserved for history painting, while in the United States, impressionistic landscapes by Childe Hassam and James McNeill Whistler underscored the relationship between golf, modern ideas about recreation, and genteel manners. Photographer Harold Edgerton dissected the game from a methodical, technological perspective, paralleling the revolution in equipment design and innovations in golf instruction, and Norman Rockwell's illustrations for The Saturday Evening Post poked gentle fun at the foibles experienced by a new generation of middle-class golfers. Finally, native Atlantan Robert Tyre "Bobby" Jones, Jr., was one of the game's most beloved players and deserves credit for popularizing the game on both sides of the Atlantic. Jones was a favored subject for artists throughout most of the twentieth century, having served as a bridge between the United States and Scotland—an ambassador, of sorts, beloved by both countries for his dedication, integrity, and love for the game.

The Art of Golf brings together extraordinary, rare, and even whimsical works of art to celebrate what Jones called "a game of considerable passion."

 
Charles Lees (Scottish, 1800–1880), The Golfers, 1847. Oil on canvas, 51½ x 84¼ inches.
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, purchased with the assistance of the Heritage Lottery Fund,
The Art Fund and the Royal and
Ancient Golf Club, 2002, PG 3299.

 
Margaret Fitzhugh Browne
(American, 1884-1972)
Portrait of Bobby Jones, 1928.
Oil on canvas, 37 x 31 inches
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 28.26

The Golfers, 1847, by Charles Lees

This large painting shows a match being played on the Old Course at the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, St Andrews. The center of everybody's attention is a decisive moment in a match between Sir David Baird and Sir Ralph Anstruther against Major Hugh Lyon Playfair and John Campbell of Glen Saddel. Lees carefully composed this complex scene, which includes over fifty individual portraits, using photographs of some of the golfers to help him.

Jointly owned by the National Galleries of Scotland and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, this masterpiece has never before traveled to the United States, though reproductions of it hang in golf clubhouses around the world. Displayed alongside the painting while at the High will be several preparatory sketches, all portraits of individuals who can be identified in the painting, and an early photograph by Hill and Adamson to which Lees referred as he composed his painting.

Charles Lees was born in Cupar, Fife. He trained as a painter in Edinburgh with the eminent portraitist, Sir Henry Raeburn. After six months in Rome he returned to Edinburgh where he established himself as a portrait painter. Lees was elected a Royal Scottish Academician in 1830. From the 1840s Lees built himself a reputation as a specialist in depicting sporting subjects; The Golfers was his first major sporting picture.

Charles Lees (Scottish, 1800–1880), The Golfers, 1847. Oil on canvas, 51½ x 84¼ inches.
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, purchased with the assistance of the Heritage Lottery Fund,
The Art Fund and the Royal and
Ancient Golf Club, 2002, PG 3299.