"WHO PAINTED THE SKATING MINISTER?" BBC Arts documentary 2006

[Music] acquired by the National Gallery's of Scotland in 1949 the portrait of the Reverend Robert Walker better known as the skating Minister is one of Britain's best-loved paintings and an international icon since it was first publicly displayed the work has been attributed to Scotland's great portrait painter Sir Henry Raeburn but in recent years that assumption has been questioned distinguished art historians are now at loggerheads and two camps have formed each led by a passionate advocate I've always thought Riven painted it many people have had doubts I've never heard the slightest dare it actually I have to root out all of the Scottish artists and that's obviously including Henry Raven I think it may be a pity everyone is completely debunked because the connection between Raven and the skating Minister is hallowed almost in the last 20 years it's just its popularity has just grown and grown and grown and and it's a painting that suddenly become out there I do think it is one of these images that has that has an instant hit and he's ended up here being a kind of logo for the National Gallery's the National Gallery's I think have been clever enough to pick up on that but will art lovers feel short-changed if the poster boy of the Scottish art turns out to be the work for French painter Henry Raeburn was born in 1756 the same year as Mozart and was celebrated as the greatest Scottish portrait painter of his age from the studio in Edinburgh snoo town he painted the man of genius of the Enlightenment as well as key figures in Scottish society over 1000 sitters have their portraits painted by Rabin so how did his most famous painting end up sharing its attribution card with another artist [Music] this is the official catalog of the national gaseous cotton this is still quite to this day and in the short entry on the reverent Roble Walker which is given to Henry Raeburn there is a there is a sentence that states the following type of canvas style of painting and scale of figure have no parallel in Ray Bans work now that is an astonishing statement to make and it's not even though it's been known by the specialist it's known been known by the National Guards of Scotland curators that is I would say that is a vote of no-confidence that vote of no-confidence has resulted in a highly unusual change to the skating ministers attribution card the card says by Sir Henry Raeburn 1756 to 1823 those are his dates recent research has suggested that the picture may be by or appeared on Lew who spent some time in Edinburgh during the end of the 18th century what does it take to change the attribution of the painting to change it irrevocably you need to make a pretty convincing case the case against Craven was made in an article in the prestigious art publication the Burlington magazine dividing art experts across the world from the Louvre to the Met in New York it's author Steven Lloyd of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery is convinced that neither Henry Rabin nor any of his Scottish contemporaries could have been the artist behind the skating Minister so he ruled out the contemporary Scottish artist you have to look at the the visiting artists and there's only one candidate at this date in the 1790s who's an artist of the sophistication and of the working that style and format that is you see in the painting of the skating Minister and that is an artist called Orry Pierre Don Lu what then convinces you from da Luz style that he was the painter of the skating Minister because the painting of the skating mister is very similar in terms of format in terms of composition in terms of the figure in terms of the way that the paint is applied the precision the crackle or the cracking of the paint these are all aspects that can be seen in other paintings by da Lu [Music] perhaps there is a clue in the large painting of the naval hero Admiral Adam Duncan that hangs in the Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh it is one of dole whose major Scottish Commission's Adam Duncan became great hero he was the biggest hero in in Britain before Nelson and he was painted many times but the figure that I'm most interested in is the the officer seen in the middle background on the Left seen in profile about moving forward on one leg with one leg trailing behind and looking upwards in profile with the trumpet he's depicted chatting instructions up into the rigging two other Marines at the height of the battle but is there to me there are many parallels there's compositionally in iconographically between that figure in particular and the figure in the skating Minister I would like to say something about the image actually because I think this is where a number of art historians have gone wrong with this painting they've seen it has such an unusual image they've only seen the image the varnish in the narrative of the painting and one really has to come up with a whole series of these these similarities to make anything out of it at all [Music] lying deep in the Scottish Borders from Landry Castle home of the Duke of Buccleuch in the family's private collection built up over many generations are too rarely seen Scottish Potter's by Olly Pierre Don Liu what we have here is a very interesting and unusual portrait of part of a pair as two sergeants sergeant Mather here holding the pike running towards us and the pair is of Sergeant Stevenson they're both dressed in the uniform of the Dumfriesshire militia dholu is a painter that we know is a very fine draftsman and many of his drawings do survive and he works out composition so we see this very carefully and artfully constructed a picture but of course we're first struck by the originality of the pose this is one of the great characteristics of Dali the animated lively pose in motion [Music] so how exactly did Don Liu end up in Scotland his journey like that of most French Royalists was to escape the horrors of the revolution leading the exile was Charles Philippe Borbon known as Monsieur Comte d'Artois later he was destined to become the last king of France but in 1796 he and his reduced entourage were welcomed in Edinburgh and one of those people who comes up from London to paint a portrait and a series of portraits of the exiled French royal family is Don Liu and the key portrait he has to do is of of the Comte d'Artois with dholu in Edinburgh at various times between 1796 and the end of the century is it possible he also painted the skeety Minister now the French style of painting is to work slowly and to build up the painting and if you work in different stages on the painting the paint cracks and it paints in what we call crazy paving if you can see there are circular patterns that the paint has cracked all over the surface of the painting in a very distinctive French way and experts in French art who've looked at this painting very closely see a French painting and this is one of the main reasons why experts have become have begun to doubt this painting as as as by Henry Raeburn because of the way it's cracked because of the way the painting has cracked now I'm quite dumbfounded by that because I paint in cracks for a whole variety of reasons and there's no way you can be scientific about it it depends on the artists technique depends on where the pictures been kept how much has been abused how much has been cared for totally unpredictable this crackle Europe which all old paintings have [Music] can a forensic examination of the canvas reveal who the artist is or is not at the conservation department of the National Gallery's of Scotland a variety of investigative techniques are used these include x-raying the painting to see what is happening beneath the layers of paint what can it tell us about the cracking the canvas response to environment responds to the motivation the air is continuously a movement them their ground is relatively inelastic and tends to crack with time and what you see here is the tracking stemming from the ground there's no it's completely oblivious of the paint on the surface virtually it just goes straight across makes no distinction what kind of paint is on the surface clacking alone cannot be relied upon as evidence of who painted the skating Minister but what about the type of canvas that summons sisters no parallel in ribbons work I think I've recorded about 10 out of 200 paintings so it isn't very common so common or not reeben did work with the same type of canvas that was used for the skating minister they haven't looked carefully enough that the way Rabin applied the paint to the ground which is on the canvas they haven't looked at the fabric they haven't looked at the manufacturing of this wonderful object they haven't seen they haven't seen his handwriting and this is where it's sort of pleat with ribbons very very individual handwriting which I could take you to loads of other ribbons and point out exactly the same handwriting this is Ravens signature [Music] the Reverend Robert Walker and Henry ribbon knew each other as both were trusted members of a select group of men the royal company of archers the personal bodyguard of the monarch whenever he or she is in Scotland what do you see looking at this painting and is distinctively reborn esque gosh it's got so many features of ribbon in it I mean it's a wonderfully textural picture you know you can see the crunchy squelchy paint all over it so you know it's got ribbons really broad minor encapsulated all sorts of areas of the picture foreground to background but it's also got this very very fine detail as well that we see in the skating Minister for instance if you concentrate for instance on the area of the head and his right arm and glove you see Robin doing things that he does in the skating Minister you know get a very very fine painting of that ShamWow glove the little ridges along the fingers are very carefully depicted such a contrast to the way the tree trunk is painted great broad slabs of paint and these thongs that I think tension the fingers going between the fingers and then tied around the wrist precisely the way that Raven pins the earth the leather straps and the inkle cordon on Walker's escape skating feet so the surface texture of the pending here of this bending is so different from anything that downloaded don't lose paintings of a kind of neoclassical polish and the detail is teased out from whatever is working right to the edge of the painting whereas you can feel that Raven he's not describing in this very careful way you know he's finding painterly equivalent for what he's depicting whereas Don Lou is no sense imitating what he sees as carefully as he can it's an entirely different manner it's a French neoclassical manner Raburn is doing something entirely different dholu is interested in the precision and the finish and the finesse of detail and a painting and you see this in the pipe you see this image particularly in the in the the feather on the top of the of the Hat I sit in the the braiding on the hat you sit only even in the trailing the trailing drapery to suggest the movement of the of the of the waistband there's very much a contrast the ostrich are rather disheveled ostrich feather in spencer's bonnet you can see that rare bone is simply he's worked a lot of fairly loose white paint onto that and to give this sort of broken up texture of the of the feather he simply turned his brush round and scored it with the handle now this is a technique we find him using in the portrait of the skating minister in the ice now here we have John the an infrared image off the picture but what do you deduce from that infrared penetrates as far as the ground and if they're really under drawing or adjustments they they will show if they're on the surface and here it's borne Erik very well we can see the fairly extensive restoration around the damage another damage here the Hat shows up very very prominently and typically the underlying shape shows more than the surface shape well because paint becomes more translucent with age that they the first hat as it where is no showing through quite prominent you can actually see with the naked eye the adjustments that he made and he raised the crown of the hat and it does seem that the artist and I dare I don't think that there's haven't Stanley ruled out the issue of the this possibility that there could be two artists two hands working in the same painting you know certainly conservators have looked at this have absolutely ruled out the fact that could be the case but there do seem to be changes they're not seen there are changes and there are Penta meant and that is is a puzzle in the picture changes of mind at a characteristic of ribbon spontaneous approach to his portraits but are not typical of Don Lou who carefully drew his compositions before starting to paint and you can see two most interestingly how he's tightened up the profile of the figure and putting a certain emphasis on the curves and movement of the figure you can see the liveliness in the brushwork that that's gone on this is somebody who kind of attacks a canvas a bit doesn't yes yeah and the scale I mean it's quite an adventurous brushwork it has long been believed that the background to the skating Minister depicts dudingston loss on the south side ephemera one of the places the Skating Club met however Steven Loy darkus that this is wrong he believes the location is lock end on the north side of Edinburgh this is the Ryan argued where the the the background the location for the the painting of the skating Minister I mean traditionally always given to that instant lock the other the other side of Arthur's Seat about a mile from here if you look at the background of the painting of the skating Minister what you see is this sharp profile all this this quite steep hill here of Arthur seat and then also you see this kind of quite steep Ridge of the source of crags the two features have obviously have been compressed and then what you see in the background are the Pentland Hills which is this range of Hills just to the south of Edinburgh that rise to about 1500 feet [Music] so who was the man who had become the skating Minister his name was Robert Walker and in 1784 at the age of 29 he was appointed by George the 3rd to take up the senior position at the Canongate Church in the heart of old Edinburgh with a palace of Holyrood at one end of his parish and Edinburgh Castle at the other Walker found himself in the center of an enlightened new world remember this is the time really of the French Revolution the Napoleonic Wars all coming along it was also the great time of the huge cauldron bubbling in Edinburgh of all these brilliant minds and people in all the different fields and Walker was part of that said he was also a kind of Loutre character Walker I think possibly more so it wasn't quite so pink as the others I get the feeling because for example I don't know if Emily else who did the kind of things that he did and being painted by a French Catholic painter if indeed he were would I think just fit into this kind of wide variety the palette that he had of activities was extraordinary he'd brought up in Rotterdam he wrote several books throughout his life he's a he's an academic and a scholar book on golf a book on the Dutch character as well as sermons he was a member of the Skating Club oddly enough he's a member of the wagering Club and he used to be the minister of Clement before he came here and his friends made a bet that he want you to regret ever leaving Graham and within the year that was actually entered in the books of the wagering club he wasn't a bit in common with many other churches at that time the Canongate Church had two ministers at least one of them was definitely painted by reborn the two ministers what hand-in-glove i suspect that his friend his colleague whatever cannon did quite a lot the pastoral work but each of them would have services in sunday they'd all have funerals weddings and and also the vast social life that ministers had in those days which they saw as part of the ministry they were in and out amongst the people the institution's keeping an eye on society and themselves be much entertained by society and Robert Walker did all that on February of the 25th 1949 lot number 80 now known as the skating Minister was purchased by the National Gallery's of Scotland for the modest sum of five hundred and twenty five pounds from Christie's in London one month later a typewritten letter outlining the history of the painting was sent from Christie's to Edinburgh that letter was a sworn testimony of miss Beatrix Scott the sole surviving great-granddaughter of the Reverend Robert Walker it was given to her lawyer in 1926 shortly before she died the rebound in my possession is the portrait of my great grandfather the Reverend Robert Walker DD minister of crime and 1770 of Canongate 1784 died June the 30th 1808 he's represented skidding on dudingston law and the portrait was painted by Ray barman 1784 I have always understood that ray Barden considered it his masterpiece the poor is being so good and the lovely frosty atmosphere of the scarring to ice with all the marks of the skates dr. Walker was a great skater on his death so Henry Burton gave the picture to his widow my great grandmother after her death it came to my mother to me it's a it's a it's a neutral it's a nonspecific piece of evidence it's a I think it's a piece of evidence someone has to handle very very carefully this description this very very to me this description is over specific there's there a kind of statements about it being given by Ray Ban two to two Walker's widowed that's all their business of the hissing eyes better there's this it's a rather too elaborated description for an 8 year old woman it's to me it sounds like a it's to me it sounds like a sales page and it it it contains this kind of warmth about her great-grandfather the the skating administer and she was obviously very very conscious of this painting all her life have you tested that testimony and the DS I don't mean how accurate is it yes I've tested a number of these dates as far as that's been possible and I can find no mistake among these dates that she's given and the names of the members of the family so we've discovered another document which might be relevant indeed is relevant to all of this which is the will of Jean Walker the Reverend Walker and I wondered what you made of this this is a trend this is it here the original handwriting this is part of the will of Jean Walker Walker the skating minister's wife as we do this meeting ministers were do yes who died in 1831 yeah could you just have a read at the bit we've highlighted down and give us your impression of what that tells you I also direct my said trustees or trustee to deliver to my grandchild Jean Walker all the portraits of which I made I possessed gosh that is interesting does that help add to the weight of the evidence and beat Rick Scott's testimony I think it does actually the fact that there were portraits of any kind in the family you know because you know one could easily have a will which you know was foreign state that didn't contain any pictures that's quite possible you know a Presbyterian ministers family might not contain any pictures and something might not contain any portraits oh no I found out quite fascinating fascinating yeah it was only after the Reverend Robert Walker died in 1808 that it was discovered that Henry Rabin had been appointed as one of the nine trustees of his will although both men were in Edinburgh at the same time to date no evidence has been found that or EPR dholu ever met the Reverend Robert Walker but there is a remarkable twist to the story of the skating minister's family and the last of robert Walker's descendants in the late 1870s another of his great granddaughters Margaret moved to Edinburgh to live with her aunt Janet when Margaret died unmarried her estate was left to her aunt when she and her husband the Reverend John Inslee died the contents of the Edinburgh home they had all shared her scent for sale the Dow's auction house in Edinburgh in November 1896 lot 91 was sold to a mystery buyer for an auction record sum of 37 pounds and 16 shillings that painting was described as the late dr. Walker by Henry Rabin it has been missing ever since we shared with Stephen Lloyd this irrefutable proof of the Walker family's connection to Rabin I'm I'm I'm slightly puzzled I must say I mean I do think it is it is very compelling I mean I think this is this does not add up it does make sense definitely what it does seem to sort of prove as the the Walker ribbond connection through that family and it also because Rabin dies in 1823 and the Reverend Robert Walker dies in a charade and to have the two they're together in the same description of a painting it does Maxima it does increase the chances that it is off Alma and the Reverend Robert Walker and it also strengthens the case that Raburn did paint a portrait of the rebel woman but you're saying on this occasion the more conventional portrait of Robin water yes the painting that's going to look like that could it just be possible that in addition to the missing painting that is yet another Walker portrait by Rabin waiting to be found we know that Rabin painted Walter Buchanan fellow minister to Robert Walker at the Canongate Church and we also know that Rabin painted Buchanan's wife as part of a matching pair perhaps Jean Walker the skating minister's Widow also had her portrait painted by Henry Raeburn perhaps the portraits of which she died possessed included one of herself and it now languishes amidst the dozens of unnamed Rabin portraits scattered across the world awaiting proper identification you know personally think that the balance of probabilities and that's all one can say is weighted now I think in having thought about the picture more in Ravens favour if I if I can put it this way Rabin if it's by rabe and then he's painting in a format favored by dalu but if it's by dalu he's painting in a style practiced by Rabin now it's more likely to my mind that you could paint in another art it's format than paint in a stock which is really quite different from the rest of your work I still think it's a painter painting like Rabin rather than a painter pity like Donnelly the degree of detail and dollar is simply not here the degree of finish isn't here so a painting that some people have thought is a typical it is a typical it does have a signature and has become a kind of signature work in rebounds career and I see no good reason to remove it from that position [Music] you [Music]

Channel: LEMAN PRODUCTIONS ARCHIVE

Views: 174,309

Keywords: Henry Raeburn, National Gallery of Scotland, Dr Duncan Thompson, Alan Taylor, Michael Clarke, Edinburgh, Duddingston Loch, Iconic painting, Skating, Minister, Canongate Church, Napoleonic, Henri Pierre Danloux, Drumlanrig, Duke of Buccleuch, Bourbon, Charles X, Holyrood House, Leman Productions, 2006, Edinburgh Castle, Burlington Magazine, National Portrait Gallery, Joshua Reynolds, Martin Leman, Royal Company of Archers, 英国广播公司纪录片, 英国广播公司艺术, بي بي سي وثائقي, BBCアーツ

Id: mU15JqSZaD4

Length: 28min 54sec (1734 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 20 2019