Possibly the greatest aerial shot of any city in the world, ever.
Alfred G. Buckham's matchless Aerial view of Edinburgh (1920). In order to get dazzling shots like this, Buckham would hang out of the aircraft with his leg tied to the seat with a rope 📷
Today we are announcing that we are ending our arrangement with the BP Portrait Award. We recognise the need to do all we can to address the climate emergency. More details here:
We have made a truly incredible discovery. A previously unknown self-portrait by Vincent Van Gogh has been found in our collection. Yes, you read that right! 🖌️👇
With the increasing popularity of TikTok the National Galleries Scotland felt it was time to reframe the collection.
“This new narrow format is clearly the way forward…and, of course, it frees up wall space which allows us to display twice as many works"
📷
@NialSmith
This staggering image of Edinburgh Castle wins the internet for today 😲
'Castle in the Cloud' was captured in the misty capital last night by Adam Bulley.
If sharing, Adam's FB post said: "Please do not post this image on social media without credit".
We are extremely sad to learn that John Byrne has passed away. Truly one of a kind, he was one of Scotland’s most masterful, maverick artists. Inventive, innovative and intriguing, John’s distinctive art stops you in your tracks and immediately draws you in.
Happy New Year, everyone!🎆
This celebratory painting depicts a beach resort on the Normandy coast. The artist's friend, Samuel Peploe, can be spotted left of centre, dressed in grey:
John Duncan Fergusson 'Dieppe, 14 July 1905: Night', 1905.
There’s only 3 months until Ray Harryhausen: Titan of Cinema opens! 📽️
Harryhausen created some of the 20th century's most magical cinema moments. And without him, modern cinema wouldn’t be what it is today.
We cannot wait to showcase his iconic work.
#Harryhausen100
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Ray Harryhausen was born 100 years ago, today.
@Ray_Harryhausen
's boundless imagination has lit up the minds of millions. His stop-motion genius made the impossible, possible.
Today, please share with us your thoughts & memories on Ray & his brilliant movies.
#Harryhausen100
We’re excited to unveil ‘Harold, the Ghost of Lost Futures’, a large-scale collage specially created for us by
@Coldwar_Steve
to coincide with our fab exhibition
#NGSCutPaste
() at
#ScotModern
Merry Christmas 🎄
This beautiful painting by William Crozier titled 'Edinburgh in Snow' captures the view from Princes Street Gardens looking to the west from the Mound towards the castle.
Find out more:
The Glasgow Girls were a community of interdisciplinary artists who received international recognition between 1885 and 1914. 🧵 🖌️
They were united by their determination to improve opportunities for women artists.
Learn more in our new video feature:
Meet Marie Maitland. Think of her as Scotland's 16th century Sappho. 🪶
Her poetry, which explores themes of romantic love between women, features in a treasured manuscript written in Scots. Despite this, her life and legacy are largely overlooked.⬇️🧵
“But pleasures are like poppies spread — You seize the flow’r, its bloom is shed; Or like the snow falls in the river — A moment white— then melts forever”.
Happy birthday to Scotland’s Bard,
#RobertBurns
#BurnsNight
@RobertBurnsNTS
Today is the hundredth anniversary of Joan Eardley’s birth. To mark this occasion, we've produced a special 3-part audio series in celebration of the artist’s life and work. 🎉
Episode 1, 'Painting Catterline and the sea', is available now:
#Eardley100
Ray Harryhausen's monsters, Martians and Medusa's have inspired many of today’s greatest movie-makers, writers, animators, illustrators & actors.
What's your favourite memory of Ray’s work, or of the great man himself? Comment below & share your own!
@Ray_Harryhausen
On Ray Harryhausen’s 99th birthday anniversary, we’re thrilled to share images of recently-restored models, pictured here with his daughter Vanessa.
Our show Ray Harryhausen | Titan of Cinema next year will be astonishing! ⚡️
📷 |
#Harryhausen100
'O my Luve is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve is like the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune...'
Happy Burns Night everyone 👋🤩😍🏴🤩🙌
👀⬇️ See THE image of the Robert Burns at
#ScotPortrait
-
#BurnsNight
We're delighted to share that visitors to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery - reopening Friday - can now view this striking new Ken Currie painting.
It depicts preeminent forensic anthropologist Professor Dame Sue Black. The work has never been publicly shown before.
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We are so excited to share that the Playfair Steps are now open, allowing access from Market Street to East Princes Street Gardens. They will open and close daily in line with the opening hours of Princes Street Gardens throughout the Fringe Festival.
The Gormley sculptures are coming back to the Water of Leith! 4 figures from Antony Gormley’s 6 TIMES artwork are being reinstalled at their original sites along the Water of Leith. We’ve worked closely with the artist & partners to resolve matters & to make sure...
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On
#ScotNatGallery
's birthday, here's one of its most popular artworks, John Singer Sargent’s mesmerizing Lady Agnew of Lochnaw.
It made Sargent an instant celebrity when first shown at
@royalacademy
; the sculptor Auguste Rodin named him “the van Dyck of our times”.
#159Years
To celebrate
@Ray_Harryhausen
| Titan of Cinema reopening on Monday we’ve let some iconic creatures loose around Edinburgh!
We’re giving away a pair of exhibition tickets and an exhibition book for you to enjoy! To enter, retweet this post and tag a friend in the replies below.
Thrilled to see our Ray Harryhausen show on
@WillGompertzBBC
's list of 2020's must-see exhibitions!
Lots of great exhibitions in that list; we can't wait to showcase the incredible art made by this cinema titan 📽️
📖 | Article here:
#Harryhausen100
An extraordinary old photograph of the top of Edinburgh's West Bow, taken sometime in the 19th Century by Alexander Adam Inglis.
You can easily see the top of the Royal Mile & with squinted eyes, St Giles' Cathedral off in the distance 📷
This celebrated painting by Victoria Crowe is set near her home in the hamlet of Kittleyknowe in the Scottish Borders.
Crowe frequently painted her neighbour and friend, the shepherd Jenny Armstrong - she is seen here as a small, dark figure set against the snow. ❄️
❄️If we don't tweet about it, is it even snowing?❄️
William Crozier, 'Edinburgh in Snow' (c. 1928).
This view from Princes Street Gardens looks towards the castle, silhouetted in the background. Spot the footprints which add some movement to this otherwise still painting.👣
Hugh MacDiarmid was born
#OnThisDay
in 1892. 🎂
Christopher Murray Grieve revived and renewed Scots as a poetic language. He used half a dozen pen names before settling for Hugh MacDiarmid, the name by which he is best known. 🖊️
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Edinburgh is one of the most haunted cities in the world, with an abundance of ghostly graveyards, spooky cellars & eerie alleyways.
In the spirit of that, here's Dan Dunlop's great photograph of Edinburgh Castle from Greyfriars. 📷
Charles Rennie Mackintosh was born
#OnThisDay
in 1868. 🎂
Glasgow-born Mackintosh is a major figure in the art nouveau movement. Primarily known as an architect, he also concentrated on aspects of interior design and painted watercolours.
Photograph by James Craig Annan.
Edinburgh Castle and the Nor' Loch (1824) by Alexander Nasmyth.
Nasmyth, who painted Scotland's iconic Robert Burns portrait, also captured the Castle in paint, around 200 years ago. The Nor' Loch covered the ground where Princes Street Gardens is now.
This extraordinary photograph of Edinburgh Castle from the Grassmarket was taken by photographic pioneer James Valentine in the nineteenth century.
Explore more of Valentine's incredible work: 📷🏰🙌
Hi Tweeters 👋 We're here, that is to say, on social media. And we've got plenty planned to keep you stocked up on inspiring, astounding art. (ps. we do requests 😉)
Don't forget our online collection is always there, waiting to be explored -
#JustGreatArt
Leonardo da Vinci's last words reputedly were,"I have offended God & mankind by doing so little with my life".
Today we celebrate him as the epitome of genius, a true giant of human history, who among *many* achievements painted this, The Last Supper.
Happy birthday Leonardo🎈
Scottish artist Samuel John Peploe began to paint 'en plein air' in around 1896, in North Berwick. He made this small, loosely handled work there in 1903 😀🎨
#JustGreatArt
#coast
In anticipation of Joan Eardley's centenary on 18th May, we're celebrating her career across the next 7 days. 🎉
We're kicking off with a Q&A...What do you want to know about the Scottish artist? Tweet your question using the hashtag
#Eardley100
and tag
@NatGalleriesSco
.
John Singer Sargent was born
#otd
in 1856.
His incredibly popular work, Lady Agnew of Lochnaw (1864 - 1932), is on display at the Scottish National Gallery:
Glasgow-born Charles Rennie Mackintosh was born
#otd
in 1868🎂🎉 . Although best known as an architect and designer, Mackintosh also produced a large number of drawings and watercolours, including this, The Road Through the Rocks, Port Vendres:
⭐Today's the day ⭐
Grayson Perry: Smash Hits is OPEN
Join us today at the National (Royal Scottish Academy) and explore four decades of artistic brilliance.
Don’t miss your chance to delve into the world of one of Britain’s most iconic contemporary artists.
#YoursToDiscover
Today in celebration of
@UffiziGalleries
#BotticelliSpringMarathon
, we share Sandro Botticelli's masterpiece The Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child (1485), which features red strawberries & blossoming pink roses, both carrying symbolic significance.
A very special painting of classical music icon
@NickyBenedetti
has been put on display at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.🎻
The portrait by Scottish artist
@Calum_Art
is the winning commission of
@SkyTV
#PAOTY
!🖌️
Today heralds 159 years since
#ScotNatGallery
first opened!
It now has some of art's greatest masterpieces, the world's leading collection of Scottish art & over 1.6 million yearly visitors, making it the UK’s most visited art gallery outside of London. 🎂
#159Years
Who is this woman staring out from this portrait? Her direct gaze, suspended in time, meets ours. 👀
Painted over 400 years ago by an unidentified artist, this is our only portrait of a female sitter who is neither a royal nor a noblewoman from this period.
One for
#LighthouseDay
: 'A Seascape, Shipping by Moonlight' by Claude Monet, about 1864. ⛵
This dramatic scene depicts a moonlit harbour in Honfleur, Normandy.
A great image from David peat's series 'An Eye on the Street, Glasgow 1968' named 'Boys in back lane with burning stick'.
Several of Peat's images from this same series appear in
#WhenWeWereYoung
, on until 13 May.
"We are all travellers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend". Happy birthday Mr Louis Stevenson 📖
Edinburgh in Snow (1928) by William Crozier... The painting shows Princes Street Gardens & Edinburgh Castle as viewed from the west, at the Mound. Look closely at the bottom left & you can see a figure trudging through the thick snow.
Ahead of our blockbuster exhibition Ray Harryhausen | Titan of Cinema - coming to Edinburgh in the summer of 2020 - we look at the profound influence that Harryhausen had on generations of visionary film-makers: 🎞️📽️🙌
Edinburgh's Lothian Road in the snow, taken by John Moffat 136 years ago ❄️
With today's weather, it looks like it did back then;
@edinburghcastle
& St Cuthbert's Parish Church remain, though we now have
@on_lothianbuses
instead of horse & carts!
#ThisIsEdinburgh
The picture on the right is van Gogh's famous Café Terrace at Night, painted in Arles, France in 1888. The photograph on the left is of the same setting as it looks today, some 130 years later 📷🖼️
The famous painting resides in Holland's
@krollermuller
museum
#LoveArt
Barra (1903) by Samuel John Peploe 🌤️💙
The Scottish Colourist first visited the island of Barra in the Outer Hebrides in 1894 & this bright, beautiful painting was created during his final trip to the island in 1903.
Scottish Colourist Samuel John Peploe was hugely fond of
#Iona
, and we're on board 😍 😍
The rocky, northern end of the island which was a sanctuary for the painter is captured in his beautiful work Iona Landscape: Rocks, pictured:
The mysterious image was revealed in an x-ray taken when we examined our Van Gogh painting 'Head of a Peasant Woman' for our upcoming exhibition A Taste for Impressionism.🔍
We are thrilled to have acquired the first Remedios Varo painting to enter a public European collection! Varo was a leading figure in Mexican Surrealism in the 1940s/50s. Fascinated by science she painted domestic scenes and strange otherworldly beings.
➡
Happy Birthday, Joan Eardley (1921-1963), one of Scotland's most popular twentieth century artists. 🌅⛵️🤩🙌
Celebrate by learning more about the life and work of this incredible and influential artist:
#IMD2019
Prior to lockdown, we welcomed the arrival of the portrait of Scottish rugby star Doddie Weir by artist
@gerardmburns
on loan 🙌🏉
This short film explores the significance of the portrait to rugby legend
@DoddieWeir5
and his
@MNDoddie5
Foundation: 🎥👀
John Singer Sargent was born
#OnThisDay
in 1856. The American artist became one of the most fashionable portrait painters of Edwardian society.
Sargent’s portrait of Lady Agnew helped her to become a leading light in fashionable circles.
🖼️ 'Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, 1892.