Art in Edinburgh: Vermeer, the Skating Minister and Niagara at the National Gallery

He has folded his arms when most of us would be stretching them out to avoid falling. The man in The Skating Minister glides across the ice with a composure that makes a difficult manoeuvre look unremarkable. He is traditionally identified as Robert Walker, minister of the Canongate Kirk. Before following Edinburgh’s paintings towards Holland or America, begin with this local figure doing something that his pulpit would never have allowed you to see.

The Scottish National Gallery, now billed simply as the National, is on the Mound beside Princes Street. Its main entrance is in East Princes Street Gardens, and Waverley station is a short walk away. Set aside a morning for the collection and use the afternoon to walk towards the Canongate. This gives the portrait a place in the city without making a single day carry every Edinburgh gallery.

The Mound: a collection learns to live together

William Henry Playfair’s gallery opened in 1859, but it initially housed two institutions. A division through the building separated the Royal Scottish Academy’s exhibition spaces from the national collection. The Academy moved into the neighbouring building in 1912. What looks from outside like a settled arrangement of classical temples grew through negotiation over who could show art and who should own it. A national museum had to be made, room by room and purchase by purchase.

The stories of its pictures take that process beyond the architecture. A thread manufacturer bought the Vermeer; a businessman who had emigrated to America sent the Niagara painting back to Scotland. These were particular choices made with private money, later offered to a public whose taste would keep changing. All three belong to this gallery’s collection in our records; their present availability remains unconfirmed. Ask about your chosen pictures before setting out.

A minister whose portrait nearly stayed private

Walker belonged to the Edinburgh Skating Society, which used frozen lochs outside the city. Duddingston is the traditional identification of the setting in The Skating Minister. He had been brought up in Holland and wears Dutch-style skates. That small detail gives his recreation a history of its own. The picture leaves the figure largely alone, so there is no crowd to reassure a hesitant viewer that everyone skates with such ease.

For generations, almost nobody outside private ownership had the opportunity to know this image. Its appearance at auction in 1949 brought it to the attention of the national gallery, which bought it. The now familiar silhouette did not spend two centuries being endlessly reproduced. A family picture entered public life comparatively late, and the postcard image followed the acquisition. Keep that sequence in mind before assuming that a city has always recognised itself in the pictures it sells.

The attribution to Henry Raeburn has also been questioned, with Henri-Pierre Danloux proposed as an alternative. The gallery retains Raeburn’s name; family tradition supports it, and Raeburn was a trustee of Walker’s estate. There is no need to hide the debate or turn it into a solved detective story. Look instead at the marks the skates leave in the ice and the outline of the coat. A claim of effortless movement depends on those few indications of contact.

Vermeer before the small, quiet room

Cleaning in 1901 revealed the signature on Christ in the House of Martha and Mary. Its scale and biblical subject had made it an unexpected candidate for Vermeer. It is his largest surviving painting, and it belongs to the beginning of his career. Anyone arriving with an image of tiny domestic interiors in mind has to adjust. Here the figures are large enough for their relationship to be read first through bodies and gestures.

Martha has brought bread and objects to being left with the work while Mary listens. Christ’s hand, set against the white tablecloth, directs attention to the seated sister. The Gospel of Luke supplies the encounter, but the painting lets an ordinary domestic grievance remain legible. You can understand Martha’s complaint before thinking about the religious distinction between action and contemplation. Her work is necessary to the hospitality that allows someone else to sit still.

Vermeer builds Mary’s profile against the lit cloth and lets light describe the bread and fabrics. Try following the boundary of a face without mentally drawing a line around it. Shapes emerge where colours meet. The painting may have been a commission for a Catholic patron or a concealed Catholic place of worship, but its original destination is uncertain. That uncertainty is worth retaining; a plausible account of a commission is not the same thing as a surviving contract.

William Allan Coats, a director of a Paisley thread business, bought the picture after the signature was found. Following his death, his sons sold the collection but gave the Vermeer to Scotland in 1927. The journey from a Dutch religious scene to an Edinburgh public gallery passes through an industrial family. A roll call of painters would miss the decision that made this particular encounter possible for visitors here.

Niagara crosses the Atlantic

Frederic Edwin Church bought back his own Niagara Falls, from the American Side in 1870. The canvas had already begun a travelling life, and in 1887 John Stewart Kennedy bought it to give to Scotland. Kennedy had built a career in America, including the supply of coal and steel to railroads and work in banking. He chose an American landscape as a gift to his native country.

The picture asks for physical distance. At more than two and a half metres high, it can surround your attention before you begin sorting out its details. Church used preparatory material that included a coloured sepia photograph; observation and construction worked together. The little platform at the left is an invention, and the tiny figures help measure the falling water. Find them, then look away from them. The waterfall immediately takes back the space.

Church removed much of the tourist infrastructure from his painted view. His interest in the falls also extended beyond images: he supported efforts to protect Niagara from industrial encroachment and signed an 1880 preservation petition. This makes the apparent wilderness less innocent than it first looks. He was painting a place already visited, developed and argued over, and choosing which parts of that experience his audience would receive.

Save your longest pause for whichever picture changes most when you stop reading. Then walk down the Royal Mile towards the Canongate Kirk, Walker’s parish church, if the weather suits. Duddingston Loch can wait for a separate outing; the painted setting is traditional rather than securely documented. With limited time, an unhurried gallery morning and one connected walk will give you more to remember than an afternoon spent chasing the next building.