USAGAF

Winter Landscape, ca. 1630

Hendrick Avercamp’s winter scene conveys a message about democratic social values: various classes – rich and poor, old and young, male and female – are bound together through leisure. Nevertheless, kolf was connected to elite status in seventeenth-century Dutch society, here evidenced by the players’ colorful, elegant clothing. The copper support, unusual for Avercamp, provides a smooth surface appropriate to the gemlike quality of the depiction. Two thin tree trunks enclosed in the ice provide the goal for the group of four kolfers in the right foreground.Hendrick Avercamp (Dutch, 1585-1634), Winter Landscape, ca. 1630, oil on copper, 11 1/4 x 16 3/4 inches.  Scottish National Gallery.

The Golfers, 1847

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.

John Shippen, undated

In 1896 John Shippen (1879–1968) became the first African American golfer to compete in the U.S. Open. He was sixteen years old when he entered the event at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club. Protests were raised from both British and Scottish professionals in the field, but USGA president Theodore Havemeyer allowed Shippen to compete and he finished fifth. Shippen played in five more U.S. Open championships and was the head professional at the Shady Rest Golf and Country Club in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, from 1924 to 1960. In 2009 the PGA of America granted him a posthumous membership.Unknown Photographer, John Shippen,undated, Gelatin Silver Print,United States Golf Association Museum and Archives, Far Hills, New Jersey

Old Man Tracy of Tracy and Tracy, 1926

Humor is integral to the game of golf—anyone who has played it knows that elements of the absurd and ridiculous are, indeed, “par for the course”—and humorists often use it as a subject, parodying the game that Mark Twain once called “a good walk spoiled.” The subject of golf was a perfect match for Norman Rockwell, whose style is distinguished by great attention to detail and a love of the anecdotal vignette. This wonderful piece combines his signature sense of humor with the American love for the game of golf.Norman Rockwell (American, 1894-1978), Old Man Tracy of Tracy and Tracy, 1926, oil on canvas, 22 x 36 inches. United States Golf Association Museum, Far Hills, New Jersey. Photo by Cindy Momchilov.

Robert T. Jones Winning the British Amateur at St Andrews, 1930

Printed in the United Kingdom after Bobby Jones won the Grand Slam, this original color lithograph depicts his historic shot on the eighteenth green. The British Amateur was the first leg of what became known as the Grand Slam, and Jones had never before won this event. Upon his victory, he was swarmed by nearly 15,000 spectators, who escorted him for more than a mile back to the clubhouse. This lithograph is inscribed by Jones to his close friend and fellow amateur golfer from Atlanta, Charlie Yates.Unknown artist, Robert T. Jones Winning the British Amateur at St Andrews, 1930, lithograph, 11 1/8 x 16 inches. Courtesy The Yates Family.

Pop Art master Andy Warhol: “Athletes：Jack Nicklaus”, 1978.

Athletes is a series of silkscreen portraits created by American artist Andy Warhol in 1977. The series was commissioned by Richard Weissman and consists of ten color portraits of the most famous athletes of the time: Muhammad Ali, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Chris Evert, Rod Gilbert, O.J. Simpson, Pele, Tom Seaver, Willie Shoemaker, Dorothy Hamill, and Jack Nicklaus.
In 1977, art collector Richard Weisman proposed and idea to his friend Andy Warhol. As an avid sports fan, Weisman suggested that Warhol create a series of screen prints portraying the leading sports stars of the day. Warhol, the leading artist of the pop art movement, was an enthusiast of pop culture and Weisman recognized the growing commercialization of sports. Weisman viewed this project as a way of blending sports and art. In 2007, Wesiman told The Art Newspaper: “I spoke to Andy about the idea; I knew he was a groupie and loved to meet famous people.” According to Weisman’s 2003 book Picasso to Pop: The Richard Weisman Collection, Warhol said, “The sports stars of today are the movie stars of yesterday.”
Ten 40 x 40 inch portraits were commissioned by Weisman for $800,000, and Warhol produced eight sets. One portrait was given to each subject, and one portrait of each subject went to Warhol. Of the other sets, three were given to Weisman’s children, two were given to the University of Maryland Art Gallery and to University of California, Los Angeles, and one was split among the associations pertaining to each sport.

St Andrews, “Old Course,” 2011

Patricia and Angus Macdonald work in a unique academic and artistic partnership, based in Scotland, researching, documenting, and interpreting the wide spectrum of cultural landscapes – land affected by human activities – mainly by means of aerial photography and accompanying texts.This group of aerial photographs of famous Scottish golf courses was commissioned specially for this exhibition. The six-part artwork, Bunkered Terrain: Golf Landscapes, Scotland, 2011, is part of an ongoing series titled The Play Grounds, which explores the landscapes of leisure activity both historical and present-day, in both rural and urban contexts.Bunkered Terrain portrays six golf courses representing two contrasting strands of golf-course design. Three are traditional Scottish links courses built around the natural features of the land; such courses are generally considered to achieve considerable harmony with the surrounding environment both visually and ecologically. The other three images feature courses that intrude more on the landscape, transforming the land by means of intensely applied fertilizer and irrigation and large, artificially shaped bunkers and white paths, to produce what the Macdonalds describe as “hyper-real landscapes reminiscent of those of virtual reality.”Patricia Macdonald (Scottish, born 1945) in collaboration with Angus Macdonald (Scottish, born 1945), St Andrews, “Old Course,” from Bunkered Terrain: Golf Landscapes, Scotland, 2011 (six-part series), part of the ongoing series The Play Grounds, 2011. Photograph, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, PGP 809.1.