A painting by a Fife-born artist could fetch up to £500,000 at auction next month, it has emerged.
“A Summer Evening on the Musselburgh Links: Golfers”, created by Cupar painter Charles Lees, is among the leading works up for grabs at Bonhams Scottish Art Sale in Edinburgh on Wednesday October 11.
The painting, which depicts the Old Links of Musselburgh six miles east of Edinburgh, has been given an estimate of between £300,000 and £500,000 and is expected to attract a great deal of interest.
Lees, who was born in 1800 and died in 1880, first found fame as a portrait painter, but in the 1840s turned increasingly to depicting recreational sporting scenes, mainly golfing, curling and, strangely, chess.
He painted the celebrated “A Grand Match Played Over St Andrews Links”, which now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh and has been described as the most famous golf painting in the world.
Painted in 1859, “A Summer Evening on the Musselburgh Links: Golfers”, which was once owned by the American billionaire collector of British art Paul Mellon, shows the view from the course to the north-west, possibly at the eighth or ninth hole.
Although golf was a game for the gentry in the mid-19th century, caddies who carried the clubs were allowed to play among themselves in the evenings, and it is such a scene that Lees has produced in his work.
Chris Brickley, Bonhams head of Scottish art in Edinburgh, said: “Historic golfing pictures rarely come to the market, and “A Summer Evening on the Musselburgh Links: Golfers” is a particularly fine example.
“The complex and accomplished poses of the figures succinctly capture the action and drama and focus the viewer’s attention on different areas of the canvas as the players putt and drive on the north-western Links – very much as they might do today.”
