This exhibition of around 60 works will focus on the portrayal of golf in art from the seventeenth century to the present day, with a particular emphasis on the emergence of the sport in Scotland.

The centrepiece will be the greatest golfing painting in the world, Charles Lees’s, The Golfers 1847, which portrays a match played on the Old Course at St Andrews in 1847 and which is jointly owned by the National Galleries of Scotland and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, St Andrews. Among the artists to be represented in the show will be Rembrandt van Rijn, Hendrick Avercamp, Paul Sandby and Sir Henry Raeburn. A special section will be devoted to John Lavery and his paintings from the early 1920s of North Berwick and its surrounding golf courses. Other sections will be devoted to the origins of the game and its importance for the development of golfing tourism in Scotland.

The Art of Golf will overlap with two important sporting events in Scotland in 2014: the Commonwealth Games, Glasgow (23 July – 3 August) and the Ryder Cup, Gleneagles (23 – 28 September), the biennial competition played between teams of professional golfers representing the United States and Europe.