Greatest Paintings: Age of Enlightenment - Raeburn's Skating Minister

This episode is brought to you by TikTok. The online world moves fast. That's why TikTok approaches teen safety with families in mind from the start. On TikTok, teens get over 50 built in protections right when they join. Their accounts start private by default. For those 16, direct messages are turned off and only friends can comment on their videos. So safety is built in from day one. And you know, when safety comes first, discovery and creativity can follow. Learn more at tiktok.com/guardiansguide. Hello everyone. Tom Holland here and I am joined by the great Laura Cumming and we are looking at painting in history, four paintings that reflect a particular period in history. We'll be looking at the history of the painting itself, the life of the artist, and teasing out the mysteries that shadow all four paintings. Today's painting, it's the Skating Minister by Henry Raeburn, the most famous painting in Scottish history. A painting that tells us about the Enlightenment, about Romanticism, and also, of course, about skating. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to our ongoing series for you, our beloved club members on great paintings, how they are situated in history, the story behind them, the story of the person who painted them, all of that kind of thing. We've been to to Bruges in the fifteenth century. We've been to Madrid in the seventeenth century. And now we are going to Edinburgh in the late eighteenth century. And Laura Cumming with me. Laura, you are Scottish. You are from Edinburgh, and I am a Scottish landowner. So basically, I'm I'm basically Scottish as well. You're basically my boss. Yeah. And, I can see Theo who purports to be French sitting in the producer's booth, and he's just he's just made a rude gesture at that. So we're we're in a very Scottish mood today. And actually, the painting you've chosen is the national painting for Scotland, isn't it? So so what is it? Who painted it? Tell us about it. It's the Skating Minister painted by Henry Reuben, or was it, in 1795. And it is absolutely the painting of Scotland. It's the one painting that everybody can who's listening now, I think, can probably associate with my nation. Just for those very few who have no idea who the skating minister is, what it looks like, just describe it. Pitch black silhouetted figure of a minister. Church of Scotland, very black clothes, skating on Duddingsen Lough. And he's on one leg, the other leg behind him like a ballet dancer. His arms are crossed. It's called the traveling pose, in fact, as skaters will know. And he's crossing the loch. And behind him is this unbelievable sort of frosty, romantic, misty distance. Yes. And, the painting is to me not just a perfect logo, of itself. And if you grew up in Scotland, you knew this painting very well. It was everywhere. It would pass you on buses, which was an additional …