Featured today is a watercolour by the eminent Glasgow artist, Alexander Kellock Brown RSA RSW RI (1849 – 1922), purchased recently for the Stirling Smith collections. The artist’s viewpoint is from the Cornton area, looking across the Forth to what was Winshel Place at Laurencecroft (now Drip Road) in the late 19th century. All of the little vernacular buildings, some with red pantiled roofs, were swept away by new local authority housing at Laurencecroft and the rest of Raploch in the 20th century. The magnificent tenement at the south end of the Old Bridge was demolished in 1963. The only building which remains from that time is Campbell’s building at what is now the foot of Lower Bridge Street. There are cattle grazing on Laurencecroft.
Besides its topographical importance, this work is a good example of the broad wash ‘wet’ watercolour technique developed by Kellock Brown and favoured by many of the other Glasgow painters of his generation.
Brown was one of the founders of the Scottish Artist’s Benevolent Association and also President of the Glasgow Art Club. Most of his work is Scottish, and his views of Arran are particularly well – known.
Like every landscape artist of his time, capturing the beauty of Stirling was on his ‘to do’ list, and the Smith is lucky to have caught this lovely work, courtesy of Dr Robin Campbell and the Common Good Fund of Stirling.
