Today’s story is a holiday themed painting in the Stirling Smith collections by artist James McDonald RSW.
Born in Stirling in 1956, James studied at Edinburgh College of Art, completing his post-graduate year there in 1979. Working initially in the field of printmaking (advanced intaglio techniques), since 1989 he has devoted his time primarily to painting, exhibiting in mixed & solo shows worldwide.

Examples of James’ work can be found in numerous public & private collections worldwide, including: The Victoria & Albert Museum, The McMasters Museum, Toronto, The Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow, Strathclyde University, The Clydesdale Bank, HBoS, and RBS.

He is a regular exhibitor at The Bohun Gallery, Henley on Thames, Panter & Hall-London, Cameron Contemporary Art, The Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts & at the London and Glasgow Art Fairs.

James is well – known for his trompe-l’œil paintings, where details are rendered giving a three-dimensional effect. In recent years, some of these have had a Scottish food theme, like piece ‘n’ jam, banana piece, chips on a roll, etc. The Stirling painting references Edwardian holidays in the town with the carefully depicted postcards, camera and flowers.

The Fiery Cross by James Drummond, is one of the great history paintings in the Smith collection, acquired through a bequest of the artist, a few years after the Smith opened, in 1877.

It shows the ‘Fiery Cross’, a Celtic signal used as a call to arms, arriving at Stirling Castle. This was carried through Scotland in 1547, by the order of the Earl of Arran, Governor of Scotland, during the time of the ‘Rough Wooing’, when Henry VIII of England was attempting to marry his son Edward to the infant Mary Queen of Scots. It was at this time that the Stirling Town wall was built and strengthened, and Mary was moved to Inchmahome for safety.

The artist James Drummond (1816 – 1877) was a member of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland along with fellow artists Joseph Noel Paton, D.O. Hill and William Fettes Douglas. Most of Drummond’s subjects were drawn from Scottish history and allowed him to reveal his great knowledge of costume and weapons. Drummond also became curator of the National Gallery in 1868. His childhood was spent in apartments at 49 High Street, Edinburgh, formerly John Knox’s house. Later in life the artist made a series of drawings of Edinburgh’s old town during the 1840s-50s at a time when many buildings were being demolished.

 

The Polmaise Colliery exhibition continues at the Smith.  This photograph is from Cowie Colliery, located in Bannockburn.

 

It opened in 1894, ten years earlier than Polmaise, and closed in 1953.The image dates from the 1920s and is of the men who tended the machines which washed the dust from the coal. A man in the back row is smoking a clay pipe and the man in front of him has the pit cat on his knee. Many pits were bothered with rats and mice, attracted by the animal feed spilt in the process of feeding the pit ponies, so cats had a part to play in the mining industry.
Cowie was a smaller colliery, employing on average 344 men, with 563 at its peak, when it became part of the National Coal Board in 1947. It had baths from 1931 and a canteen. It produced 400 tons of coal a day, averaging 100,000 tons a year. This was mainly coking, house and steam coal of high quality.
For generations, Stirling’s economic well- being depended on coal, and in spite of the closure and capping of Polmaise 3 & 4 Colliery in 1987, there are vast reserves of coal still underground.

 

An amazing amount of history can be contained in a single small piece of paper like this tram ticket, the only one of its kind in the Smith collections. The Stirling and Bridge of Allan Tramway Company operated from 1874 – May 1920, and although there was a tram with a petrol engine from 1913, the company was still operating with horses in 1920. The company had many difficulties, including the public expectation that the tram would stop anywhere along the route for passengers to get on and off.

The ticket dates from 1899, when Andrew Wardlaw became secretary, or after.

The advertisement “For dainty luncheons and teas try McLachlan and Brown, French Milliners and Outfitters 8 – 12 Murray Place Stirling” is on the back of the ticket. The shop is very much in the folk memory of Stirling as a great retail destination with its own family stores.  McLachlan and Brown were taken over by the House of Fraser in 1946, but continued to operate under their own name. Writing of ‘Shopping in Stirling in the 1960s’, poet Eunice Wyles recalls that The retail reputation hung/ On McLachlan and Brown, McCulloch and Young. The tram ticket reveals that McLachlan and Brown also had a branch in Paris at one time.

The Smith collection has a 1917 wedding dress from the store, and three donations of carrier bags from citizens who want its contribution remembered.

 

Dougal Graham (1724 – 1779) the Raploch Rapper, Poet, Chapman, and Stirling’s first war correspondent sits in effigy in the Stirling Smith.

On Friday 22 May at 7.30pm, writer and fellow poet John Coutts will brought him to life again when the Riverside Drama Club’s production of “A Chapman Calls” is staged in the Stirling Smith, in a special Evening with Dougal Graham.
Dougal Graham was a poor, disabled young man from the Raploch who at the age of 21 joined Bonnie Prince Charlie’s army as a camp follower. He had a sharp and ready wit and a talent for writing poetry. Within five months of the Jacobite defeat at Culloden, he had written his History of the Late Rebellion in rhyming verse. His chap books, which he sold from door to door, were the predecessors of our newspapers.
Dougal is one of the great heroes of Scottish chap book literature, whose work was much admired by literary giants like Sir Walter Scott. With this work, John Coutts is shining a light in the unknown world of chap book literature and giving us the opportunity to enjoy and have a laugh from the eighteenth century.

 

The Stirling Smith collection contains many treasures, some of which have seen better days and are in need of major conservation work. Many are anonymous, like this ‘Portrait of a Man in Uniform’. When it was published in the Public Foundation Catalogue of paintings in public collections it was recognised by Smith volunteer Michael Donnelly as a portrait of Simon Bolivar (1783 – 1830), The Liberator, known in Scotland in his lifetime as ‘The Wallace of South America’.
Bolivar was a soldier and statesman who fought and secured the freedom of Venezuela from imperial Spain, and went on to secure the liberation of Ecuador, Peru, and finally, Bolivia (which was named after him). He is the national hero of Venezuela, and when their government was working towards social change through music in areas of social deprivation, the Simon Bolivar Orchestra was born, working through ‘El Sistema’, the system of encouraging every poor child to play a musical instrument. In 2008 the principles of El Sistema came to Raploch and The Big Noise Orchestra came into being. How appropriate that the Stirling museum should have a painting of Bolivar himself!

The painting was in the possession of Thomas Stuart Smith, founder of the Smith, whose own radical paintings of black men made him unpopular. The modern equivalent would be to have a portrait of Che Guevara – and the Smith has that too, donated by the G8 protesters in 2005.

 

This weekend is the annual Festival of Museums, and to celebrate, the Stirling Smith is hosted a free demonstration at 2pm on Friday 15th May, by award-winning artist and local girl Rosanne Barr.

Rosanne, who is now Vice President of the Glasgow Society of Women Artists, was educated at Balfron High School and was a Jolomo Award Laureate. She graduated with first class honours from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, and like Jolomo, is now a highly regarded painter of Scottish landscapes. The capture of mists, storms, tides and sunsets is her speciality, and she set the tone for a new generation of Scottish landscape artists. In 2012, she was International Artist of the Year at Florida’s Great Gulf Arts Festival, and her work features in private collections in the USA, New Zealand, Thailand and Dubai. This is an unusual opportunity to see and eminent Scottish artist in action. The demonstration was be in water-soluble oils. The Glasgow Society of Women Artists exhibition at the Smith has been made possible with the support of the D W T Cargill Fund, the Martin Connell Charitable Trust and the PF Charitable Trust

The Mining exhibition at the Smith continues, and on Friday at 2pm, historian Ian Scott will speak on the history of the mining community in Central Scotland and the Sir William Wallace Grand Lodge of Scotland Free Colliers. Falkirk is the last home of this organisation, where they are known as ‘The Pinkie Men’ when they march in uniform round the Falkirk Braes, the first Saturday in August, in honour of William Wallace, wearing white gloves with pinkies interlinked. This is symbolic of leading your brother collier out of danger from a fall or explosion underground.
Until 1799, Scottish miners were technically serfs or slaves, obliged to work for the coal master, unable to change jobs or negotiate wages. They looked on William Wallace, Scotland’s liberator, as the example by which they should fight for their freedom. The miners had a long hard struggle to win decent safety measures and wages, and the nationalisation of the industry in 1947 was a triumph.
After the failure of the Miner’s Strike, a South Africa company with a record of shooting its employees came to the Golden Lion to recruit miners from Stirling. Some moved to South Africa in desperation and back to the working condition of 300 years ago.

 

This statuette in cast aluminium alloy, varnished in brown and with gold highlights is one of several items donated to the Stirling Smith by the late Dr. Ken Mackay (1931-2014). Ken was a life-long Scout, and the trophy was presented to him for his services to the 54th Dundee Scout Troop, 1952-1957, as a Scout Leader, before his teaching career took him to Stirling.

The statue is reputedly from a design by Scout founder Robert Baden Powell himself. Baden Powell was an accomplished artist who believed in drawing every day. The figure is probably by Hungarian sculptor Julius G. Maysch (1882-1946) who produced a similar iconic statue in 1930. There are dozens of Scouting statues and figures throughout the world, but this one is special. Its fabric pennant was sewn by a member of the 54th Dundee Troop.

Ken Mackay was a much-loved teacher of science, both at the High School and the University of Stirling. He pioneered industrial archaeology, taking his pupils to record lime kilns and early industrial buildings. It is thanks to him that the Observatory Tower of the Stirling Highland Hotel (formerly the High School of Stirling) is functional, with a telescope for astronomy. It was disused for decades, before Ken and a team of his students dug out the pigeon droppings and restored the Observatory apparatus.

This exhibition by the Turning Point group of textile artists, is on at the Stirling Smith until Sunday.
The Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum is fortunate to be the home of the Neish Collection of British Pewter.

The textile artists have taken the Neish Collection as a source of inspiration for their work, the piece shown here, by Mary Ennis, reproduces the famous rosewater dish of King James VI, a pewter pilgrim badge from the shrine of St Thomas Becket and several other works. Machine stitched into the rich blue background are the outlines of twelve other vessels in the collection. This piece has been purchased by a pewter historian, but there are other, equally stunning works available.

The Turning Point Textile Group has seven members who exhibit with three invited artists. They are Pat Archibald (Edinburgh), Mary Ennis and Jan Watson (Glasgow), Margaret O’Gorman (Thornhill), Margaret Morrow (Linlithgow), Alison Drayson (Perth) and Joyce Watson (Dunblane).
Along with the pewter-themed work, this acclaimed Central Scotland based group are exhibiting five other collections including “Poppies”, their own tribute to the fallen in the wars and “Ten”, a celebration of the group’s ten years of exhibiting throughout the UK, France , Holland, Denmark and Prague in the Czech Republic. Don’t miss this great show!

Elspeth King