11th September is the 716th anniversary of William Wallace’s famous victory of the Battle of Stirling Bridge and to mark it is a painting of Old Stirling Bridge, 1915 by James Bisset Crockart (1885 – 1974). This purchase was made possible with grants from the Stirling Common Good Fund and the National Fund for Acquisitions. Remarkably it was secured for the Smith in Canada by Dr Robin Campbell, was brought back to Stirling.
Crockart was a Stirling-born artist who emigrated to Canada in 1911. He exhibited a painting of Old Stirling Bridge in the Smith in 1910, but this picture was painted in Canada, where he obtained employment with a firm of architects.
He also worked producing posters for the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, but evidently, did not forget his native town.
The salmon fishers with their nets were a common sight on the River Forth until the 1960s and they are depicted on the north bank of the river, on the left of the picture. The tall tenement building on the north side of the bridge was demolished in 1963.
