Today I visited the magnificent Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum: which has 22 themed galleries displaying an astonishing 8000 objects, brought together from across Glasgow Museums’ rich and varied collection.  Walked into the beautiful Victorian entrance hall while an organ concert was in full performance.   

I loved the gallery dedicated to the Glasgow Boys. The ‘Boys’ – an informal alliance of some 20 artists that came together in the early 1880s – were determined to challenge the formulaic landscapes and narrative subjects of late Victorian Scottish painting, and to develop a distinctive style of naturalist painting. Initially rustic realism, then more decorative and almost abstract styles developed…almost Gauginesque and some Japanese inspired offerings as well. Really enjoyed this gallery.

One of ‘the boys’,  James Lavery, painted a portrait of Anna Pavlova….The Observer critic in 1911 wrote that his painting caught Anna ‘in  a moment of graceful, weightless movement … Her miraculous, feather-like flight, seems to defy the law of gravitation’. Anna made her debut as soloist with the Imperial Russian Ballet in 1899, but gained fame when she danced with Nijinsky in Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Paris in 1909.

The Art Gallery houses Salvador Dali’s Christ of St John of the Cross. Painted in 1951 and purchased by the City of Glasgow in 1952, Dali’s iconic painting has become one of the best-loved in the entire collection, amongst Glaswegians and visitors. The painting was one of the more controversial purchases made by Dr Tom Honeyman, then Director of Glasgow Museums. It is now widely recognised that Dr Honeyman made a very astute decision, in proposing to the then Glasgow Corporation, that the painting should be purchased for the city. Not only did Honeyman secure the painting for less than the catalogue price, he also purchased the copyright for the work from Salvador Dali, thus ensuring a long-term legacy from the purchase.

A beautiful leadlight window, “The Coronation of the Blessed Virgin”, by Harry Clarke 1923. The window was commissioned for their chapel by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur to mark the 25th anniversary of their convent. It also commemorates those who died in WW1. 

The museum has a substantial focus on Scottish history and archaeology including a wealth of material relating to the early settlements across Scotland and life on St Kilda.

St Kilda is an isolated archipelago 64 kms west-northwest of North Uist in the North Atlantic Ocean. It contains the westernmost islands of the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. The largest island is Hirta, whose sea cliffs are the highest in the United Kingdom used for grazing and seabird hunting. The origin of the name St Kilda is a matter of conjecture. The earliest written records of island life date from the 13thC.  St Kilda may have been permanently inhabited for at least two millennia, the population probably never exceeding 180 (and certainly no more than 100 after 1851).  The medieval village on Hirta was rebuilt in the 19th century, but illnesses brought by increased external contacts through tourism, and the upheaval of the WW1 contributed to the island’s evacuation in 1930.

Just as an interesting “by the way”, St Kilda (Melbourne) was named in 1842, when Superintendent La Trobe, at a champagne picnic on the Green Knoll overlooking Port Phillip Bay, suggests that the area be called ‘St Kilda’ after the schooner-yacht Lady of St Kilda anchored off the foreshore.  The yacht, in turn, had been named in 1834 by its then owner Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, as a tribute to his intrepid wife who, in 1812, was the first English Lady to be rowed ashore to the remote Hebridean archipelago of St Kilda.

On the way back to the hotel, saw Glasgow’s ancient cathedral which is dedicated to its patron saint, St Mungo who established a church on the site at the beginning of the 7th century.

The seven-storey Tolbooth Steeple is Glasgow Cross’ (a crossroads) most important feature and it is topped by a clock and a stone crown. This was once part of a much larger building, the Tolbooth, which provided accommodation for the Town Clerk`s office, the council hall and the city prison. The debtors` prison had a steady stream of inmates who elected their own `provost` and generally ran the place like an exclusive club. The Tolbooth provided the backdrop to many of the city`s dramas and it was here that witches, thieves and murderers were summarily dealt with, by hanging if necessary. It also had a special platform from which proclamations were read, important in the days before general literacy.   The paved area (the `plainstanes`) in front of the Tolbooth was the `in place` to be seen and here the rich paraded in their finery, particularly the Tobacco Lords, attired in red cloaks and sporting gold-topped canes.

Glasgow Cross developed as a communications hub, with stagecoaches from Edinburgh and London bringing visitors and news, and a reading room in the Tolbooth providing newspapers. However, as the city expanded and moved westwards, the Tolbooth was abandoned and eventually demolished, leaving the steeple as an isolated reminder of bygone days.