River Kelvin and Kelvingrove Art Gallery
Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery. is a gallery I can whole-hardheartedly recommend with a fine collection of paintings and other objects.
My companions and I differed in our opinions of the ‘Glasgow Boys‘, whose contribution to art in the 1880s and 90s deserves to be better known, but the gallery has a superb collection of French painting, although unfortunately too many works were absent on loan, some in Edinburgh for a joint show, ‘Impressionism & Scotland‘ which comes to Glasgow later in the year. I don’t like these big collected shows – much better I think to see the works a few at a time, but having paid your £8 you feel obliged to slog round all hundred and something of them.
The gallery (entry is free) also has a fine display of work by C R Mackintosh and friends – rather more authentic than in most tea-rooms and certainly than the ‘Rennie Mackintosh’ hotel I was staying in. (Like W H F Talbot, Mackintosh seems almost always saddled in the popular mind with his middle name.) It also made clear how much his work relied on that of sisters Frances and Margaret Macdonald, which I found more interesting than his. Good though buildings such as the ‘School of Art’ are, I find a little Mackintosh goes a very long way.
It’s also a great place for kids, and there were a lot enjoying it while we were there on a wet August morning. What other museum can boast both a Spitfire and a giraffe?
(Also showing at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery were photographs by one of its most illustrious photographer sons, Harry Benson – which I write about separately.)
