Current and Forthcoming Exhibitions at the Stirling Smith
Publishing Scotland: Eneas
Mackay, Stirling
Saturday 1 December 2007 - Sunday 27 April 2008
This
exhibition is planned to coincide with the 500th anniversary of printing in
Scotland by the press of Chepman and Myllar.
The exhibition will focus on the story of the press of Eneas Mackay, father
and son, which operated in Stirling c1880-1950 and became the Stirling
Observer Press.
The exhibition will give the opportunity to assess the output of this press
and publishing house over a seventy year period. Eneas Mackay senior was
also a publisher and seller of prints by Scottish artists. He published
widely in the field of Scottish local and art history, as well as producing
guide books and building up a travel and shipping agency business. A native
of Inverness, he made an important contribution to the history of Gaelic
publishing.
Both father and son were major publishers of Scottish poetry. It was said
that copies of the firm’s books were to be found in the houses of Scots and
Gaels the world over. Their contacts in the art world ensured the production
of beautiful books which continue to give pleasure to collectors and
bibliophiles today.
The exhibition will feature the Smith’s own collection, with that of private
collector Stewart Campbell.
It will be accompanied by a series of weekly lectures and events exploring
different aspects of the history of printing and publishing.
Please click to view a press release for the exhibition, as well as a promotional poster.
The Horse: New Paintings by Greer Ralston
Saturday 15 March - Sunday 18 May 2008
Greer
Ralston, a graduate of Glasgow School of Art, has returned to painting
equestrian-related work after 20 years of producing mainly figurative
paintings. Greer regularly exhibits in galleries across the UK and has works
in public and private collections including those of top world sportspeople
and entrepreneurs.
A recipient of the international Greenshields Scholarship, she has also
exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery in London and on several
occasions has had portrait commissions auctioned off at Christie’s, London.
Horses have featured highly in the Ralston family over the generations and
Greer herself competed from an early age. Her return to equestrian painting
was inspired by the death of her late father’s Irish hunter.
Through her figurative work, she has donated many thousands of pounds to
charity and her aim is to do the same through equestrian paintings, starting
off with raising funds for the Riding for the Disabled at the Stirling Smith
Art Gallery and Museum.
Scottish Potters Association
2008 Open Exhibition
Out of the Fire
Saturday 3 May – Sunday 13 July 2008
An exhibition featuring work by 32 potters: Alice Buttress (Inverness), Alan
Gaff (Argyll), Anne Morrison (Glasgow), Camilla Garrett Jones (Fife), Diana
Mave Ferrari (Argyll), Dawn Newbigging (Berwickshire), Emma Pattullo
(Aberdeenshire), Fran Marquis-Faulkes (Angus), George Young (Fife), Hannah
McAndrew (Galloway), Harding & Palmer (Northumberland), Janet Adam
(Edinburgh), Jane Barker (Aberdeenshire), Jeff Buttress (Inverness), Jane
Kelly (Midlothian), Karen James (Glasgow), Kirsty O’Connor (Fife), Kenneth
Tonge (Kincardineshire), Lyle Moar (Perthshire), Len Whatley (Perthshire),
Maggie Longstaff (Midlothian), Miriam Reid (Lanarkshire), Neil Halley
(Midlothian), Roger Bell (Cumbria), Ronna Elliott (Lanarkshire), Suzanne
Davis (Perthshire), Sandra Halley (Midlothian), Susan Nuttgens (East
Lothian), Stuart Orr (Glasgow), Vera Bohlen (Moray), Val Burns (Fife) and
Veronica Newman (Nairn).
For more about the Scottish Potters Association 2008 Open Exhibition, please click here to visit the exhibition website.
More information about the Scottish Potters Association, their main website can be visited here.
Ten Drawings by Leonardo da Vinci
An Exhibition to Celebrate the 60th Birthday of HRH The Prince of Wales
Saturday 8 August - Sunday 2 November 2008
To celebrate the 60th birthday of HRH The Prince of Wales
on 14 November 2008, ten of the Royal Collection’s finest drawings by the
Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) will travel to museums and
galleries across the United Kingdom in 2008-9. The exhibition will visit The
Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum in Stirling from 8 August to 2
November 2008.
The Royal Collection contains the world’s most important group of drawings
by Leonardo da Vinci. These delicate works are preserved in the Royal
Library at Windsor Castle and are among the greatest treasures of the
Collection. Although the drawings can never be on permanent display, because
of the potential for damage from exposure to light, they are regularly lent
to exhibitions around the world. This loan exhibition follows the success of
three previous touring exhibitions of ten masterpieces from the Royal
Library – held to celebrate the Millennium, The Queen’s Golden Jubilee in
2002 and Her Majesty’s 80th birthday in 2006 – which attracted record
visitor numbers at venues across the UK.
Leonardo’s drawings are the richest, most wide-ranging, technically
brilliant and endlessly fascinating of any artist, and this exhibition has
been selected to demonstrate the extraordinary scope of his interests. It
includes studies for painting, sculpture and architecture; a beautiful
portrait of a young woman and a caricature of a grotesque old man; two
exquisite studies of a dissected human skull and two of plants; a drawing of
an arsenal, probably intended for a treatise on warfare; a highly accurate
map of the river Arno, surveyed by Leonardo himself; a design for a dragon
costume and an apocalyptic image of a deluge. The drawings demonstrate all
the techniques and materials that Leonardo routinely used – metalpoint, pen
and ink, brush and ink, watercolour, and red and black chalks.
Leonardo da Vinci was the archetypal ‘Renaissance man’, accomplished in
painting, sculpture, architecture, music, anatomy, engineering, cartography,
geology and botany. Yet beyond a handful of paintings, most of his great
projects were never completed. His surviving drawings are therefore our main
source of knowledge of his extraordinary achievements. According to Martin
Clayton, Deputy Curator of the Print Room at Windsor Castle and author of
several books about Leonardo, ’we can often grasp the true nature of
Leonardo’s intentions only through his drawings’.
Through drawing Leonardo attempted to record and understand the world around
him. The artist maintained that an image transmitted knowledge more
accurately and concisely than any words, although some of his drawings are
extensively annotated. Leonardo was left-handed, and throughout his life he
habitually wrote his personal notes in mirror-image from right to left
(although he wrote in the conventional manner when the text was intended for
some other reader). This was not an attempt to keep his researches secret,
as has been claimed, but probably a childhood trick that he never abandoned.