Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum, Stirling
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: Edward Pritchett (active c.1828-1879)
Date: 1828-1864

Image Details
Date: 29 March 2026
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/50s
ISO: 200
Licensing: Image of a Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum asset. This image cannot be licensed.

Although a native of Glasgow, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman owed his political career to the voters of Stirling, who first elected him Member of Parliament for the Stirling Burghs in 1868. His grandfather, James Campbell farmed Incharoch, in Menteith, but left the area to set up business as a yarn merchant in Glasgow in 1805. Two of his sons, James (Sir Henry’s father) and William founded the firm of 1 & W Campbell, wholesale drapers and warehousemen in 1817.

Both Sir Henry’s father and his elder brother were staunch Conservatives, serving the party at local and national level respectively, but it was as a Liberal candidate that Sir Henry successfully contested the Stirling Burghs in 1868. Under the terms of the will of a maternal uncle, he assumed the additional name of Bannerman in 1872, and it was as Henry Campbell-Bannerman that he held several important posts, culminating in that of Prime Minister from 1905 until his death in 1908. In 1892, by then Sir Henry, he received the Freedom of Stirling, and one of his generous gifts to the town was the Observatory of the High School of Stirling.

The sculptor of this portrait bust was also an artist. Montford studied at Lambeth and also the Royal Academy Schools. He was appointed to the post of Modelling Master at Chelsea in 1898, and became a member of the Royal Society of British Artists in 1904.

He exhibited at the Glasgow Institute, Royal Academy and the R.B.A.

Object description
Type: Sculpture
Location: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum, Stirling
Material: Marble
Artist: Paul Raphael Montford (1868-1938)
Date: 1910

Image Details
Date: 29 March 2026
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/33s
ISO: 400
Licensing: Image of a Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum asset. This image cannot be licensed.

The Reverend Hugh Heugh was for fifteen years minster of what is now Viewfield Church in Stirling, A son of the manse himself, he was ordained in August 1806 as a colleague (assistant) to his father, the Reverend John Heugh.

The original church on the present site was built in 1752, its congregation drawn partly from Erskine Church after the Breach of 1747 over the Burgher Oath, partly from parishioners from Logie and St Ninians. John Heugh held the first charge until he was over seventy, when a ‘colleague” the Reverend Thomas Dick was appointed. Mr Dick’s stay was short lived, and John Heugh’s son Hugh was appointed in 1806, succeeding his father in 1810 on the latter’s death.

He remained at Viewfield for fifteen years, when he was called to Regent Place Church, Glasgow. He died in 1846.

The Reverend Hugh Heugh had been awarded the degree of Doctor of Divinity by the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvannia in 1831, an award he dismissed as “a mere shoulder tinsel knot”. A prolific writer on ecclesiastic themes, he was active in church politics until his death.

Object description
Type: Sculpture
Location: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum, Stirling
Material: Marble
Artist: Patric Park (1811–1855)
Date: 1854

Image Details
Date: 29 March 2026
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/33s
ISO: 250
Licensing: Image of a Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum asset. This image cannot be licensed.

Archibald Wishart owned property in the parish of St Ninians, including the farm of Drum, and Earlsburn House.

A lawyer by profession, he was thought to have been a close friend of Thomas Stuart Smith, founder of the Smith Art Gallery and Museum. In the course of his career he became a Writer to the Signet, and Assistant Keeper of the Register of the Sasines. Sasines are documents recording the transfer of property, so it may have been at this point that he met Thomas Stuart Smith, during Smith’s search for evidence of his claim to Glassingall House in Dunblane.

Wishart died in 1853, and his widow later remarried, becoming Mrs George May: She outlived her second husband also, and died in 1898 at the age of 85. She bequeathed this marble bust of Archibald Wishart to the Smith, surely an appropriate home for this man of the law.

Object description
Type: Sculpture
Location: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum, Stirling
Material: Marble
Artist: Unknown artist
Date: Unknown

Image Details
Date: 29 March 2026
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/33s
ISO: 320
Licensing: Image of a Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum asset. This image cannot be licensed.

George Harvey was born to Elizabeth Jeffrey, wife of clockmaker George Harvey, at 59 Main Street, St. Ninians, in February 1806, but the family moved to Stirling shortly afterwards, George senior setting up business in Baker Street.

The Young George was educated at the High School of Stirling, then apprenticed to a local bookseller, McLaren of Bow Street.

His artistic gifts were already evident and he left Stirling when he was 18 to attend classes at the Trustees Academy in Edinburgh, established specifically for tradesmen to obtain instruction in artistic design. Harvey thrived in this atmosphere, studying under leading artists of the day, and eventually setting up the Scottish Academy, later the Royal Scottish Academy. He was elected to the R.S.A in 1829, becoming President between 1854-76, and received a knighthood in 1867. A history painter who favoured Scottish and covenanting subjects, his works are in many Scottish galleries, but the character sketches for them are owned by the Stirling Smith.

The Sculptor of this bust is Amelia Paton, who was a leading figure in the Scottish art establishment in the late 19th century.

Two of her brothers were leading painters; Sir Joseph Noel Paton and Waller Hugh Paton.

Amelia married the pioneer photographer D. O. Hill, and as was the convention of the period, she signed her works as Mrs D.O, Hil.

Her most important public works include the statue of Sir David Livingstone, Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh (1876), the bust of Livingstone for the National Wallace Monument, and her statue of Robert Burns, Dumfries, 1882.

Amelia contributed seven of her own works to the opening of the Stirling Smith in 1874.

Object description
Type: Sculpture
Location: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum, Stirling
Material: Marble
Artist: Amelia Paton (1820-1904)
Date: Unknown

Image Details
Date: 29 March 2026
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/33s
ISO: 320
Licensing: Image of a Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum asset. This image cannot be licensed.

From Wikipedia:

Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European and Scottish literature. He is known for his Waverley novels (1814–1831), which were, for nearly a century, among the most popular and widely read novels in Europe. He is also known for his narrative poems Marmion (1808) and The Lady of the Lake (1810). He greatly influenced European and American literature.

As an advocate and legal administrator by profession, he combined writing and editing with his daily work as Clerk of Session and Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire. He was prominent in Edinburgh’s Tory establishment, active in the Highland Society, long time a president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1820–1832), and a vice president of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (1827–1829). His knowledge of history and literary facility equipped him to establish the historical novel genre as an exemplar of European Romanticism. He became a baronet of Abbotsford in the County of Roxburgh on 22 April 1820; the title became extinct upon his son’s death in 1847.

Object description
Type: Sculpture
Location: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum, Stirling
Material: Plaster
Artist: Andrew Currie (1813-1891)
Date: Unknown

Image Details
Date: 29 March 2026
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/50s
ISO: 200
Licensing: Image of a Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum asset. This image cannot be licensed.

John Macfarlane was a Stirling man who made his fortune in Manchester in textile manufacture and export, and in property development. He retired in 1845 to Bridge of Allan and bought the Coneyhill Estate, where he feued the ground to build villas.

He used his fortune to promote the arts and education, and was an ardent supporter of every institution that promoted the welfare of the working classes.

He began a Free Library and Reading Room in Stirling in 1854, endowing it with £1900 worth of stocks and shares in railway and gas companies, and provided several thousand of his own books on art, science, history and biography. The Macfarlane Free Library was moved to the Smith in 1881, together with his antiquities collection. In 1904, it was moved again to the new Caregie Library (now Central Library) in Stirling.

He commissioned from Italy and France, a collection of casts of Roman and Grock antiquities, hoping to found a School of Design in Stirling The Stirling School of Art ceased to function in 1875.

In 1843, a Museum Hall was built for the casts in Bridge of Allan.

Macfarlane’s collection of stuffed birds and animals was also exhibited here.

Few had seen the Australian animals he exhibited in 1861, other than as engravings in books. Admission for tourists was a shilling, and for school children, three pence. The Museum Hall was part of Victorian tourism in Bridge of Allan.

In 1886-7, Macfarlane’s Trustees, working with architect William Simpson of Stirling, constracted a grand new Muscum Hall, in the Romanesque style, to house the main collection and provide a grand concert hall for the people of Stirlingshire The museum collection was discarded in 1936, but Museum Hall continued as a focal point for the social and cultural life of the district until its closure, following, subsidence, in 1979 Many famous musicians and orchestras performed there, the Beatles played in Museum Hall 5 Jannary 1963

Currently the building is up for sale for redevelopment as housing, but the Council and the Court of Session require that the facade be retained and restored

Object description
Type: Sculpture
Location: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum, Stirling
Material: Marble
Artist: Holme Cardwell (1813–1895)
Date: Unknown

Image Details
Date: 29 March 2026
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/33s
ISO: 400
Licensing: Image of a Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum asset. This image cannot be licensed.

Harriet Dutens sat for Reynolds in 1772 shortly after her marriage to James Callendar. She was the daughter of Pierre Dutens, a jeweller to the court. The Dutens were a French family of Protestant descent. She was the second of three wives of Sir James Callendar of Craigforth and Ardkinglass. She died in childbirth at the age of 23.

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum, Stirling
Material: Oil on panel
Artist: Sir George Harvey P.R.S.A. (1806-1876)
Date: c. 1829

Image Details
Date: 29 March 2026
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/20s
ISO: 640
Licensing: Image of a Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum asset. This image cannot be licensed.

Harriet Dutens sat for Reynolds in 1772 shortly after her marriage to James Callendar. She was the daughter of Pierre Dutens, a jeweller to the court. The Dutens were a French family of Protestant descent. She was the second of three wives of Sir James Callendar of Craigforth and Ardkinglass. She died in childbirth at the age of 23.

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum, Stirling
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: Sir Joshua Reynolds PRA (1723 – 1792)
Date: 1772

Image Details
Date: 29 March 2026
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/17s
ISO: 640
Licensing: Image of a Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum asset. This image cannot be licensed.

Inscribed GVL: WALLAS.SCOTVS.HOSTIVM.TERROR

William Wallace the Scot, terror of the enemies

This is one of the iconic portraits of William Wallace, whose victory at the Battle of Stirling Bridge (11 September 1297) liberated Scotland from English occupation. It is one of a handful of extant early portraits, and was part of a scheme of plasterwork and portraits installed in Niddrie Marshall House in 1661-2 by the Wauchope family. The painting was listed in family inventories of 1707, 1711 and

1715. In the 1720s, when the house was redecorated, and three rooms made into a large dining room, the portrait was given its enlarged surround of a martial trophy, and re-sited in pride of place above the new dining room fireplace. It remained there until Niddrie Marshall House was abandoned in the 1950s. The house was set on fire and demolished in 1957.

An engraving of the portrait was commissioned by the patriot James Paterson for the book, Wallace and His Times, (1858), which remained in print for 50 years.

Engraved by J. C. Armytage, it is the image through which most people knew Wallace in the nineteenth century. The iconography comes from the description of Wallace in the medieval epic poem by Blind Harry composed c1477. Poet Adam MacNaughtan in his fund-raising poem for the painting describes it thus:

The image of brave Wallace leapt from Blind Harry’s page And oor limner’s skeely portrait gave focus to the age But this nae Braveheart Wallace, on slaughter solely bent This visage framed in chestnut curls is thoughtful and intent.

The story of William Wallace is of central importance to the history of Stirling and of Scotland. No contemporary portrait of him is extant, but artists in later centuries sought to interpret his spirit. This significant early picture is important not only in the iconography of Wallace, but in the history of Scottish interior decoration

Historical research by Michael Donnelly

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum, Stirling
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: Unknown artist
Date: 1661-1720

Image Details
Date: 29 March 2026
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/25s
ISO: 320
Licensing: Image of a Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum asset. This image cannot be licensed.