Stirling Smith Museum and Art Gallery - Stirling Fine Art Association Exhibitions

Stirling Fine Art Association Exhibitions

A regular feature of the Smith’s programme between 1881 and 1938 was the three yearly Stirling Fine Art Association Exhibition. There were eighteen of these exhibitions in all, usually running from January to March. Season and family tickets could be purchased. Many of the best known names in the Scottish art world exhibited at the Smith, including Cadell, McTaggart, Bessie MacNicol, Gemmell Hutchison and Anne Redpath. The local artistic community included William Kennedy, Joseph Denovan Adam, Nellie Harvey, D. Y. Cameron, Henry and Isobel Morley, and stained glass designer Isobel Goudie. In 1910, Stirling architects Crawford and Fraser exhibited their drawings for Henry Morley’s new house ‘The Gables’ which was ‘the speak o’the toun’. Other architectural plans and cartoons for stained glass windows were exhibited from time to time.

The triennial exhibitions were accompanied by a lecture and concert programme. The speakers and musicians were accommodated on a platform at the back of the large gallery. It was at these concerts that the work of the young Muir Mathieson was premiered. Son of artist John G. Mathieson who ran a gallery at 16 Allan Park, he went on to become famous as a composer for the British film industry. Many of the concerts in the 1930s were organised by Adam R. Lennox, musical director of the Stirling Operatic Society and organist of Chalmers’ Church. He worked in the Town Clerk’s Office for David B. Morris. Alexander McIntosh OBE, at that time a young assistant in the Town Clerk’s Office sometimes had the duty to show people to their seats at the Smith concerts.

The Constitution of the Stirling Fine Art Association allowed the purchase of works of art to be added to the Smith collections from any surplus funds, after all expenses incurred by the exhibition had been defrayed. Unfortunately, these circumstances rarely occurred.