The Stirling Smith was founded in 1874 to collect portraits of all the famous people associated with the town of Stirling. There are around 400 works (22 for William Wallace alone) ranging from the portrait of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, painted from the life in Rome in 1746, to tennis impresario Judy Murray, sketched in the Smith in 2008.
There are about 400 watercolours in the collection, some by the most important Scottish and English watercolourists, including Sam Bough, John Warwick Smith, R.P. Bonnington, David Cox and J.D Harding. Shown here is a watercolour of the Borestone in 1842 by Edinburgh artist William Greenlees.
The collection of 820 oil paintings, which can be seen on the ArtUK website is growing to reflect the many landscape artists who had the town of Stirling among the beauty spots of Britain on their list to paint. A typical example is the work by Robert Houston RSW (1891-1942) of Stirling Bridge in the 1930s.
There are about 600 prints and drawings, including the Crawford collection of topographical prints, showing the work of eminent artists attracted by the beauties of Stirling and the Trossachs. This print of Stirling Castle, with Ben Vorlich in the background, is a lithograph by George Fennel Robson in the 1840s
