Easy Tiger finds Permanent Home at Stirling Smith

The much-loved Easy Tiger by the Mach brothers is now part of The Stirling Smith’s permentant collection! Director, Caroline Mathers said: ‘We are delighted to give Easy Tiger a permanent home at The Smith. We would like to thank the National Fund for Acquisitions as well as David and Robert

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Simón Bolívar

Three years ago, a much-neglected canvas, torn, battered and with paint loss, listed as ‘Man in Uniform. Artist Unknown’ in the Smith collections was the Stirling Story. Today, after painstaking restoration and framing, he can be seen in his full glory as Simón Bolívar (1783 – 1830), The Liberator, known

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Star of Snowdon

Snowdon is the ancient poetic name for Stirling. In 1859, the Star of Snowdon Purity Brooch was a piece of Stirling-inspired jewellery made for the women of the Drummond family to celebrate the inauguration of the Virgin Martyrs Monument in the new Valley Cemetery. The cemetery was created with money

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The Neish Collection

Today’s Stirling Smith object is an elegant writing stand, made for Shoreham Old Church in West Sussex. It is engraved with the words ‘For ye use of ye Great Vestry Room, Saml. Coupers Vestry Clerke 1745’ and is in the Neish Collection of British Pewter. Alex Neish has spent a

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Stirling Builders

A special exhibition from Historic Environment Scotland ran throughout the summer at the Stirling Smith and finished on Sunday 12 August. Called ‘Stirling Builds’, it looked at many of the best-known buildings in the city from drawings of the pre-Reformation Church of the Holy Rude to the Wallace Monument competition

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Langgarth House

Langgarth is one of Stirling’s great villas, designed by the architect William Leiper (1839 – 1916). Built in 1897, it was originally one in a group of four on the St Ninians Road. The others were Viewforth (Stirling Council headquarters), Springbank (demolished to make way for Central Regional Council’s headquarters

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Raploch Lion Roars Again

Last week, the latest addition to the Stirling Smith collections was unveiled by Stephen Kerr MP. It is a reproduction of a long-lost Raploch stone, re-carved anew by stonemasons James Innes & Son of Doune. The original stone was on a tenement in Back O’Hill Road / Albany Crescent, designed

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William Littlejohn

The Stirling Smith has a collection of some 850 major works of art which show different aspects of the history of Scottish, British and European art. This work by William Hunter Littlejohn (1929 – 2006) is one of two in the Smith collections, featured in a brand -new book on

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Bruce and de Bohun

With the approach of the 704th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn this weekend, it is worth re-visiting one of the Smith’s more famous paintings. ‘Bruce and de Bohun’ was painted by artist John Duncan (1866 – 1945) as an entry in the national competition run by Kelvingrove Art Gallery

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Provost George Christie (1826 – 1902)

People expect the Stirling Smith to have portraits of past Provosts of Stirling. This is not the case, for unlike the other major Scottish cities, Stirling has never commissioned or curated civic portraits. There are few Stirling Provosts represented in the Smith’s collections and most, like this one, were painted

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