Scotland: Glasgow’s Art Treasures featuring the Burrell Collection 569

We depart from our designated pick-up points and travel to Glasgow, where we begin with a visit to the Gallery of Modern Art, housed in an impressive neo-classical building in Royal Exchange Square. It was originally built in 1778 as the townhouse of a wealthy merchant, later becoming first a bank and then the Royal Exchange. Since 1996 it has been home to the Gallery of Modern Art, which borrows, collects and displays contemporary artworks from around the world an ever-changing series of exhibits across its four galleries.
Outside the museum sits one of Glasgow’s iconic landmarks, the equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington, upon whose head there invariably sits a traffic cone, and there will be a photo opportunity here before we depart for our hotel, where dinner is served in the evening.

After breakfast we return to Glasgow and head for the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, which first opened its doors to the public on 2 May 1901 when it formed a major part of the Glasgow International Exhibition. Since then, it has established itself as one of the finest civic collections in Europe. French, Italian and Dutch art feature alongside exhibits as diverse as Ancient Egypt, Dinosaurs and Scotland’s Wildlife. There will be an opportunity for lunch on arrival here (not included).
In the afternoon we travel a short distance to the Hunterian Art Gallery, part of the University of Glasgow, which is famous for its Whistler and Mackintosh collections and has a wide range of outstanding works on show. It was the first museum in Britain with a gallery of paintings and today the Hunterian Art Gallery holds one of the most distinguished public art collections in Scotland. Works range from Rubens and Rembrandt to the Scottish Colourists and Glasgow Boys, as well as an important collection of works by leading contemporary artists. It also features an outdoor sculpture courtyard with a selection of works by British artists.
You may be interested in visiting the Mackintosh Collection, numbering around 1,000 items, including architectural, furniture and interior designs, textile designs, flower drawings and watercolours. Entrance to the Macintosh House is optional (entrance charge approx. £10 adult, £6 senior citizen) and subject to availability since entrance is restricted to 12 guests at a time and cannot be pre-booked.
We return to our hotel later in the afternoon.

This morning we head for the south side of Glasgow and visit the newly renovated Burrell Collection. This ambitious refurbishment allows visitors, for the first time, to explore all three floors in the building, set out as galleries, visible stores and special exhibition spaces. When Sir William Burrell and his wife, Lady Constance, gifted his collection of over 9000 works of art to Glasgow, the city acquired one of the greatest collections created by one person.  William Burrell had been an art collector since his teens and the collection is made up of a vast array of works of all periods from all over the world.  You can wander round important collections of medieval art, tapestries, alabasters, stained glass and English oak furniture, European paintings including works by Degas and Cézanne, an important collection of Islamic art and modern sculpture including works by Epstein and Rodin.
Our afternoon visit takes us to Holmwood House, the finest and most elaborate residential villa designed by Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson. It is also rare in retaining much of its original interior decor. Holmwood was constructed for James Couper, a paper manufacturer in 1857-1858. Couper owned the Millholm paper mill in the valley of the White Water of Cart immediately below the villa. The polychromatic decoration was designed by Thomson and executed by Campbell Tait Bowie. The most notable survival is in the dining room which has a frieze of panels enlarged from John Flaxman’s illustrations of Homer’s Iliad. The sculpture on the hall chimneypiece was by George Mossman.

Returning to Glasgow once more, our final visit is to the House for an Art Lover in Bellahouston Park. The origins of this unique building lie in drawings prepared by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in 1901 as his entry to a competition to design a ‘Haus Eines Kunstfreundes’ or ‘Art Lovers House’ set by German design magazine ‘Zeitschrift Fur Innendekoration’. The entry, though highly commended, was unsuccessful and for more than 80 years Mackintosh’s concept remained an unrealised design on paper, until Graham Roxburgh, the Consulting Engineer responsible for restoring Mackintosh interiors in nearby Craigie Hall, had the idea finally to build the House for an Art Lover. After much detective work and various setbacks Roxburgh’s dream finally became a reality in 1996 when the house opened to the public and today it offers a remarkable insight into the work of an architect of extraordinary vision and imagination.
Following our visit we return to our original pick-up points.