Port Portrait Identified

The sitter in a portrait in the McLean Museum collection has recently been identified as a merchant from Port Glasgow. His name is Archibald Simpson and he was born around 1821, apparently in Port Glasgow, and by 1841 was earning his living as a clothier living on the south side of Church Street. By 1851 he seems to have given up his business and is recorded in that year's census as a 'Student of Divinity'.

On 21 July 1857 he married Christina Wilson, the eldest daughter of Robert Wilson, the Port Glasgow ship owner. The marriage was not to last very long, for Archibald was to predecease his wife, and Christina herself was to die shortly afterwards at Mary Street, Port Glasgow on 21 November 1862 aged 34.

The painter of the portrait has not yet been identified. The work itself carries no signature or other identifying mark, so any the creator must remain conjectural. It would appear to have been painted around 1850, a date which rules out local artist John Fleming, who died in 1845. One possibility is that it is the work of Archibald McVicar, whose fine portrait of Sir Gabriel Wood is currently on display in the McLean Art Gallery.

Museum Collections Now Online

The McLean Museum constantly tries to give the best possible access to the collections and now you can see thousands of images and records about objects and photographs in the Museum's collection online in a new online database devoted solely to the collections. The database is fully searchable and indexed but also has a random selection feature which delivers a wonderful range of objects and photographs from the Museum.

Not only do you get images of the objects you can also see in depth information as well. You see the same information as the Museum's curators themselves, making the database a great research tool. There are several thousand images on the system already and more will be added in time making McLean Museum Collections Online the best online resource for exploring the heritage of Inverclyde and the collections at the Museum.

Click on this link McLean Museum Collections Online to start exploring them now!

A Greenock Reverend Recalled

Many of Inverclyde's most prominent figures had their portraits painted in the nineteenth century. One interesting variation was the presentation portrait where a group of subscribers would commission a portrait and present it to the sitter as a token of of their esteem. The painting above is one such work. It is a portrait of the Reverend James Melville McCulloch (1801-1883) by the local artist James MacBeth (1847-1891).

Reverend James Melville McCulloch D.D. was Minister of West Parish Church, Greenock from 1843 to 1883. He was a prominent figure in local education and bequeathed £400 for a bursary for a boy educated at a Greenock school to pursue his studies at Glasgow University. His interest in education led to him being involved in the setting up of Greenock Academy and he compiled the school book 'McCulloch's Course of Reading'.

The presentation of the portrait was in this case made to a public institution, a way of ensuring the widest public awareness of the work and preserving it, and the memory of the sitter, for posterity. The event took place with appropriate Victorian ceremony, as the local press reported in June 1880:

'GIFT OF PORTRAIT OF REV. DR. McCULLOCH TO WATT INSTITUTE 

A number of gentlemen met in the Picture Gallery of the Watt Institute last night when the interesting ceremony of presenting the Institution with a portrait of the Rev. Dr. McCulloch took place. Mr. James MacBeth is the artist and belongs to Greenock being a son of the distinguished painter Mr. Norman MacBeth R.S.A. Mr. MacBeth in the course of a few remarks presented the portrait to the institution. Dr. Wilson as chairman of the Committee of Management accepted.'

Egyptian Collection Award

The Ancient Egyptian collection is one of the most popular and important collections at the McLean Museum. In addition to being a favourite with several generations of Inverclyde's schoolchildren and visitors from far and near, the collection is increasingly used by contemporary Egyptologists and specialists as a research resource.

The collection has now been awarded a grant of £5,000 by Museums Galleries Scotland to improve the storage and access to the collection. The grant was recently awarded as part of Museums Galleries Scotland Capital Fund awards and as Museums Galleries Scotland state: 'The McLean Museum houses a significant collection of Ancient Egyptian material acquired in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many items were excavated by the founders of Egyptology and it includes many important objects.' 

You can find out more about the work of Museums Galleries Scotland by clicking HERE.

The object from the collection shown above is a ceramic canopic jar lid decorated as the god Duamutef, one of the four sons of Horus, portrayed as a mummified jackal. The jar would originally have contained the stomach of the deceased. It dates from the New Kingdom Period (1550-1069 BC) and excavated at Cemetery D, Tomb D37 at Abydos between 1899-1900 by Arthur Cruttenden Mace (1874-1928) for the Egypt Exploration Fund, London.

Old Greenock Schoolmaster

James Slater, Headmaster of the Kilblain Academy

The portrait above was for many years a mystery with neither the sitter nor the artist known. Now the mystery has been solved and it is now known that the sitter was James Slater, a teacher, and subsequently headmaster, of the Kilblain Academy in Greenock during the latter part of the nineteenth century. The occasion for the portrait is unknown, but it may have been painted on him assuming the headship of the school.

Gair is one of Inverclyde's forgotten artists. Like the painting itself the artist, William Gilles Gair, was something of an enigma but recent research has uncovered more facts about his life. He was born in Greenock on the 26 September 1842, the son of Alexander and Mary Gair, his father’s profession being that of a coachmaker. In 1851 the Gair family were living at 44 Innerkip Street, Greenock and by 1861 William Gillies Gair was employed as a gilder and was living at 7 Tobago Street, Greenock. It was a not unknown career progression for some gilders to become artists. Another Inverclyde example would be the portrait artist Archibald McVicar.

Gair seems to have left the Inverclyde area, perhaps to pursue a career as an artist, sometime during the next two decades. At all events by 1881 he was living at 4 Albert Street, Merthyr Tydfil, Wales where he was listed as a ‘portrait and landscape painter’. He seems to have kept up his contacts in the Inverclyde area, as evidenced by the portrait commission above, but does not seem to have returned to settle in the area. By 1891 he was living in Cardiff and he appears to have moved to London at some point before 1901, for the 1901 census records an artist by the same name living in Hammersmith, London. How, when and where he died remains unknown. He seems to have died sometime before 1906 but the lack of details and circumstances has led to speculation that he may have died abroad.

Witch Hunters of Inverclyde Discovered

Important research on witch hunting in Inverclyde has recently been completed by Inverclyde Council's Archivist, Neil Dickson. Neil has generously made his research freely available to everyone as a free download. In the download you can find out who was accused of being a witch in Inverclyde, when it happened and get the full story behind this extraordinary period in Inverclyde's history. Find out how the accused were put to torture and who were the leading witch hunters in the area. You can get this super contribution to the study of Inverclyde's past by clicking HERE. The link will take you the Archives page where you can download 'Witch Hunting in Inverclyde' along with other interesting material relating to Inverclyde's Archives.

The Poet's Muse Depicted

Goethe und Die Muse

The means by which works of art became known to the public changed radically in the later nineteenth century with the adoption of photography to illustrate art books. One of the most important early art books to use photography was 'Goethe's Frauengestalten' published by Friedrich Bruckmann in Munich from the late 1860s. The book's title refers to the subject matter, a gallery of the main female characters appearing in the works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). The artist Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1804-1874) created original artworks which were then photographed and put into an album along with a text explaining each illustration. They were part of a long series of works devoted to Goethe and brought Kaulbach's art to new audiences.

Hermann und Dorothea



Ottilie

The subject matter was no accident, Kaulbach's other works often used subjects from German history and literature and his works were often spectacular in scale. This book contains 22 photographs of Kaulbach's works including three of Goethe. All the illustrations have been recently digitised by the McLean Museum and they will appear online in due course. You can see more of Kaulbach's work and read a biography of the artist by clicking HERE. It will take you to the collection of the Neue Pinakothek in Munich which houses many of his works.

 

Goethe in Frankfurt