Tapestries from the Burrell collection

 Rebecca Quinton talked to the Friends on 27 September about the tapestries and the book which has just been published by Glasgow museums. She entitled her talk A Hunt for Fidelity and ably led us from the 14^th century to the 17^th century with examples of tapestries in the collection. She not only gave us the date of the tapestry but also its origin. Many of these come from the northern countries, from the Southern Netherlands, from France and from Germany. The tapestries varied in size from a small tapestry, which could be hung in a normal room, to very large tapestries designed for hanging in churches and great halls. The book covers about 200 tapestries and Becky covered nearly 40 of them! We are grateful to her for a clear, beautifully illustrated and comprehensive lecture.

Art of Power

Masterpieces from the Bute Collection

A group of Friends visited the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow University to see the exhibition of paintings from the collection of Lord Bute. We were introduced to this by Dr Peter Robinson, curator. Many of us had heard of Lord Bute as a Prime Minister in the reign of George III but we were interested to hear of his previous life as a tutor to the young George III and then of his subsequent career. His interests were Art and Botany and indeed he published a nine volume book on Flora. He was a friend of Linnaeus and knew Joseph Banks who was the botanist with Captain Cook on his voyage to Australia. Both these interests are covered in the exhibition.

The paintings on show at the Hunterian are mostly small paintings from Dutch and Flemish artists and they are hung as they would have been at Mount Stuart. This is a delightful exhibition and we are most grateful to Dr Robinson for giving his time to explain it. Many of us will visit again.

The Hunterian