Glasgow - Kelvingrove Museum & Art Gallery

Time should be set aside to visit the Glasgow Museum and Art Gallery. Opened in 1901 it probably has the finest municipal collection of British and continental paintings in the United Kingdom. Van Gogh's "Portrait of Alexander Reid" (1886) is certainly one of the museum's highlights as Reid was a well-known Glasgow art collector. Other artists displayed here include Bellini ("Madonna with Child", ca. 1475), Botticelli ("The Annunciation", 1490), Guardi ("San Giorgio Maggiore by the Canale Grande in Venice", 1755), Rembrandt ("The Carcase of an Ox", 1630, "A Man in Armour", 1655), Picasso ("Flower Seller", 1901), Camille Corot ("Mademoiselle de Foudras", 1872), Matisse ("Study of a Young Woman", 1919), Juan Gris ("The Glass", 1918) and Georges Braque ("Still Life with Fruit", 1926). French Impressionists are also well represented with Degas ("Dancers", 1898), Signac (Sunset in Herblay, 1884), Seurat ("Riverbank", 1883), Cézanne ("Fruit Basket", 1877), Monet ("Vetheuil", 1880), Sisley ("Boatyard in Saint-Mammes", 1886) and Pissarro ("The Tuilerie Gardens", 1900). William Aikman and Henry Raeburn ("Mr and Mrs Campbell of Kailzie") represent British portrait artists but others include William Turner ("Stirling", 1831), the Anglo-American Whistler ("Portrait of Thomas Carlyle", 1872), Graham Sutherland, Ben Nicholson and Ben Johnson ("The Gatekeeper", 1977). Among the Scottish artists with work on display here are the portraitist Allan Ramsay, Alexander Nasmyth ("Rocky Landscape", 1817), Horatio McCulloch ("Glencoe", 1864), Robert Herdman ("Execution of Mary Stuart", 1867), the Glasgow Pre-Raphaelite Burne-Jones, Thomas Faed ("The Last of the Clans", 1865), the Aberdonian William Dyce, James Guthrie ("Old Willie", 1886), George Henry ("Landscape in Galloway", 1889), Edward A. Hornel ("The Fish Pond", 1894), John Q. Pringle ("Two Figures by the Fence", 1904), Leslie Hunter ("Old Mill in Fifeshire"), William McTaggart ("Paps of Jura", 1902), Peploe and Cadell ("Interior", 1928-probably the lounge in Cadell's Georgian town house in Edinburgh), Stanley Spencer ("Port Glasgow", 1952), William Gillies from Edinburgh ("Still Life in Blue and Brown", 1952), Mackintosh (La Lagonne, 1924), William Gear ("Summer Garden", 1951) and Glasgow's Bruce McLean ("Acrylic and Chalk Collage", 1984).

Elsewhere in the museum are sculptures, Egyptian mummies and Scottish archaeological finds, including Bronze Age tools and jewelry from Arran, Kintyre and Glenluce. The ethnography department displays Ashanti figures from Ghana, bronze heads from Benin, masks from Zaire, Maori figures from New Zealand and a model of a Samurai warrior from Japan. Other exhibits of interest include weapons and armor, such as helmets, crossbows and swords from the 15th/16th century, Flemish tapestries, Glasgow-made jewelry, silverware, glassware and pottery from various periods. The natural history section also merits a visit. It documents the history of shipbuilding and maritime travel on the Clyde.