Talking of statues, I see that Paisley is going to erect a full-sized
figure of the late Thomas Coats, with a bronze high hat under his bronze
arm. The history of the Corporation Art Galleries is curious. The nucleus
of the collection is the bequest of a coach-builder, who seems to have
had a Glaswegian Renaissance all to himself, for it was years after his
death before his legacy was routed out from the lumber-rooms to which it
had been consigned, and ere its many genuine treasures were catalogued by
Mr. James Paton, the learned curator, whose magic-lantern exhibit the
other day of the coach-building connoisseur's face was the first display
of his lineaments to an ungrateful posterity. The Galleries now claim to
contain so many Old Masters that no connoisseur is complete without a
knowledge of them. Except Velasquez, there is scarcely one of the great
painters who is not represented here, even including Giorgione, of whom,
parodying Hegel's remark about the one disciple who understood him ("and
he doesn't understand me!"), it may be said that there are only two
genuine specimens of him in the world, and that both of these are by his
pupils. What Mary Logan would say to these Rembrandts and Rubenses I know
not; but there is much of indisputable value in this collection, to say
nothing of Flaxman's masterpiece--the statue of Pitt,--or the recent
accessions, such as the Whistler, or David Murray's "Fir Faggots," or the
bust of Victor Hugo by Rodin.
Pictorially the hill of the dead was the most interesting part of Glasgow
I saw--a scene which, especially in its simple severe Protestant draping
of snow, might well tempt the artist. At its summit John Knox looks down
upon the Cathedral, whose altars and images were broken during the
Reformation, and whose new stained windows (made in Germany) testify by
their preference for Old Testament subjects to the latent Puritanism of
Caledonia. Especially interesting is the crypt, with its sepulchral
church, whose subterranean service is recorded in "Rob Roy." One of the
pillars of the crypt proper is called the Rob Roy pillar, for behind it
the great outlaw is supposed to have hidden. Near it is the shrine of St.
Mungo, patron saint of Glasgow, who has presumably risen in the hierarchy
now that Glasgow has been made a county. Facing the shrine is a window
decorated with a portrait of Edward Irving, clothed as St. John the
Baptist. The cicerone said it was greatly admired because the eyes
followed you about wherever you walked. This is not the first time I have
been asked to admire as supreme art what is really one of the commonest
of optical delusions. After the Cathedral had closed, it had to be
reopened because I had lost a glove within. After a careful search the
glove was found in the gloomy crypt, pointing its finger at this
miraculous picture, unable to tear itself away. But perhaps the most
characteristic thing I came across in Glasgow was an inscription at the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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