Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum
The Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum – formerly The Smith Institute – has played a very special part in the history of Stirling since its foundation in 1874. Established by the bequest of artist Thomas Stuart Smith (1815–1869) on land supplied by the Burgh of Stirling, it is an historic public-private partnership which has continued to the present day. It was founded as a gallery of mainly contemporary art, with museum and library reading room ‘for the benefit of the inhabitants of Stirling, Dunblane and Kinbuck’.
Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum
The first Smith curator was Alexander Croall (1804–1885), a native of Angus who acquired a national reputation as a natural historian, and who was also the first curator of Derby City Museum before his appointment to Stirling. As a young man he had trained himself in botany through his frequent field trips. ‘On those occasions he commonly slept on the heather, carrying his slender commissariat in his pocket’. He corresponded with and was respected by other eminent natural historians, including Balfour, Dickie, Hooker and Darwin. In 1855, Sir William Hooker commissioned Croall to prepare a herbarium of the plants of Braemar for Queen Victoria.