Day Seventeen

Mild but wet again. Tickets for train to Gainsborough arrived through the post. Anne and Kathleen and I went into Aberdeen. They went off shopping and I went to revisit the art gallery. I wanted to see the part of the collection of painting devoted to the early years of the 20th Century. To the fore is a painter called Samuel John Peploe, a member of a small group called the Scottish Colourists, their paintings showing influence from the French Impressionists.
I then walked over to Provost Skene's House. " Dating from 1545, Provost Skene's House is one of Aberdeen's few surviving examples of early burgh architecture. It now houses an attractive series of period room settings, recalling the elegant furnishings of earlier times from the 17th century Great Hall, Parlour and Bedroom to the 18th century Bedroom and Georgian Dining Room, as well as a Nursery recreated from the late 19th century.Visitors can see an intriguing series of religious paintings in the Painted Gallery....", (Copied from some tourist blurb). The most interesting room was "The Painted Gallery" in which wooden panels on the walls and ceiling depicted scenes from the life of Christ. Rediscovered in 1952 behind other walls they have been restored and are now in constant temperature and humidity conditions. Upstairs was an exhibition devoted to printing in Aberdeen, from the earliest examples to the present day. An early printer, Edward Raban, before he established his printing press enlisted to fight the Spanish Catholic forces in the Netherlands and describes a get together before he and his comrades embarked for the war. "We made day and night all one, with eating, drinking, playing, swearing and haill fellow well met....he that could not quaff of a dozen pots of beer or a pottle of wine and swear an hour together he was not fit to go on our company"
On the walk over to the house I had noticed a sign indicating "The Marischal Museum" and so decided to investigate. Marischal College was originally an independent university but is now part of Aberdeen University. It houses a museum, the best part of which displayed artifacts from this part of Scotland in a somewhat idiosyncratic way. A display case would have a panel in it on which there was a dictionary definition of a word say "Trinket" and alongside it there was a piece of Viking jewellery and a Nelson Mandela badge and everything in between. The whole room had this wonderful collection of artifacts from the distant past to the present day.
( http://www.abdn.ac.uk/virtualmuseum/) Lunch called so I met Anne and Kathleen as arranged. Home again to watch a bit of Australian Open Tennis on TV.