This is a list of the artworks from our collection currently on display at each Gallery.
Works are moved from view for many different reasons. Although this page is updated regularly, we cannot guarantee that the pieces listed here will be on display when you visit.
Alexander and William Brodie
Queen Victoria, 1819 - 1901. Reigned 1837 - 19011865On Display | PORTRAIT GALLERY
Queen Victoria sat to Alexander Brodie at Balmoral in 1865 and 1866. He had been asked to produce a statue (now at Aberdeen City Chambers) and this bust. The queen wanted the results to look distinctly Scottish, so Brodie included a thistle on the neckline of her dress, alongside the English rose and Irish clover. Brodie was a perfectionist, and his anxiety over this commission is thought to have been a factor in his suicide, aged thirty-seven, in 1867. William, his elder brother, finished the bust.
Glossary [2] Show
Bust
Sculpted portrait consisting of the head and the top of the shoulders.
Commission
When an individual or organisation employs an artist to execute a particular project, the process and the resulting work are termed a ‘commission’.
- Accession no. PG 1068
- Medium Marble
- Size Height: 67.70 cm
- Credit Transferred from the National Gallery of Scotland
Alexander and William Brodie (Scottish, Alexander: 1830 - 1867; William: 1815 - 1881)
The Brodie brothers were sons of a Banff ship-master and were brought up in Aberdeen. William became a plumber but his skill in modelling small wax and clay portraits encouraged well-wishers to send him to the Trustees' Academy (School of Design) in Edinburgh in 1847. He later continued his studies in Rome. On his return to Scotland in 1854 he sculpted some of the figures on the Scott Monument, the bronze of Greyfriars' Bobby and numerous portraits of his contemporaries. Alexander worked in his brother's Edinburgh studio and attended classes at the Academy's School of Design. He set up on his own in Aberdeen and was working on commissions for Queen Victoria when he committed suicide aged thirty-seven.
Glossary [3] Show
Commission
When an individual or organisation employs an artist to execute a particular project, the process and the resulting work are termed a ‘commission’.
Modelling
This can mean the representation of three-dimensional forms in two dimensions so that they appear solid, or it can refer to the practice of creating a three-dimensional form out of a malleable substance such as wax or clay.
Trustees' Academy
The Trustees’ Academy was founded in Edinburgh in 1760 by the Board of Trustees for the Improvement of Fisheries and Manufactures in Scotland. This was the earliest publicly funded art school in Britain, but during the early years it was essentially an elementary drawing school dedicated to applied design. The students included practical craftsmen as well as fine artists. The school gradually developed more facilities for advanced fine art education, including a plaster cast collection. In 1826, it relocated to a new building on The Mound, which was erected by the Board. The Trustees’ Academy was reformed in 1858, using the well established government Schools of Design in London as its model, and was the direct ancestor of Edinburgh College of Art, established in 1907.