Nine works by Alasdair Gray go on display at Kelvingrove

The Herald Scotland

12-06-2025

Gray gifted The Morag McAlpine Bequest to Glasgow Life Museums following the death of his wife Morag McAlpine in 2014.
Nine works from the collection will be on show at Kelvingrove from Saturday, June 14.
Alasdair Gray: Works from The Morag McAlpine Bequest celebrates 10 years since the collection was donated to the city.
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Exhibited in the Fragile Art Gallery, the new display opens in what would have been Gray's 90th year, in the very place where he credited a weekend art class with sparking his early love of painting.
Works on display include the original design artwork for Poor Things – his novel published in 1992, the wrap-around jacket for Old Negatives, artwork in progress for the jacket design of Agnes Owens' People Like That, and A Working Mother, among others.
The display offers insight into key aspects of Gray's artistic practice, tracing the creation of artwork for publications from inception to print and explores how he reused imagery, and reimagined the influence of historical artworks in his own distinctive style.
It also highlights Gray's innovative and resourceful approach, including his willingness to use whatever was close at hand, such as Tippex and sticky labels, to make instant changes to his work, a process that echoes the idea of erratum, where errors or alterations become a meaningful part of the creative act.
Poor Things (1992) by Alasdair Gray. Glasgow Life Museums' collection. (Image: The Estate of Alasdair Gray) Katie Bruce, Producer Curator with Glasgow Life, said: 'Alasdair Gray showed great generosity when he gifted The Morag McAlpine Bequest to the city, following the passing of his wife. These personal gifts for anniversaries, birthdays, and Christmas, include portraits later transformed into characters in his work and framed drawings for book covers and dust jackets, both for his own publications and those of fellow writers. Among them is the original cover design for Poor Things, which many will now recognise from the recent film adaptation.
'It is fitting and wonderful to display this collection in a place that meant so much to Gray, and to offer audiences a deeper understanding of his innovative practice and extraordinary talent.'
Visitors to Kelvingrove Museum can also see Cowcaddens Streetscape in the Fifties, which shows life in an area of Glasgow where the landscape and community radically changed post-war. Painted in 1964, it is one of Gray's best-known works and what he referred to as 'my best big oil painting'. It represents a significant example of his painting within the decade following his graduation from Glasgow School of Art in 1957.
Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum (Image: NQ)
The work was also a key part of Gray's retrospective – From The Personal To The Universal – which ran at Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum from late 2014 to early 2015. Cowcaddens shows life in an area of Glasgow where the landscape and community changed radically post-war. The work captures the look and feel of daily life in Cowcaddens and is a powerful way of engaging with Glasgow's past. It highlights how buildings, streets and people give the place its character.
Alasdair Gray was one of Scotland's most multi-talented artists. Born in Riddrie, in the east of Glasgow, he was also a prolific poet, playwright, novelist, painter, and printmaker whose work continues to be celebrated in books, exhibitions, conferences, and the annual Gray Day (February 25).
Gray's most acclaimed work is generally considered to be his first novel, Lanark. Published in 1981 and written over a period of almost 30 years, the book is seen as a landmark of Scottish fiction.
The Morag McAlpine Bequest enriches the Alasdair Gray collection held by Glasgow Life Museums, which includes the City Recorder series (1977–78), some of which can be viewed at the Gallery of Modern Art.