McLean Museum and Art Gallery

McLean's collection is one of the most interesting in Scotland and is the product of over 130 years collecting by the Museum. Until the end of World War I, the majority of the collection comprised portraits of local dignitaries which had begun in 1877. Two important bequests changed the face of the collection. The first, the Mackellar Bequest, came to the McLean in 1919 and consisted of a variety of genres including landscapes, genre paintings, portraits, architectural and wartime subjects by William Quiller Orchardson, William Strang and James Lawton Wingate. This was soon to be followed by the equally important Caird Bequest. As well as his own personal art collection, ship builder Stuart Anderson Caird bequeathed a sum of £6,000 to fund a trust that would purchase other works of art. The collection has significant holdings of nineteenth century works by Robert Gemmell Hutchison, Thomas Carsell, Thomas Reynolds Lamont, Norman MacBeth, William McTaggart, William Cathcart Methven and John Stewart.

The modern collection at Greenock includes many fine works from the twentieth century from a wide range of artists on a diverse range of subjects. Amongst the most famous are the Scottish Colourists who are represented at the McLean by Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell, John Duncan Fergusson and Samuel John Peploe. Other artists in the collection from the first half of the twentieth century includes Muirhead Bone, Gerald L. Brockhurst, Alfred East, Seán Keating, Laura Knight, Alfred Munnings and William Orpen.

The Glasgow School of the early twentieth century is also represented with works by David Gauld, William Gillies, Alexander Goudie, James Guthrie, George Henry, Edward Atkinson Hornel, John Lavery, James Paterson and Robert Macaulay Stevenson. The post World War II period sees work from Mary Armour, Robert Henderson Blyth, William Crosbie, James Cumming, Stanley Cursiter, David Ewart, William Russell Flint, John MacLauchlan Milne, Alberto Morrocco, James McIntosh Patrick, Anne Redpath and Robert Sivell.

Local twentieth century works by Inverclyde artists such as Patrick Downie, George Telfer Bear, Leonard Boden, Norman Edgar, Douglas Thomson and Ian McLeod are well represented. There are prints from Robert Bryden, Muirhead Bone, William Lionel Wyllie, Augustus John and Edward Bawden and from the Greenock based artist William Niven.