I haven’t posted one of these for a long while now.

A Brian Gerald art-drawn postcard of buildings and floral displays at the Empire Exhibition Scotland, held in Bellahouston Park, Glasgow. Palace of Engineering to right, Garden Club in centre, below Tait’s Tower:-

Here is a wonderful Art Deco poster for the Empire Exhibition, Scotland, 1938, held in Bellahouston Park, Glasgow. I saw the poster for sale at Ingliston Antiques Fair in Edinburgh:-

There, too, was this brilliant Art Deco style chocolate box lid showing one of the two Scottish Pavilions at the Empire Exhibition, Scotland, 1938:-

Also at the same Ingliston Antiques Fair I saw this framed photo of an Art Deco building which looks as if it may have been (still be?) a hotel. The flag standard is flying a French tricolour.

I haven’t done one of these 1938 Empire Exhibition posts for a while but these are two crackers.

On left the Tower of Empire by Night; a Brian Gerald art-drawn postcard by Valentine’s for the Empire Exhibition, Glasgow 1938.

On the right the South Cascade and Tower by Night, Empire Exhibition 1938: a colourised postcard of the Empire Exhibition, Glasgow, 1938.

The Tower at night must have been wonderful.

A couple of weeks age we revisited the True to Life Exhibition at Modern Two, (Scottish National Gallery Of Modern Art,) Edinburgh.

I’ve left this a bit late as the exhibition is only on for a few more days now. Its full title is True to Life, British Realist Painting in the 1920s and 1930s.

I found this to be much more enjoyable than the Beyond Caravaggio exhibition recently finished at the Scottish National Gallery (see also here.)

The first picture in True to Life, though, David Jagger’s “Conscientious Objector”, would not have looked out of place at that Beyond Caravaggio exhibition. It exploits light in much the same way as those did. This is apparently a self-portrait:-

“By the Hills” by Gerald Leslie Brockhurst features on the True to Life Exhibition catalogue cover though for me it’s a bit too sharply delineated. The artist was said to have used lipstick to paint the lips here:-

Another such too sharp picture was Meredith Frampton’s “A Game of Patience”:-

As with the David Jagger painting above Edward Baird’s “Dan Cross” also looks as if it could leap off the canvas. I feel as if I know this person:-

Keith Henderson’s The Harbour Crowd is another fine example of the capture of light. As I recall this painting was one of the exhibits in the Palace of Arts at the Empire Exhibition, Scotland, 1938. There was a black and white reproduction in the relevant souvenir booklet.

Some of the paintings in “True to Life” stretched the definition of realist somewhat.

Though it does contain figures (including the artist) “The Deluge” by Winifred Knights seemed to me to be at least influenced by Vorticism:-

Nora Russell by John Downton captures the impatient aspect of the early adolescent schoolgirl very well. I get the impression she didn’t really want to be painted:-

Another Brian Gerald art-drawn picture of the Empire Exhibition, Scotland, 1938. This one shows the avenue called the Kingsway.

And this is a black and white photographic postcard of the same avenue from a little further up showing the Palace of Industries.

Another stunning art-coloured postcard by Brian Gerald from the Empire Exhibition, Scotland, 1938.

Two more stunning art-drawn postcards by Brian Gerald from The Empire Exhibition, Scotland, 1938. These are both of the Lake Illuminations.

This one also shows a piece of statuary.

There is a small display at the People’s Palace on Glasgow Green which shows images of Glasgow’s various International Exhibitions.

The colour picture at the top is of the 1901 Exhibition, a panorama of that same exhibition is below it, a sepia depiction of the 1888 Exhibition lies below the writing, a view of the Scottish Pavilion at the 1938 Empire Exhibition is to the left and a poster stamp of the Empire Exhibition’s logo in red is below that.

The colour picture is of the Main Pavilion at the 1901 Exhibition:-

The mostly blue picture is of the interior of one of the two Scottish Pavilions at the 1938 Empire Exhibition:-

Here’s the poster stamp in a closer up version:-

The People’s Palace also has one of the jigsaws of the Empire Exhibition:-

Note the (oddly shaped) missing piece of the jigsaw. I actually have a complete example of this jigsaw at home (a companion piece to this) but it’s still in a box somewhere due to the house move last year.

Another colourised postcard of Thomas Tait’s Tower of Empire by night, at the Empire Exhibition, Scotland, 1938. (See a previous one here.) This shows off well the illumination of the upper canopies plus has the Moon in the background.

Here are two more of my collection of postcards of the Empire Exhibition, Scotland 1938.

The first shows three of the Colonial Pavilions, part of the South African building on left – one of the few “traditional” structures present (rather than the deco/moderne that dominated the Exhibition) – then New Zealand and finally Canada. As ever Thomas Tait’s Tower of Empire is in the background.

This next one is captioned wrongly. It shows the South African and New Zealand Pavilions and not Australia.