KELVINGROVE PRE-CHRISTMAS

I headed to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum for the 1 pm organ recital today  (CM playing). 

Their Christmas tree was very welcoming in the main hall ... having come in from very cold and windy weather.

There has been an addition of coloured lights flooding the organ loft.  M-m-m-m ... not great for the organist who has these lights shining up from his feet as he tries to read the music.  However the audience appreciated the flat screens below showing close-up views of the keyboard(s) played by the hands and the pedals played by the feet.

While there I took the opportunity to view the new painting by Rubens which now graces the gallery.  The story is here [Guardian newspaper]:

A long-lost portrait of perhaps one of the most famous gay men in history by the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens has been found in Glasgow.
 

The portrait showing George Villiers, the first Duke of Buckingham, thought to have been James VI and I’s lover, had been hanging in a National Trust for Scotland property [Pollok House] and was believed to be a copy of the lost original, which had been missing for almost 400 years.

Conservation work carried out by the art restorer Simon Gillespie has returned the portrait, which belongs to Glasgow Museums, to its original state.

 
This allowed for a new assessment of its attribution and the painting was authenticated as a Rubens by Ben van Beneden, the director of the Rubenshuis in Antwerp.