More than just miles separated the humble Lanarkshire miners’ rows from the well-heeled corridors of the nation’s most elite art galleries.
The coal mines, dirty death traps where men grafted in backbreaking misery to power the industrial revolution in return for crumbs from its rich spoils, were no places for dwelling on the fine brushstrokes of an Allan Ramsay or Henry Raeburn.
And the small cottages, crammed with families and held together with rotting timbers and leaky roofs, offered even less in the way of homely comforts, never mind room for fine art or lavish décor.
For Peter Shaw, these humble beginnings – far removed from the elevated world of art and culture – would lay the foundations for the most astounding private collection of Scottish art and an equally astonishing plan to share it with the nation.
A 1905 study by Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh for a panel in The HIll House, Helensburgh (Image: Contributed)
The Herald recently revealed the existence of the huge £10m private art collection, gathered over more than three decades and made up of almost 12,000 original Scottish art works, after it emerged its highly secretive owner was considering its future.
Until then, the vast scale of the collection, its quality and the various subsections devoted to often overlooked areas of Scottish art were known only to him.
The owner had kept his identity tightly under wraps for decades as he used the fortune from a high-profile business deal to quietly accumulate the “finest privately owned collection of Scottish art in the world.”
Now with the collection reaching its natural conclusion, Mr Shaw has decided to reveal why he poured his multi-million-pound windfall into a huge art collection that would help fulfil one, deeply personal ambition…
That one day he could share it with the kind of hard-working community he grew up in – his way of paying respect to generations of workers whose toil was often overlooked and whose appreciation of arts and culture dismissed as unsophisticated or even non-existent.
Annie French, one of the Glasgow Girls, features in the collection (Image: Contributed)
Speaking of his plans to share his collection, Mr Shaw said: “All my collection is kept in safe storage, but I can no longer continue to be a secret collector if I am to achieve my objectives.
“My vision is for a new public art gallery fit for the 21st century.
“It should be exciting and innovatory, and located outside the established city cultural centres.”
Mr Shaw became a chartered accountant and ‘accidental millionaire’ in summer 1996 when employee-owned Strathclyde Buses was sold in a £110 million deal to its rivals First Bus.