Across the road from its namesake museum, the Hunterian Art Gallery is home to an important collection of international art, including some Dutch Old Masters and James McNeill Whistler's limpid prints, drawings and paintings. But the highlights here are the Scottish artworks, including the society portraits of Henry Raeburn, William MacTaggart's impressionistic Scottish landscapes, and Francis Cadell's Iona paintings.
The gallery is also home to Mackintosh House, a reconstruction of the early 20th-century home that Charles Rennie Mackintosh shared with his wife, noted designer/artist Margaret Macdonald. They designed it themselves, and it's fair to say that interior decoration was one of their strong points; the Mackintosh House feels startlingly modern even today. The quiet elegance of the hall and dining room on the ground floor gives way to a stunning drawing room and bedroom upstairs.
The visual highlight is the white-as-white drawing room. There's something otherworldly about the mannered style of the beaten silver panels, the long-backed chairs and the surface decorations echoing Celtic manuscript illuminations. You wouldn't have wanted to be the guest who spilled a glass of red on this carpet.
There's also a great exhibition on the history of the house, showcasing Mackintosh's design drawings. While the gallery is free to visit, there's a £10 admission fee for Mackintosh House.
