ON October 13, 1886, the septuagenarian Patrick Allan-Fraser was presented with the freedom of the burgh of his native Arbroath. It was an honour that, according to J. M. M’Bain’s Eminent Arbroathians (1897), ‘he appeared to value more highly than any of the others which had been conferred upon him’. M’Bain’s judgement rings true. In the course of his long life—funded through the inherited fortune of his wife, Elizabeth, which he managed skillfully—Allan-Fraser was an unusually energetic patron of the institutions and amenities of his home town, including its water supply, library and infirmary.
No less notable was the settlement of his estate when he died a few years later without issue on October 18, 1890. All his Scottish properties and possessions, including an impressive collection of drawings, paintings and sculpture, were placed in a trust with two clearly stipulated responsibilities.
One of these was to ‘provide for the comfortable maintenance and support’ of 10 ‘aged or infirm... painters, sculptors and literary men’. The other was to establish what was, in effect, a school for the Arts at his former home—also inherited through his wife— at Hospitalfield on the outskirts of the town.
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