Thanks to the generosity of the late deceased financier and art collector Allan Murray, there is a distinct Scottish flavor about the interiors of the exclusive Hong Kong Club. Some 120 fine Scottish landscapes are displayed on the club's walls. The images are on long-term loan from the Allan and Carol Murray Collection.

The Murrays built their collection from scratch but developed a very fine taste along the way. The images of crags, glens, lochs and hills, so generic of Allan's native Scotland, framed in richly gilded antique wood, have made a world of difference to the Hong Kong Club's plush interiors. It's a matter of honor that the majority of paintings belonging to the Murrays are displayed in Hong Kong even as other outstanding items from the collection are currently loaned out to a few of Britain's best-known galleries like the National Portrait Gallery and Tate Britain. At an earlier reception held at the National Galleries of Scotland in Murray's memory, the gallery's director-general, Sir John Leighton, described his collection as "the most important collection of Scottish paintings formed in recent years".

Hong Kong has had its fair share of Scottish entrepreneurs. The role of Scottish expatriates in founding Hong Kong businesses, and nurturing the city's economic potential to develop it into a thriving international financial center, cannot be underestimated. It seems therefore rather appropriate that one of Hong Kong's finest and oldest clubs should have a large part of this outstanding collection of Scottish landscapes, featuring works by Allan Ramsay, John Knox and Sir Henry Raeburn.

May these paintings continue to hang at the Hong Kong Club long into the future, both as a nod to the city's Scottish legacy as well as a fitting memorial to the much-loved Allan Murray, who went about picking up Scottish landscapes with unbridled passion.

(HK Edition 07/25/2016 page8)