Cimbalo family/Lyon & TurnbullA teenager in the US is selling a valuable painting that her family owns in the hope of raising thousands of pounds for a Lochaber museum.
Amelia Cimbalo and her art collector dad Jeff spend their summer holidays near Fort William and are regular visitors to the town’s West Highland Museum.
The 17-year-old from Virginia set up her own charity for a Girl Scout project to help the museum’s £6.2m redevelopment programme.
The painting – Travellers on a Country Path, Possibly Ayr Beyond by Edinburgh-born artist Alexander Nasmyth – is being sold by fine art auctioneers Lyon and Turnbull and could sell for between £3,000 and £5,000.
Amelia shares her father’s interests in history and Scotland.
During their visits to the west Highlands she works as a research assistant at the museum.
She told BBC Scotland News she wanted to use her Girl Scout’s final year project to help its revamp.
“The whole idea is to spread awareness about Scottish history,” she said.
“The painting has been hanging in our house for five years and it is a painting that my dad thought would be very good for this because it is by a Scottish artist, and it is small enough to be shipped out.”
Amelia’s father said they were in the Fort William area so often that they felt like locals.
He said his fascination with Scotland was partly due to reading books by Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson, whose work include Treasure Island.
Mr Cimbalo said his family spent their holidays near the location of the Appin murder. The assassination of a government agent in 1752 was an inspiration for Stevenson’s novel Kidnapped.
The family are also regular visitors to Fort William’s museum.
Mr Cimbalo said: “I have been dragging Amelia to this museum since she could walk. We’ve formed a relationship with the place.
“We love being there. If we could go there more we would.”
Chris Heaton/GeographThe museum in Fort William’s Cameron Square is popular with fans of the Outlander books and TV series, who come to see its large collection of objects associated with the Jacobite cause.
Diana Gabaldon, the author of the books, toured the building last month while in Scotland to receive an honorary doctorate.
In 2012 the museum attracted about 9,000 visitors, but since then it has become free to enter and last year 59,000 people came to view its displays.
Nasmyth, who died in 1758, was a landscape and portrait painter and a friend of poet Robert Burns.
Travellers on a Country Path, Possibly Ayr Beyond depicts a scene in Burns’ home area of Ayrshire.
Lyon and Turnbull’s senior fine art specialist Alice Strang said: “What an amazing Girl Scout Amelia is, to have established not only a charity for her final scout project, but one that will support Highland heritage.
“Travellers on a Country Path, Possibly Ayr Beyond is a gem of a painting by one of Scotland’s most important artists and its sale will help the West Highland Museum’s exciting redevelopment plans.”
