Dumfries Museum was founded in 1835 as an astronomical observatory and museum in the eighteenth-century stone windmill at the top of Corberry Hill. A camera obscura was installed in the following summer and the building was opened to the public on 1st August 1836. The tower rooms were furnished with show cases in 1842 and the main hall was added in 1862 to house the collections of the newly formed Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society. The Museum was taken over by the Town Council of the Royal Burgh of Dumfries in 1934. Dumfries Museum’s brief covers all material relating to the natural and human history of the region. Today the collections include fossil footprints left by prehistoric animals, the wildlife of the Solway, tools and weapons of our earliest peoples, stone carvings by Scotland’s first Christians and the everyday things of the Victorian farm, workshop and home. The fine art collection focuses on eighteenth-, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century illustrations of local scenes, with a particular emphasis on views of the town of Dumfries. Romantic eighteenth-century prints of historic monuments and idealised nineteenth-century oils contrast with twentieth-century works that focus on light and colour. The artists represented in the collection include Joseph Watson and Christian Jane Fergusson.