The Unusual Art Collector
I like art and have a few paintings, but quite frankly there are only two that I treasure. They are drawings and were both done by my uncle Leslie. I think one is my mother as a child and the other is his wife, who was also my mother’s and his first cousin. That doesn’t happen now, but two of my mother’s brothers married cousins.
But all the rest is for sale at the right price.
Last night though they told the story on The Culture Show of Tom Alexander, who was a shopkeeper on the Isle of Arran. He got a payment of £40 each year as a reservist and spent it on a painting of the day. He purchased a Lowry and a Hepworth to name but two. There has just been an exhibition in Edinburgh and it is described here.
Talk about a canny Scot!
The Problems of Moving
It’s only now, that I’m seeing the sort of problems that I will have with the move.
I already know that a lot of my furniture won’t fit, as although the new house has three bedrooms, it’s got fitted wardrobes and a low ceiling height.
I’ll be getting rid of a classic dresser, a table that seats fourteen and four Victorian wardrobes. One is so awful, you can imagine it being delivered to the house after the wife (or husband for that matter) has bought it at auction and getting a response like “Darling! You actually paid good money for that!” The other three are quite nice, but they are not the sort to put in a modern house.
But it is the mass of paintings and posters, C and I collected over the years. I just won’t have the wall space for them!
I’ve also got enough framed family photographs to cover the outside of the Albert Hall.
I’ll just have to be ruthless.
Bury St. Edmunds Guildhall
The Trust that owns it is trying to raise money and decide what to do with building according to this report on the BBC web site.
They should at least use the building to house the Mary Beale pictures, which are hidden away in Moyses Hall Museum.
I’ve Now Got the One and Other Book
I received Anthony Gormley’s One and Other
This is the video I took, whilst I was on the Fourth Plinth.
Health and Safety at the Tate Modern
The Tate Modern exhibition of porcelain sunflower seeds has had to be closed because of a possible health risk. This is not the first time, that these issues have occurred at the museum according to The Guardian. A friend actually got stuck in Doris Salcedo‘s crack in the floor.
Mary Beale was Disappointing
I mentioned Mary Beale in Suffolk Art and it says in the Public Catalogue for Suffolk, that there at least twenty of her portraits in the care of St. Edmundsbury Museums . Only four were on display in a rather dark corner and although I’m no expert, they looked like they needed some restoration. They certainly needed better labels.
If Ipswich can create a proper gallery for their collections in Christchurch Park, surely St. Edmundsbury can do the same. And they charge for entry, whereas Ipswich does not!
Perhaps, this is why none of my artist friends had ever heard of Mary Beale.
The Start of a Very Long Journey
Today there is no football, either for Ipswich or on the television. I do hate these boring International weekends! Especially, now that they don’t play on a Saturday, but on a Friday night.
After reading about Bury and their football for a fiver, I tried to find them on the web and found my local team, Bury Town, who must surely be the only team with Town in their name, who play in a town with a cathedral. In fact how many towns with cathedrals are there, that are not cities.
Bury Town, are playing in the Third Round of the FA Cup today, I think I’ll go! Perhaps then, I’ll follow the team in the cup that beats them and see how far I can get! It will be a long and difficult journey!
I’ll go early, check out the museums for some of the paintings and then have a gluten-free lunch in the new Carluccio’s.
My Public Catalogue for Suffolk Came Today
My catalogue of publicly-held oil, acrylic and tempera paintings in Suffolk from the Public Catalogue Foundation arrived in the post today. And what a beautiful example of the printer’s art it is too! It was £15 well spent and over the next few weeks I’ll explore some of the galleries.
As most counties now have a catalogue, they make would good presents for those who have everything!
The Public Catalogue Foundation
I found a link to this organisation, when I was looking for more details on the art held by various councils, art galleries and museums in Suffolk.
This is their mission statement from their web site.
The Public Catalogue Foundation is a registered charity based in Covent Garden, London. It was set up to photograph and record all oil, acrylic and tempera paintings in publicly owned collections in the UK. This includes works in museums (both on display and in store) as well as paintings in council buildings, universities, hospitals, police stations and fire stations. It is estimated that there are some 200,000 such paintings in the UK. However, at any one time some 80% of these are hidden from public view, being either in storerooms or public buildings in official use.
The aim of The Foundation is to improve public access to these paintings by producing a series of affordable colour catalogues on a county-by-county basis. These will later go online allowing the public free access to the works they own. The benefits to the collections are considerable and include free digital images, improved records, an income stream for painting conservation and education, and improved publicity. These benefits come at no cost to the collections, many of which face severe financial constraints.
They have produced catalogues for most counties in the UK. And they are selling the catalogues for just £15, so that they are affordable.
What a good idea!
Suffolk Art
Suffolk is a county that has been either the birthplace or home to numerous artists; John Constable, John Duval, Thomas Gainsborough, Alfred Munnings, Philip Wilson Steer and George Stubbs, to name some of the more famous. In the present day there is Maggi Hambling. But she is not the only successful woman artist to come from the county. There was the sculptor, Elizabeth Frink and in the seventeenth century, the successful Mary Beale, who was born near Bury St. Edmunds.
There is more on Suffolks public collection of art here.
The Anonymous Widower 