With a flourish
John Vincent looks at the connoisseurs and patrons whose vision
helped shape artistic tastes in God’s own country.
Yorkshire’s artistic heritage owes much to its magnificent and diverse scenery – an inspiration to generations of artists, from Turner to Hockney. Even Lowry ventured from Lancashire to paint Huddersfield in 1965 to capture the mill chimneys.
But this week, and with considerable help from Jane Winfrey, picture specialist for Bonhams in Leeds, attention is focused on the visionary collectors and patrons who supported the arts and shaped the popularity of artists and art groups.
One such collector was industrialist Colonel Thomas Walter Harding, Lord Mayor of Leeds in 1898-99, who financed City Square in 1904 featuring eight lightbearing nude nymphs, Morn and Even, by sculptor Alfred Drury, controversial at the time. He was also instrumental in founding Leeds City Art Gallery.
Another important figure was Ossettborn Sam Wilson, a Leeds JP who bought the Frank Brangwyn panels from the Venice Biennale in 1905 to present to the City Art Gallery and also bequeathed his collection of Modern British pictures, including work by Mark Senior, Frank Brangwyn, George Clausen, and William Orpen, along with drawings, sculptures, furniture and porcelain, plus £1,000.
Michael Sadler, vice-chancellor of the University of Leeds from 1911, was another major benefactor. He commissioned the controversial campus War Memorial, sculptor Eric Gill’s Christ Driving the Money Lenders from the Temple (1923), suggesting perhaps that Leeds merchants had profited from the war.
Sadler was an early supporter of
Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) art movement in Germany, which was fundamental to Expressionism. Last year Bonhams sold an early purchase of his by the artist Franz Marc, entitled Pferd, featuring one of the German artist’s favourite animal motifs, for £1.1m.
Another important figure in the development of contemporary British art was Eric Craven Gregory (1888-1959), who encouraged some of the finest modern artists to take up residencies in Leeds, including painters Terry Frost, Alan Davie, Trevor Bell and Norman Stevens, sculptors Austin Wright, Kenneth Armitage, Hubert Dalwood, Reg Butler and William Tucker and poets James Kirkup, Kevin Crossley-Holland, William Price Turner and Jon Silkin.
Leeds City Council enlisted JA Grimshaw’s help in buying Roundhay Park for the public, commissioning him to paint views of the lake and he often incorporated a lone heron.
More next week on other far-sighted connoisseurs who helped shape artistic tastes in the North and established the popularity of our most famous painters and sculptors.
Leeds City Council enlisted JA Grimshaw’s help in buying Roundhay
Park for the public.