York Museums Trust Blog

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was the most famous and fashionable portrait painter of his day. Born in Florence, the son of a Philadelphia doctor, he settled in London in 1885 and enjoyed an international reputation.

This beautiful drawing exemplifies Sargent’s confident draughtsmanship, his marks are full of energy and are made both with charcoal, and with the eraser.

The sitter, Lady Helen Vincent (1866-1954) was born Lady Helen Duncombe, daughter of the first Earl of Feversham of Duncombe Park, Yorkshire. In 1890 she married Edgar Vincent, later Viscount d’Abernon, and together they formed an important art collection.

During the First World War she trained as an anaesthetist treating 13,000 patients, all of whom survived the anaesthetic.

YORAG R2516 - Info by Jackie & Jenny

This morning we launched a fantastic new event-cum-exhibition on the streets of York.

There’s been an embargo on news about it, so nothing on the blog either, but for the last few months we have been beavering away, laying plans, choosing sites, getting permissions and generally running around trying to make this happen.

We’ve been working with one big organisation - the National Gallery - and one huge one - Hewlet-Packard - to bring 49 reproduction paintings to the streets. It has been an interesting and exciting process. The support within the city of York has been wonderful.

In the spirit of the blog here are a few behind the scenes shots:

The team fitting the paintings deserve a plug - they also printed them - : EPS

The official site is here: www.thegrandtourinyork.org.uk

Illustrations from the Tillotson Hyde Collection

This watercolour by Marjorie Miller is one of my favourites from the Tillotson Hyde Collection. Miller was an illustrator of children’s stories and periodicals around 1924-1935. The elongated figure and composition demonstrate a Japanese influence.

James Tillotson Hyde (1894-1973) amassed a collection of some 1,500 drawings, most of which were original illustrations for newspapers, childrens’ publications and satirical publications such as Punch. In 1962, he gave his collection to York Art Gallery, where it now resides.

YORAG : R4414 Info. by – Jenny

Forrest Gump was so obviously wrong…life is nothing like a box of chocolates…life is, quite clearly, a series of opportunities to eat biscuits.  Biscuits tend to carry with them a penalty, such as attendance at a meeting or a promise (if I eat this biscuit I promise to do at least an hours work before I have another) and some turn out to be a little stale, or what you thought were chocolate chips are actually currants.  Then there’s the fact that they often come accompanied by a hot beverage, thus adding a whole layer of metaphorical complexity that boxes of chocolate simply do not have.  See? So much more like life…

We have a horse in the gallery. Stubb’s life-size painting of Whistlejacket arrived last Thursday and to general sighs of relief, fitted through the door (with only millimetres to spare.)

He was wrapped in pinky paper - like the Jumblies feet - and arrived in an enormous, articulated lorry. It transpires that the lorry itself is not quite big enough to accommodate him, so he travels in a sort of horse-box attached to the back!

This is a porcelain three-tier table centrepiece by Rockingham and stands about 2 feet tall. It was made at Brameld & Co. between 1830-1868 and was decorated by Alfred Baguely in the same design as a dessert service made for William IV in 1830.

It is an incredibly complex decorative piece of 10 parts, combining modelling, matt and burnished gilding, painted scenes on the base (Hawes water from Thwaite force and Lowther Castle and Park) and tiny painted Civil War scenes on the bowl at the top. It is a beautiful though somewhat gaudy piece on its own, but imagine it covered in flowers, fruit and desserts on a Rococo period table….

From the Arthur Hurst Bequest to the Yorkshire Museum in 1940. Currently in store 

 Information by - Helen

YORYM:2000.4708

One of the main spaces at the gallery has been under wraps for the last few months.

Following a problem with falling plaster the South Gallery has been completely refurbished.  A suspended ceiling has been removed to reveal an attractive Victorian roof space.

This is a sneak preview: click here

She seems constantly surprised by how the people of York are attracted to her fame (we do have celebrities in Yorkshire, but the home-grown famous are tainted by too few degrees of separation – heavens, everyone in Leeds knows someone who went to school with a Kaiser Chief and if you experience afternoon tea in Betty’s without glimpsing Alan Bennet, I’d demand a refund.) She’s exotic and glamorous (being American) and defiantly surprising, as she’s here by choice, not the happenstance of birth.  So the people come, as moths to a flame (not that Tracy would ever burn anyone, not even on an off day.)  Last Tuesday they came in hoards, like their Viking ancestors. As we set out her desk with her handwritten ‘the writer is in’ sign, in a corner of the gallery, and she sat with her pen poised, I felt I had led a lamb to the slaughter.  Would she survive?  The crowd were bemused and buzzed like angry bees “When is she going to speak?” “Well,” I suggested, “I’m sure she’ll speak if you speak to her..”  and they buzzed some more.  She did survive…and the Viking bees seemed pleased to have met her.

Icons are considered to be the Gospel in paint and Russians sometimes speak of an icon having been “written” because the same pisat’, писать word means to write and paint.

Icons are prepared today in the same meticulous fashion which has passed down through the centuries. They are painted in egg tempera on wood.

Our icon can be dated to the mid 1650s thanks to the back slats which prevent the panel warping as it dries out over time.

Info by Caroline

This view of Kikham Abbey gateway by John Sell Cotman was painted in between the 17th and 20th July 1805 whilst he was staying at Brandsby Hall, near York.

Cotman is considered to be one of the finest watercolourists of the nineteenth century, and this work dates from a period of his greatest creativity.

The picture was presented to York Art Gallery by the National Art Collections Fund in 1955, as part of the Cook bequest.

Look out for an exhibition John Sell Cotman and his Contemporaries in the Little Gallery starting in February at York Art Gallery.

Alastair Smith

YORAG R1702