Pictures for Schools in the modernist magazine
Posted: March 11, 2016 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: art, art education, Manchester, Painters, painting, Pictures for Schools, post-war 1 Comment
I have written an article about my Pictures for Schools research for the latest edition of the modernist magazine, which focuses on twentieth century architecture and design. As the issue is themed ‘Forgotten’, I have discussed Pictures for Schools as a forgotten idea and ideal which was once successful and well-regarded but today is all but unknown.
For more information, and to purchase the magazine, visit www.the-modernist.org/forgotten.
Pictures for Schools talk, Manchester Metropolitan University, Wednesday March 16, 6.30pm
Posted: March 1, 2016 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: art, art education, events, loan collections, Local Education Authority, Manchester, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester Metropolitan University, Painters, painting, Pictures for Schools, school loans services, School Museum Service, schools, talk, Whitworth Art Gallery 1 Comment
I will be doing a talk about my PhD research for the March meeting of the Friends of the Manchester Centre for Regional History.
Pictures for Schools: Bringing art to Manchester’s post-war classrooms
Pictures for Schools was a scheme founded in 1947, which aimed to get original works of art into ‘schools of every kind’ so children could grow up with art as part of their everyday environments.
Between 1947 and 1969, annual Pictures for Schools exhibitions were held in London (with the exception of 1957, when a venue in London could not be found and the exhibition was instead held at Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery). Here, contemporary artworks by living British artists were displayed and sold at prices affordable to educational buyers. Contributors ranged from well-known names such as LS Lowry to students who were obscure at the time but later went on to make a name for themselves.
Local education authorities, education committees and museum services across the country made the annual trip from London to make purchases from the scheme, and extensive collections of artworks were built up in towns, cities and counties large and small for loan to schools. Several schools in Manchester benefited from the opportunity to buy work, and education committees in Lancashire, Rochdale and Manchester were among the regular buyers from Pictures for Schools. Another purchaser was Manchester Art Gallery’s Rutherston Loan Collection for educational institutions in the north of England.
However, over the decades schools have closed, changed name or merged, and local authorities have come under pressures such as boundary changes and financial constraints. Many of these collections have now disappeared with little or no acknowledgment that such a service once existed. Does Pictures for Schools have a legacy in Manchester today, and can these artworks still have any relevance in the twentieth-first-century classroom?
The talk will take place on Wednesday March 16, 6.30pm, in Room 307, 3rd floor, Geoffrey Manton Building, Manchester Metropolitan University, Oxford Road, Manchester M15.
Free; all welcome
Exhibition visit: ‘Elisabeth Frink: The Presence of Sculpture’, Nottingham Lakeside Arts
Posted: February 24, 2016 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: art, Coventry, Coventry Cathedral, drawings, Elisabeth Frink, exhibitions, Manchester, Nottingham, Pictures for Schools, post-war, public art, sculpture 2 Comments
I was delighted to stumble across an exhibition of sculptures by Elisabeth Frink during a daytrip to Nottingham at the weekend, at the university’s Lakeside gallery. Frink was one of the best-known British artists to be involved in the Pictures for Schools exhibitions, and served on selection committees to select sculptures for the exhibitions for a number of years. She also submitted sculptures to Pictures for Schools, and sold works on paper through the scheme, including drawings from her Spinning Man series.
Entitled ‘The Presence of Sculpture’, the Nottingham show focused largely on Frink’s post-war commissions and drew attention to themes and subject matter, from heads (many displaying a smooth serenity), horses and birds to movement, change, uncertainty and the lightness and heaviness of flight. Works and studies on display included large-scale sculptures for corporate companies such as WH Smith, and work in the Battersea outdoor sculpture exhibition, as well as religious and public commissions, including her angular, roughly textured eagle lectern for Coventry cathedral and her controversial tribute at Manchester airport to Alcock and Brown’s non-stop Atlantic flight, which somehow manages to retain a sense of grace despite the flailing, tapering descent of the legs and the contrast between the smoothness of the man-made wings and the awkwardness of the human body. Much was made of the ways in which her artworks were encountered in people’s everyday lives.
However, my favourite works were those depicting boars, including a spindly-tailed bronze in which the bulk of the animal has been arrested in movement, seemingly coming to a sudden stop. I also loved the washed-out colour and hairy detail of the 1967 lithograph ‘Wild Boar’.
‘The Presence of Sculpture’ finishes on Sunday February 28.
A visit to see Manchester Grammar School’s art collection: the final piece of the jigsaw
Posted: December 1, 2015 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Abstract art, art, art education, Art school, artists, Cambridge Society of Painters and Sculptors, collections, Edward Bawden, Great Bardfield, landscape, linocuts, loan collections, Manchester, Manchester Art Gallery, Midland Group Gallery, Nan Youngman, Painters, painting, Pictures for Schools, prints, Private school, School, The School Prints 1 Comment
I have long wanted to know what happened to the artworks sold at Pictures for Schools once they had left the exhibitions, and tried to contact schools which purchased work. This always been unfruitful as many schools have closed, merged, changed name or changed location and premises since the 1960s. Though most of the buyers were local education authorities and education committees, there were a number of primary, secondary and independent schools across the country that bought work from the exhibitions. Unfortunately, those schools which do still exist are often unaware that they once owned original works of art.
I was pleased to discover, through a chance conversation with their Head of Art, Lisa Murphy, that Manchester Grammar School (MGS) is an exception and still has several, though perhaps not all, of the artworks it purchased at Pictures for Schools. Lisa, who has been at the school since 1998, is keen to use original works with students, whether through direct observation, as part of project work, or as the basis for reinterpretation.
Manchester Grammar School Art Collection Fund was suggested by an old boy in 1956 for the purchase of original and contemporary works of art, and governors, old boys and friends of the school contributed. The collection was not just limited to works on paper, but was intended to encompass ceramics and sculpture, though this was not in evidence when I visited. In 1960, an exhibition of the collection was held. The catalogue explained that:
“The aim has been to buy pictures that are good of their kind by modern artists, known and unknown.”[1]
In the 1980s, an Ivon Hitchens work was sold to enable new purchases to be made. Aside from the Art Collection, other work belongs to the school Common Room. Some works were purchased through a bequest and some were gifts. There are also remnants of an earlier collection, and other work includes a 1945 John Skeaping print of a mare and foal which was part of the School Prints series. In addition to its own collection, the school also made use of Manchester Art Gallery’s Rutherston loan scheme for educational institutions in the north of England.
The Pictures for Schools invoice books held in Nan Youngman’s papers at the University of Reading, though incomplete, reveal that Manchester Grammar School was a regular buyer from Pictures for Schools in the 1950s and 1960s. Invoices were made out to the bursar on behalf of Art Master JH Bell, and on occasion on behalf of the ‘High Master’. John Henry Bell joined in 1951 and served as Head of Art from 1956-81. An Oxford-educated historian and scholar, he also painted landscapes, with a particular interest in mountains. He was known for an extensive collection of art and architecture slides, and recorded talks for BBC radio. At that time, the historical and critical aspects of art were emphasised in the school more than the practical aspects.
I recently visited MGS, a large and still academically oriented independent school in suburban south Manchester, to see what remains of the collection, and to get a sense of these artworks in a school setting, The artworks are scattered around the school, which is based around an extensive and disorientating 1930s building. In general, the school gives the impression of being filled with art and visual stimulation. Students’ work is displayed throughout the large and impressively resourced art department, as well as in the shared spaces of the school such as hallways and corridors. Changing and themed exhibitions of students’ work take place in a small gallery space next to the main reception, and there is also a small sculpture garden containing students’ work. Staff rooms, common rooms, reception, offices and classrooms also have pictures on display, ranging from formal and old-fashioned portraits of former grandees to architectural drawings of the school to work by local artists and artists who have been in residence in the school, including modern photography and graffiti-style stencil work. Some of the original mid-twentieth century 
works of art purchased by the school can be found among this, and highlights of the collection are on display in a wide corridor area. These include Edwin La Dell’s 1960 lithograph ‘Priddy Nine Barrows’, a green, rolling rural landscape. Though I had seen photographs of the print before, I much preferred it in ‘real life’, seeing its mark-making close-up and its colour choices appearing more vibrant.
Like many school buyers, Manchester Grammar School bought a large number of prints from Pictures for Schools, although it did also purchase paintings. Many of the artists involved in Pictures for Schools, and represented in the MGS collection, were themselves involved in art education, at secondary or university level.
Paintings at MGS include Gordon Bradshaw’s ‘Essex Landscape’ (1962), an unusual and stylised perspective on a townscape which is reminiscent of a briefly glimpsed view of a town looking down from a railway viaduct as the surrounding countryside stretches out behind it. Susan Horsfield’s ‘Boxes of Fish’ (1961) is a detailed oil painting. Horsfield met Pictures for Schools founder Nan Youngman through their involvement in the Women’s International Art Club and was invited by Youngman to submit work to the scheme. Peter Midgley’s humdrum oil painting ‘Still Life’ (1958), meanwhile, shows newspaper-wrapped grocery shopping in Kitchen Sink-style. Midgley taught at Beckenham School of Art.
Schools often had less money to spend on original works of art than local authorities. Prints, which could be purchased framed or unframed, were among the most affordable works of art at the exhibitions. Furthermore, prints such as linocuts had an obvious application in the classroom; they could be used to demonstrate to students what could be achieved in a medium they were likely to use themselves in school art lessons. There are also screen prints, etchings and lithographs. These include the bold 1966 screenprint ‘Blue Night Flower’ by Dennis Hawkins – who taught at Repton School and was a founding member of the Midland Group and the Printmakers’ Council’, which edges towards abstraction. Philip Greenwood’s, ‘Slate Street’ (1965) is a dark, sketchy, angular etching, while ‘Two Friends’ is a figurative lithograph by Alistair Grant, who studied with Edwin La Dell and taught at the RCA. Another print, ‘Barmouth’, from 1984, picking out the shapes of the town through exaggerated use of line and colour, is by John Brunsdon, who designed posters for Pictures for Schools as well as selling work through the scheme.
Perhaps the work I saw on my visit I liked the most was Euan Jennings’ highly stylised 1957 linocut ‘Essex Gravel Pit No 2’, a detailed reinterpretation of an everyday and workaday landscape in blue, black and yellow, in which contrasting textures and patterns are used to create contrast between different layers and areas of foliage, water, rock and stones. Jennings’ father was Principal at Tunbridge Wells School of Art.
I also like Denys Delhanty’s 1959 gouache ‘Summer Landscape with Cow Parsley’, a more unconventional landscape that has something in its palette of black, white, greys and pale blues, and brush marks resembling surface scrapes and bubbles, of the quality of a photographic negative. Denys Delhanty was Head of Art at Cheltenham Ladies’ College and his work was extremely popular in the Pictures for Schools exhibitions.
Unsurprisingly, given their prominence in Pictures for Schools, a number of the artists in the MGS collection are associated with East Anglia. These include the Great Bardfield artist Edward Bawden – an artist’s proof of his linocut ‘Town Hall Yard’ (1957) is on display – as is a large, sweeping, abstracted, expressive linocut of an ‘East Coast Storm’ (1967) by Julia Ball who was, like Nan Youngman, a member of the Cambridge Society of Painters and Sculptors.
I was disappointed, however, not to see abstracted linocuts of farm machinery by Peter Green, one of the best-selling artists at Pictures for Schools, which once formed part of the collection. As Lisa Murphy is making a renewed effort to locate and catalogue the works to improve their visibility in the school, I’m hoping that perhaps they might be unearthed for a future visit.
[1] Information about the collection and the history of art teaching at MGS is largely drawn from the pamphlet Art at the Manchester Grammar School, edited by David Stockwell, 1993.
A day in Coventry (on the trail of Steven Sykes and Pictures for Schools)
Posted: October 12, 2015 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: architecture, art, Betty Rea, camouflage, Coventry, Coventry Cathedral, Essex, Great Bardfield, John Piper, loan collections, Local Education Authority, Manchester, mural, murals, Nan Youngman, Peter Peri, Pictures for Schools, planning, post-war, public art, reconstruction, sculpture, Steven Sykes, war art, World War II 2 CommentsMy interest in the artists who contributed to and sold work through Pictures for Schools, as well as the education authorities that purchased work from Pictures for Schools (and an enthusiasm for visiting and understanding more about post-war built environments more generally) recently led me on a day trip to Coventry.
I was on the trail of the artist Steven Sykes, whose work was very popular at Pictures for Schools, during which time Sykes also taught at Chelsea School of Art. He regularly submitted both drawings and works on paper to the scheme, as well as reliefs and sculptures. Many of them were themed around animals, and proved to be popular with child visitors. I first became interested in Sykes because he designed two large murals either side of the stage in New Century Hall, a concert and conference venue in the Co-operative’s former tower block headquarters at New Century House in Manchester, dating from 1963.
New Century Hall is a large ballroom with a sprung dance floor and charismatic 1960s light fittings, and many famous bands played there over the decades. Sykes’ tall murals are stylised depictions of musicians, which sparkle when the light hits them. Like other regular Pictures for Schools contributor Julian Trevelyan, Sykes was a camouflage artist during the war, and a war artist. In the 1960s, he turned his garden and home in Sussex into an ornate work of art.
Sykes was also responsible for the Gethsemane chapel in Basil Spence’s modernist ‘new’ Coventry Cathedral, the winning candidate for a replacement after the medieval cathedral was bombed in the Coventry Blitz of 1940. The Gethsemane chapel, which dates from 1959-60, is a glittering room featuring an angel in richly decorated concrete inlaid with mosaic which gleams like gemstones, against a golden backdrop.
It’s the most opulent and luxuriant piece of art in the building, most of which is far more sparse and restrained, from John Piper’s angular stained glass windows to the muted tones of Graham Sutherland’s giant Christ tapestry to John Hutton’s etched glass angels and saints, both still and suspended in action, which catch the light from the large windows to dramatic and striking effect.
Despite its vast scale, the cathedral, with its polished concrete, fossil stone floor (like that of the Royal Festival Hall in London) and decorative and functional use of wood, feels warm and human-scale. This struck me as a great contrast to the other 20th century cathedrals I have visited, in Liverpool (particularly the Anglican cathedral), which seem designed to strike the fear of god into the visitor with their oversize scale and austere atmospheres.
The cathedral, which interacts and is juxtaposed effectively with the ruins of the old cathedral, is an ideal place to get a sense of the two sides of Coventry, old and new, and to get an idea of the cityscape that Coventry’s 20th century reconstruction replaced. It stands on a hill-top, from which narrow streets descend, filled with cosy shops and restaurants. As the autumn leaves swirl to the ground, for a moment you think you could be in Canterbury, or in Montmartre, even, as a busker plays the accordion
The round, light-filled Chapel of Christ the Servant, with its floor-to-ceiling windows, on the other hand, looks out onto the brutalist architecture of Coventry university, including a high-rise accommodation block, though the modernist campus is effectively landscaped with green space.
Also in the vicinity of the cathedral is the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, opened in 1960 and extended and modernised in recent years. Like many of Coventry’s buildings, its municipal modernism incorporates light-filled areas and large windows, notably in the stairwell. I understand that the Herbert’s collection includes a number of artworks purchased by Coventry Education Committee, as well as a former schools loan collection. City of Coventry Education Committee was one of two major Coventry buyers at Pictures for Schools, the other being City of Coventry Training College, whose collection is now on display at the University of Warwick. There was much crossover in both the artists and the types of artworks chosen for the respective collections, with artists including Kenneth Long, Mary Fedden and George Chapman.
On display in the Herbert are many artists and artworks dating from the era of the Pictures for Schools exhibitions, and representing some of the most popular artists as well as the type of urban, everyday social realism that predominated at Pictures for Schools. These included the ‘kitchen sink’ painter John Bratby, whose 1959 painting ‘Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day’ layers thick paint onto the canvas to create exaggerated net curtains looking out over suburban back gardens. LS Lowry offers views of gravestones outside a village church, and Ebbw Vale in Wales. ‘Landscape with Tank’ by Prunella Clough, meanwhile, from 1957, is an unconventional landscape depicting stark, geometric shapes in shiny, dark shades of grey, including the gas tank of the title. George Chapman, one of the artists associated with Great Bardfield in Essex, is represented by ‘Miner Returning Home from Work’ (dating from ‘before 1960’), a large and tall urban scene depicting a miner descending a hill through jagged streets, angular roofs, stairs and sharp edges, overlooked by TV aerials. Another very popular artist was Kenneth Long. Long’s ‘Huntingdon Street Bus Station, Nottingham’, from 1957, depicts sketchy figures in drab greens, highlighting humdrum details such as pigeons and chip wrappers. In common with Joan Eardley’s ‘Glasgow Boy With a Milk Bottle’ (1948) and the grimy, dark face of Chapman’s miner, the impression given of life in post-war Britain in these paintings is drab, poor and restrictive, a far cry from the modern world suggested by the architecture of rebuilt central Coventry and conventional, hopeful narratives of reconstruction.
I was also very pleased to see a fairly large sculpture by Betty Rea, the partner of Nan Youngman, depicting a woman stretching in bronze fibreglass. Other sculpture included John Greaves’ women chatting on a church bench, and a girl waiting for a bus. The most extraordinary sculpture on display is ‘Coventry Sculpture’ by Peter Peri, another artist who submitted work to Pictures for Schools and was renowned for his work in educational settings, dating from 1958-59. The large sculpture captures pinched, rust-coloured clay figures in action, interacting with a metal tower structure. The figures capture both light and strength, suggesting sport, movement and height. They’re running, doing, jumping, climbing, throwing, building, carrying, passing, lifting, stretching, interacting and collaborating. Peri is himself in the sculpture, as a bearded figure – and the only still character!
Elsewhere, Coventry’s post-war architecture boasts an impressive range of murals, many of which are tactile and seem to invite sensory exploration. These include William Mitchell’s 1966 characteristic concrete doodles on the front of the former Three Tuns pub (now a fried chicken shop), and Gordon Cullen’s large, tiled mural of 1958, now restored and relocated in the Lower Precinct of Coventry Shopping centre, which makes effective use of both pattern and abstract forms and colours, as well as narrative details from Coventry’s history and industries, from clock and bicycle manufacture to post-war planning and rebuilding.
Another 1960s mural, in Sainsbury’s, shows the expansion of Coventry, and seems to be held in high regard by staff. Another effective retail mural is carved detailing outside the large Coventry Co-operative premises, built in 1956, depicting aspects of co-operative history and symbolism, as well as products. Unfortunately the building, which still retains its original lettering as well as a plaque for the CWS (Co-operative Wholesale Society) architects’ department, is soon to be vacated by Heart of England Co-operative Society and probably demolished.
As well as faith, education, art and retail, the people of post-war Coventry were catered for in leisure. However, another piece of Coventry’s post-war cityscape whose days are numbered is the 1960s Olympic-size pool. Like much of Coventry, its light-filled windows, which envelop swimmers in sensations of space, spectacle and modernity, are now grimy and neglected.
As a whole, the centre of Coventry feels very un-English. The cathedral, and the city centre as a whole, feel like transplants from Northern Europe, from Scandinavia, from Rotterdam, where cities are more mixed use, and living in maisonettes above shops, or in blocks towering above the city centre, is normal. The city centre is dominated by 20th century structures and street patterns. Despite a number of empty shops, the central shopping area feels lively and public spaces are pleasant. Coventry, with its lingering independent and specialist shops, also feels strangely retro, a city from a different decade. The type of place where a specialist pipe repair shop can survive, and a remnant from a different time and society. Visiting really gave me a sense of the context into which artworks in Pictures for Schools were received, the priorities and cultural attitudes of the time, and the types of environments to which they belonged.
Photographs by Natalie Bradbury and Steve Hanson.
Exhibition visit: We Want People Who Can Draw: Instruction and Dissent in the British Art School, Manchester Metropolitan University Special Collections (until 31 July)
Posted: July 16, 2015 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: archives, art, art education, Art school, dissent, Education, Exhibition catalogue, exhibitions, Hornsey, Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University, occupations, post-war, protest, universities Leave a comment
Ruskin plaque in the entrance to Manchester School of Art
Though it’s not directly related to schools, as part of the contextual reading for my PhD I have also read a lot about the history and development of art education, specifically art schools and colleges in Britain, from the municipal colleges of art that were set up in industrial towns and cities in the nineteenth century, to the changing status of provincial schools of art and art degrees following the Coldstream Report of 1960, to the student protests and occupations sparked by that at Hornsey in 1968, where students demanded more say in the direction of their education.
The current exhibition at Manchester Metropolitan University’s Special Collections brings together an impressive, stimulating and inspiring range of materials relating to the last of these aspects of the history of British art education, borrowed from individuals and institutions including the Women’s Art Library in London. They encompass manifestos, books, magazines, pamphlets and student journals, including material from Art & Language in Coventry and King Mob at Goldsmiths in London, along with exhibition publicity, films, some evocative photographs of demonstrations and occupations, and prints and posters relating to these demonstrations, and correspondence between students and university officials. Through these artefacts, the exhibition draws out links with wider and international movements for change such as the Situationist International and radical feminism. Many of the publications were amassed and distributed by Ron Hunt, the librarian at Newcastle University, who must have some tales to tell!
Many of the objects, as well as being fascinating documents of the time and a particular educational and social moment, raised important questions about the purpose and uses of art in the post-war context, a period in which the government and other authorities had started by promoting the potential and responsibility of art to take on an explicitly social role in both educating and improving the lives and leisure of the masses. Should art, and the critical and technical skills students developed at art schools, be used for the good of society, as in the street theatre workshops discussed in the exhibition, or should it be enlisted into the commercial services of advertising, against which students at Hornsey were partly protesting? One of the most intriguing items in this regard was Ken Garland’s 1964 First Things First manifesto, recently updated fifty years on, which enlisted the signatures of several designers to rail against advertising and call for design which worked for the public good. It would be interesting to know what came of the signatories, and where their future careers led them …
At a time when the value – and cost – of studying arts subjects, not just at school but at degree level, is being questioned, and when university buildings are still being occupied through student protests, it was strange not to see present-day imagery and examples in the exhibition, despite this providing the starting point for the exhibition catalogue.
The catalogue is well worth a read and is accessible as PDF at www.specialcollections.mmu.ac.uk/files/wewantpeople_guide.pdf.
Final visit to Nan Youngman collection, University of Reading
Posted: September 27, 2014 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: archives, Cambridgeshire, Derbyshire, Hertfordshire, Leeds Art Gallery, Leicestershire, loan collections, Manchester, Manchester Art Gallery, Nan Youngman, Peter Green, Pictures for Schools, Pictures for Welsh Schools, prints, school loans services, University of Reading, West Riding 8 CommentsThis week I made my fourth and final visit to see Nan Youngman’s papers at the University of Reading. It felt very much like a finishing up and plugging the gaps visit, and I know feel like I’ve looked at everything in the collection and seen the full scope of what’s there. I found out about some more minor details of the Pictures for Schools exhibitions such as how they were publicised – this included advertising at underground stations, and writing to London borough libraries to ask them to display leaflets.
One of the things I got from the trip was a real sense of who the educational buyers were from Pictures for Schools, and what types of artworks and which artists were particularly popular, through looking at a series of invoice books from 1949 to 1968 (although there are some gaps where invoice books are missing, including a long period in the 1950s).
Schools of all kinds, including secondary moderns, grammars, junior schools and independent schools purchased work from Pictures for Schools, sometimes on a one-off basis and sometimes as repeat buyers, with Manchester Grammar School being a particularly regular buyer (this interested me as Mrs Rutherston was frustrated that it failed to make use of Manchester Art Gallery’s Rutherston Loan Scheme, and seemed generally unimpressed with the quality of art teaching at the school). Other regular buyers included Greenwich Library in the 1960s, as well as various training colleges around the country, and occasionally adult, further and higher education establishments. Other buyers included county or city loan services linked with museums, including Reading Museum and Art Gallery (this service is still in operation and embroideries by artists including Constance Howard and Sadie Allen purchased through Pictures for Schools in the 1960s are still available for schools to borrow), Ferens Art Gallery, who made purchases on behalf of Hull Education Committee and the Leeds Loan Collection which was linked both with Leeds College of Art and Leeds Art Gallery.
Although, as I already knew, Derbyshire Museum Service made regular and extensive purchases, I revised my opinion a little about the number of local authorities making use of the scheme, who seem to be slightly less numerous and widespread than I thought, although Essex County Council, Kent, Cambridgeshire, Great Yarmouth, Cumberland/Carlisle, Northumberland/Newcastle, Lancashire, City of Coventry, Cambridgeshire/City of Cambridge, West Bromwich, City of Manchester, Shropshire, Worcestershire, Buckinghamshire, Oxford, Rochdale, the London County Council and later Nottingham and Scunthorpe and Bromley were enthusiastic and regular buyers from the scheme, with West Sussex, East Sussex, Norfolk, Bristol, Somerset, Devon, Dorset, East Yorkshire, Gloucester, Southampton, Bradford, Croydon, Kingston upon Thames, Rotherham, Birmingham and Harrow Schools Art Library making purchases more intermittently. I also realised I may have overstated the links between Pictures for Schools and counties such as the West Riding, Hertfordshire and Leicestershire, who I know to have had extensive loan collections and to have valued art in schools. Whilst they did certainly support Pictures for Schools in its early years, they appear to have stopped being regular purchasers by the late-1950s and 1960s, perhaps because they had become accustomed to buying art on a more year-round basis and approaching and liaising with artists and galleries direct. Educational buyers from Wales (and very occasionally Scotland) also made occasional purchases, although Wales had its own Pictures for Welsh Schools exhibitions from 1951 and a one-off Pictures for Scottish Schools exhibition was held in 1967. One thing I am interested in finding out more about are the art advisers who visited Pictures for Schools on behalf of county education committees, some of whom seem to have had interesting artistic careers and involvement in their own right, including Robert Washington, long-running art advisor for Essex.
I noticed that prints were by far the most popular item, probably due to their affordability (many buyers purchased prints unframed) with embroidery also popular and sculpture noticeably unpopular. One name which really stood out was the print-maker Peter Green, who seemed to make extensive sales at each exhibition, as did fellow print-makers Philip Greenwood, Michael Stokoe and Richard Tavener. Something else I noticed was that buyers often stuck with one artist and continued to collect their work year on year. As I’d observed previously, I also came across more correspondence from schools and local authorities which had purchased work from artists and wished to follow up by contacting the artists to ask for biographical or other information to complement the use of the works as learning resources, and sometimes to arrange local exhibitions of particular artists’ work.
Nan Youngman painting in Manchester Art Gallery
Posted: June 9, 2014 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: art, Manchester, Manchester Art Gallery, Nan Youngman, painting Leave a commentDuring my visit to Manchester Art Gallery last week I was pleased to be told that an oil painting by Pictures for Schools founder Nan Youngman, entitled Convolvulus (1943), will soon be going on display in the Art Gallery cafe. I enjoyed having a chance to view the painting in the store, a still-life in a striking colour palette of red, white and green, as previously the paintings I had seen by Youngman comprised landscapes and a self-portrait.
Convolvulus is one of two Nan Youngman paintings in the collection, the other being Waste Land, Tredegar, South Wales (1951), which stands out to me among Youngman’s output I have seen for its human element: there’s a lot of movement to the painting, in contrast with the deserted stillness I associate with many of Youngman’s paintings of deserted buildings, streetscapes and imposing landscapes. The painting is populated by the soft-edged outlines of small children busy at play, in groups and as individuals, foregrounded in colour against the griminess of a polluted industrial backdrop. However, the staff I spoke to didn’t seem to know much about Youngman and her history beyond her association with Cambridge.
Manchester Art Gallery’s Rutherston Loan Scheme
Posted: June 9, 2014 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: archives, art, Elisabeth Frink, loan collections, Manchester, Manchester Art Gallery, Nan Youngman, painting, Pictures for Schools, research, sculpture 9 CommentsLast week I finally had chance to follow up a reference from my last visit to the Nan Youngman collection in Reading: a trail of correspondence between the organisers of Pictures for Schools and the keepers of the Rutherston Loan Scheme at Manchester Art Gallery. The correspondence dated back to the 1960s, when Keepers of the Rutherston scheme were visitors to the Pictures for Schools exhibitions in London each year and made a number of purchases of sculptures, drawings, paintings and prints. At the exhibitions, the Keeper made a list of reserved artworks which, if they were not sold to schools or education authorities first, were sent to Manchester to be approved for purchase for the collection by a council committee.
The Rutherston Loan Scheme was aimed at educational institutions and art galleries in the North of England. I am curious to find out what happened to some of the artworks and how they were used once they left Pictures for Schools, yet I could find very little reference to the scheme on the art gallery’s website. I made an enquiry about whether the scheme and collection was still in existence, and what kind of records existed relating to its history and was informed that the scheme ran until the late-1970s, when a public aspect was introduced to the scheme, with local ratepayers able to borrow works for their homes. Later, in the 1980s, the scheme became a community scheme with exhibitions lent to schools and community centres. The scheme finally came to an end in the early-’90s, following rate caps and a resultant reduction in staffing levels, and artworks were accessioned into the main collection. Like many other instances of loan collections, insurance too was increasingly problematic. Today, the gallery has corporate loan schemes, which lend work suitable for the offices of local firms such as barristers’ offices. New work is acquired for this collection, often by young talent, which can later be accessioned into the main collection. Following an exhibition about nineteenth century philanthropist and Ancoats museum founder Thomas Horsfall, which worked alongside a local primary, it is encouraging to hear that artworks will once again be going into schools.
Manchester Art Gallery gallery has a useful set of records relating to the Rutherston Loan Scheme, dating back to the 1920s when the collection was founded by Bradford businessman and art collector Charles Rutherston. A transcript of a speech made at Manchester Art Gallery in 1926 reveals that after searching for a place to house his collection, he settled on Manchester due to the need for the provinces to have access to art, the good example set by existing levels of cultural provision in the city, and a pre-existing relationship with curator Lawrence Haward and his interest in modern layouts for art galleries. Manchester was also chosen because of its relative proximity to Rutherston’s home city of Bradford, which would enable circulation to institutions across Lancashire and Yorkshire. Rutherston considered it to be important that the collection could be circulated rather than having a permanent home at one gallery, acting as an educational aid, and initially anticipated that schools of art would be the most regular borrowers (it turned out that secondary schools in fact made most use of the scheme). The Arts Council later picked up on this, and circulated the collection regionally to stimulate interest in similar schemes in other parts of the country.
The pilot version of the scheme loaned artworks for one year, although this was felt to be too long to maintain students’ interest and termly loans were initiated instead. The scheme worked by lending groups of pictures to borrowers, either grouped by artistic theme or by ‘different methods of approach to artistic problems’, which could be supplemented from a pool of pictures. Borrowers could visit the collection to make a choice for themselves, or the Keeper could make a choice on their behalf, and the Keeper was also available for illustrated talks. Borrowers had to pay for transport by road or rail, and insurance arranged at ‘reasonable rates’ through the Manchester Corporation. The art gallery has lists of local schools which made use of the scheme, as well as annual reports, which reveal that the scheme was used extensively by elementary and secondary schools throughout Manchester and Salford, along with those in towns in the surrounding area such as Warrington and Bury, as well as specialist schools such as a school in the countryside for epileptics and an experimental boarding school near Clitheroe for children from Salford where students would otherwise have had little opportunity of seeing art. Schools of art made use of loans by displaying examples of work from the collection in the dedicated studios in which that medium was taught – for example, figurative work was shown in the life drawing room. Exhibitions of selections from the collection were also held at Platt Hall, the art gallery’s south Manchester outpost in Fallowfield.
Rutherston was first inspired to collect art by his brother, the painter Will Rothenstein, and, through Will, become part of a social circle that included members of the New English Art Club. This group was drawn on heavily for the collection, along with other groups of artists such as the London Group and the Camden Town Group. Although Rutherson also collected examples of ‘ancient Oriental Pottery, Bronzes and Carvings’, and the collection contained a few examples of foreign artists, his aim was the ‘cultivation of the Modern School of English Art’. In this way, like Pictures for Schools, the scheme offered support for young and unrecognised artists alongside more established names (albeit supplemented by reproductions of masterpieces if it was found to be necessary). The acquisition of work by living artists continued throughout the collection’s existence, with an emphasis on the modern, contemporary and progressive, and the collection aimed to provide a wide survey of twentieth century art and the ‘modern outlook’, aiming to stimulate interest in ‘new forms of visual expression’ among borrowers. Rutherston saw his gift as the ‘nucleus’ of a collection which would grow with gifts and further acquisitions, and a number of donations came from the Contemporary Art Society. Other artworks were purchased at exhibitions of local artists. During the Second World War, the Rutherston Scheme had links with CEMA (the Council for the Encouragement of Music and Art), and works were acquired from the War Artists’ Advisory Council. Other works in the collection were humbler forms, such as linocuts, which were thought to be of particular interest to schools as students often made linocuts in art classes.
I was able to view a few of the works which were purchased through Pictures for Schools in the 1960s in the art gallery’s store. Although sculpture is stored elsewhere in Manchester (the curator mentioned that much of the gallery’s post-war sculpture is small in scale, something which fits in with my observations of the sculpture in the Derbyshire County Council school loan collection), I was able to view an extraordinary (yet probably slightly disturbing for schoolchildren) drawing by Elisabeth Frink, Bird Man (1963), which depicts movement through an unusual drawing technique and diagonal composition. Another artwork, Studies in Line (1964), a print by Conrad Atkinson, appeared to be a snapshot of an endless variation of experiments into the possibilities of line and form which drew the eye back again and again. An artwork by Pauline Smith, Museum Study (1968), was a real curiosity, a proscenium arch drawn on graph paper in the luminous oranges and purples characteristic of the era. Unframed, it appeared to be more of a study or demonstration exercise to be shown to students than something designed to beautify a wall. One of the artworks purchased through Pictures for Schools, however, is currently on loan to the office of Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester City Council.
One of the most interesting chapters of the Rutherston collection’s history relates to the Second World War and the continuing importance of the arts at that time. Despite difficulties such as transport limitations, the evacuation of Manchester schools and the storage of some of the more valuable works safely away from Manchester, the collection was in high demand and schools continued to make good use of artworks even in temporary accommodation. Loans from the collection were also distributed to YMCAs, service camps, factory hostels, hospitals, factories and local firms, as well as the local Juvenile Employment Bureau where children discussed the pictures informally amongst themselves whilst waiting to be seen.
Another interesting aspect to the scheme was the lively interest taken by Rutherston’s widow, Essil R. Elmslie (1880–1952), an artist and owner of the Redfern Gallery in London, after his death in 1927. A steady stream of correspondence between Mrs Rutherston and the Keeper of the collection reveals that she made regular visits to Manchester, and was keen to visit schools and other borrowers to see how they were making use of the collection (as well as trying to encourage those schools which weren’t making use of the collection, such as Manchester Grammar, where paintings were only displayed in the Masters’ areas, to do so, and giving suggestions for schools which felt they had nowhere to display artwork). Mrs Rutherston made regular purchases for the scheme, both from gallery exhibitions as well as student potters at the school of art local to her in Farnham.
Along with the artworks purchased from Pictures for Schools for the Rutherston Loan Scheme, there are other interesting links between the schemes. ‘Rutherston’ was an anglicised version of the surname ‘Rothenstein’, and Charles Rutherston was the uncle of John Rothenstein, director of the Tate Gallery from 1938-1964, who was involved in selecting artworks for early instalments of Pictures for Schools. Youngman also knew John Rothenstein’s brother, the painter Michael Rothenstein, socially as part of a group of East Anglian painters. Another possible link with Nan Youngman is through the Society for Education in Art, under whose name Pictures for Schools was organised: Mrs Rutherston was actively involved in the local branch at Farnham in Surrey, helping to organise a wartime exhibition in aid of the Red Cross, and wrote with enthusiasm about attending an SEA conference at Somerville College, Oxford, addressed by Herbert Read and the art critic Eric Newton (a Manchester man who wrote regularly about Pictures for Schools in the press), where she tried to spread the word about the Rutherston Loan Scheme among those she met.
It is hoped that there will eventually be an exhibition of work from the Rutherston Loan Collection at Manchester Art Gallery, which I think is a great idea given its long and fascinating history.
Pictures for Schools 