When the In Translation ladies chose the Colonial Progress Brings Home Prosperity poster set to display in the Gallery’s latest exhibition I was really pleased. It’s one of the most controversial sets, and so it seemed right – more honest – that the Gallery was not going to keep it behind the scenes.
This painting is a good one for Valentine's day because it's then that lots of people feel loneliest, don't they? Here's Pygmalion's solution to loneliness - perhaps one not to copy!
Also see Two’s Company, Three’s None by Marcus stone in Gallery 7, Adieu by Edmund Blair Leighton in Gallery 7, and The Lantern Maker’s Courtship by William Holman Hunt in Gallery 5.The Gallery is a romantic place, easy to see why so many people propose here!
Hannah Williamson
Curator, Collections Access
Following an incredibly successful run here at Manchester Art Gallery we have now packed up the Ford Madox Brown show and shipped it off to the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, Belgium, for its second showing. I go out next week to oversee the Manchester works being installed and I’m excited to see how the curators there are going to present them. Most of the same paintings and drawings that were on show here will be included, but there will be slightly less emphasis on Brown’s Manchester period at the end of his career. There will be additional works from MSK’s collection to put Brown in the context of his Belgian contemporaries from the period when he was training in the art academies of Ghent, Antwerp and Bruges.
So, if you missed the show in Manchester, why not catch it in Ghent? It will be on from 25 February – 3 June 2012. For more information: http://www.mskgent.be/nl Preparing Work to travel Work is one of the most famous paintings in our collection and is often requested for loan to other exhibitions. Not only is it going to Ghent this year as part of the Ford Madox Brown show, it will be going to Tate Britain in the autumn for their major Pre-Raphaelite show. To preserve the fragile slip frame (the flat gold arched inner frame with inscription) our conservation team have prepared a replica slip frame for when the painting travels and is on loan. They have also prepared stretcher inserts for the back of the painting to keep the picture stable.It was great to be able to watch the conservators at work on this before we packed the painting for Ghent. It made me realise what a complex object Work is and how many years of moving and handling it can take its toll. When it returns from its travels this year our frames conservator is considering the option of making a replica of the main outer frame for display so that the original can be preserved from further wear and tear.
For more information about the Tate’s Pre-Raphaelite exhibition:
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/preraphaelites/default.shtm
There is a new Showcase display of crocheted glass by Catherine Carr on display in the second floor gallery of Craft & Design.
Book tickets
** The event is now sold out **
Images
Unfinished cartoon/design for John Kay, Inventor of the fly shuttle, AD 1753, 1888, tempera on panel. ©Manchester City Art Galleries
Design for Crabtree watching the transit of Venus, AD 1639, 1881, 1888, tempera on panel. ©Manchester City Art Galleries
Design for The Establishment of the Flemish weavers in Manchester, AD 1362, 1881, 1888, tempera on panel. ©Manchester City Art Galleries
Pre-Raphaelite artists were often intimately involved with their models and Ford Madox Brown was no exception. In December 1848 he met Emma Hill, a bricklayer’s daughter, who was working as a model. They quickly fell in love, had a daughter and married in 1853. Unlike the dark and red haired women that Rossetti, Hunt and Millais fell for, Emma was fair. William Michael Rossetti (later Brown and Emma’s son-in-law) described her looks: ‘pink complexion, regular features and a fine abundance of beautiful yellow hair, the tint of harvest corn’.
Rebecca Milner
Curator: Collections Access
A Manchester Street (image 1) was purchased by the gallery in 2008, and since that time we have been on the lookout for an opportunity to display it. The Manchester Gallery seemed the obvious place, but it wasn’t until last week that space became available.
I am not the only one drawn to Bold’s work. Mr Allcroft, the previous owner of A Manchester Street, purchased the painting directly from the artist in 1977, captivated by its simplicity. It evoked his own wartime childhood, spent in Gorton, Manchester. When the sirens sounded during the bombing raids over Manchester, he and his Mum would have to rush out to a shelter. He said, ‘My Dad thought we were sitting ducks with heavy industry all round us.’
Tom Allcroft was only five years old in 1941, but he remembers it vividly (image 2). He helped with the war effort by patrolling the street – not having a toy sword, he armed himself with his toy saw, and his toy gun. He hopes that when others see this picture of Manchester lit up by incendiary bombs they will reflect on what it must have been like during the early war years, and agree with Winston Churchill that ‘it is better to jaw, jaw than war, war’.
New on display in the 2nd floor Gallery of Craft & Design is Katie Walker's Ribbon Rocking Chair. Combining innovative design with traditional hand crafting, this chair has won awards from Channel 4's Grand Designs Product of the Year to the Wood Awards to the Guild Mark of the Worshipful Company of Furniture Makers.
This week the painters were in! On Tuesday Danny and his team started priming the walls in the exhibition spaces ready for the lovely Farrow & Ball colours that will provide the backdrop to Ford Madox Brown’s work. We’ve chosen Green Smoke, Picture Gallery Red and Brassica from F&B’s vast range of historic and contemporary colours. Green Smoke was apparently a popular colour in the second half of the 19th Century and we felt it reflected Brown’s interest in the more muted tones of the Aesthetic Movement later in his career.
We have just put up a new display by Rachel Goodyear. We are showing four framed drawings and her first animation. Rachel makes drawings of macabre scenes featuring people and animals. She is inspired by different sources including folklore, mythology and personal experience. In one image we see emerging from a girl’s mouth a snake which turns into a frog at its head. In another image entitled Headache a man with vacant eyes has thorny sticks taped to his head. The work shows a strange connection between humans and nature – one which is mutually dependent, yet sinister. There is a fine line between humour and malevolence. In the animation Kissing in Tunnels her disturbing characters come alive, locked in an eternal loop of waiting, longing and resignation.
Behind the scenes, curators play an important role in developing the programme of exhibitions and displays at the gallery. In this blog we'll talk about our work with the collections, about how we prepare for new displays and exhibitions and about the ideas, research and discoveries which inform what we do.
And we're really keen to hear your responses too, please use the comments to ask us questions or give your opinions about our work.
