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This is just a little something we’re experimenting with at the Museum of English Rural Life. We have a lot of fat cow paintings and few ways of interpreting them, but we’re thinking this may be one of many ways forward.
(and before any cow experts say anything, yes we know this is a bull and wouldn’t have been slaughtered for meat. We’re working on finding a nice bullock!)
Was up in the Art Store today, felt like I was being watched.
Turn around, it’s old man ex-vice chancellor peeking through his protective bubble wrap.
Need to fix that bubble wrap.
You may not have known that the University of Reading has numerous art collections; we’d like to introduce you to them.
The diverse art collections include the University Art Collection of oil and acrylic paintings, works on paper and photographs. Over the course of its life, work was acquired for the University Art Collection for different reasons and was used in different ways. Artworks were used as teaching aids, acquired to illustrate the University’s institutional history, or commissioned to hang in University buildings. Artworks were acquired for their connections to local history, or were the result of generous and idiosyncratic benefaction, including acquiring the work of past students.
Lacking a single unifying theme, the University Art Collection is a collection that tells the story of its institution. It is a representation of the University’s teaching, the interests of its staff and students, its building’s aesthetic and its supporters, over the past 90 years.
Some of the most significant work in the University Art Collection includes Leon Kossoff’s (b. 1926) Willesden Junction, Early Morning, 1962.
UAC/10234 ‘Willesden Junction, Early Morning’ by Leon Kossoff, 1962.
Born in London, Kossoff used the city as a stimulus for his work, often painting autobiographical scenes from where he lived and worked. Although rooted in observation, the reality and impact of his work is achieved less from topographic realism, and more from his sensory reflections of place and handling of paint (Hallman, 2014).
The University Art Collection also holds a number of paintings by Max Weber (1881-1961).
UAC/10415 ‘Still life with bird’, by Max Weber, 1912.
Weber is acknowledged today as one of the most influential American artists among his generation of early moderns (North, 2014). Weber spent several years in Paris and Europe where he assimilated modernist ideas into his work. On his return to America in 1908, he is attributed with being the first artist to introduce the New York art scene to cubist-inspired work – through both his painting and those of his acquaintances, Picasso and Cezanne.
The University Art Collection holds a number of drawings and preliminary sketches by Walter Sickert. In the early years of the twentieth century, Sickert created an informal grouping of fellow artists; this assembly later evolved into the Camden Town Group.
Betts_017 ‘Marie seated on a bed’, by Walter Sickert, c.1911-12
Camden Town painting is recognised by several characteristics, the works tended to be small and were draughted with impartial accuracy. The Group’s favourite themes established an unmistakable and repeated vocabulary: nudes on a bed, at the toilet, or inhabiting bed-sits in Camden Town. Clothed figures appear in humble interiors, mantelpieces, still-lifes of cluttered bric-a-brac and landscape views of commonplace London streets and gardens (Baron, 1976). In this sketch ‘Hubby’, Sickert’s housekeeper, is in the background in front of a mirror, probably dressing. Marie is nude and seated in the foreground, facing the viewer. Sickert’s title to base reads ‘the discussion’. Through the addition of suggestive titles, often retrospectively, Sickert embellished his two-figure subjects with fabricated stories (Baron, 1976).
The Art Collections includes the painting collection of the Museum of English Rural Life; which forms part of MERL’s designated collection.
64/96 This is a print from a lithograph of a painting, entitled 'Portrait of T. W. Coke and North Devon Ox', by W. H. Davis, c.1837.
The painting collection relates to the era of farm livestock improvement in the nineteenth century. Affectionately referred to by curatorial staff as ‘fat cow’ paintings - owing to their extraordinary size and shape - these animal portraits were commissioned to portray prize-winning breeds in a time before photography.
As ever, the definition of what art is means artistic works are contained not just in the University Art Collection or the MERL painting collection. Artistic works appear throughout the University’s Special Collections.
MS 5336/375/1 © Ladybird Books Ltd 2015, Illustration from ‘Numbers’, first published 1959, Illustrator: G.Robinson
Perhaps one of the most noteworthy is the archive of original full-colour illustrations for Ladybird books. The Ladybird books; authoritative, nurturing and quintessentially British in their approach, offered a portrait of their time through specially commissioned artwork. The books aided and encouraged children to read, and to embrace knowledge independently.
The University has recently appointed an Art Collections Officer who will manage the Art Collections. With this new post, we hope to demonstrate the relevance of the Art Collections by cultivating them as a resource in teaching and learning. As part of this objective, you can follow our progress as we share news of our future projects on our blog and twitter.
Queries relating to the Art Collection can be directed to the Art Collections Officer, Jacqueline Winston-Silk [email protected]
huntingtonlibrary has kindly invited us to take part in their Weekly Squint, one of our favourite things on Tumblr!
This is a detail of our painting Pandora by John Dickson Batten (1860-1932). Pandora was the first woman formed out of clay by the gods in ancient Greek mythology. Zeus ordered her to be made, and so she was fired by Hephaistos (God of fire and blacksmiths) and endowed with beauty and cunning by Athena (Goddess of the Arts). She infamously opened the jar which released all the evils of humanity.
Our squint shows the cheeky Hermes (God of transition and boundaries), hiding behind a pillar in the corner of the painting. According to Hesiod’s Works and Days Hermes endowed Pandora with the power of speech as well as ‘a shameful mind and deceitful nature’, so maybe that’s why he’s hiding.
tomblibootumbling kindly did some detective work on this week’s A Snapshot from the Library, tracking down the artist of the featured paintings:
I was very interested in the set of paintings from the book, which you just posted. I discovered that the first is by a Dutch an artist of whom I’d never heard, Heinrich Campendonk, associated with the Blue Rider group. The piece is in the Penzberg Museum:http://www.museum-penzberg.de/campendonk.0.html :)
Image credit
Paint your wagon red!
It takes a lot of skill, craftmanship and patience, backed up by centuries of local tradition and style to paint an English wagon. Each one is different, differing according to village, town, region and individual painter.
All of these objects may be on display in the Museum of English Rural life's redisplay (from top, l to r):
Canal Life
Here are a couple of photos we once used when primary school children visited MERL as part of Takeover Day and used pictures from our collection to create mini exhibitions (see an online version here) about life on the canals.
Unfortunately we don’t know the names of the people nor the location of the canal in these particular pictures but the date is August 1965.
The collection includes a variety of activities but here we have crocheting and painting.
