Art Much as I can’t contain my delight about visiting some of the museums listed in Edward Morris’s Public Art Collection in North-West England, there’s no denying that Bolton Museum was a disappointment. The outside is an architectural feast, a massive edifice opened next to the town hall in 1939 which looks like it could contain all of the world’s great art treasures. Not as huge as some national galleries perhaps, but certainly big enough to get the heart racing about what might be within. Edward says that this “was the last of the great Lancashire public art galleries and certainly one of the finest” and least in terms of the exterior he’s right. It’s pity then that my expectation where dashed within minutes as I realised that the mass of the interior was given over to the library and offices.
The museum and art gallery fill a couple of albeit large rooms on the first floor, and even then much of the space it taken up by the entrance hall. It lacks intimacy. Even in some of the major national galleries, its possible to spend time with the paintings, enjoy the connection. Not so easy here, where every sound echoes and there’s a general sense of hustle and bustle akin to a railway station, especially on the day I visited during half term, and we’ve already talked about how intolerant I am to noise in art galleries. I spent the whole visit with a cd swirling through my ears trying to concentrate. At what point did it become acceptable in these spaces to take mobile phone calls or to be screaming and shouting so loudly you can hear it over your own headphones which must also be on too loud?
All of which said, I still managed to fill five pages in my notebook. I wonder if it’s possible to assess the quality of a collection like this. “Oh it’s a three pager” or “It’s a five pager. Yeah!” There are two rooms, both refurbished and redisplayed in 2006, one for the permanent collection, the other for temporary displays. The first thing you notice is a giant ornate mirror which takes up much of one of the walls of the kind which picks out all of your flaws, especially my case were there are several hundred. The second is that ringing the room just above the skirting board on every wall are large slabs of marble of varying colours, the work of Thomas Hershaw.
My favourite piece here is predictably the smallest, Oscar Wilson’s Idling (1887). This depicts a young girl in pink dress during a quiet moment in an antique shop or interior of an art school surrounded by ancient statues and busts of Greco-Roman origin as well as pottery in a variety of muted colours. There's a stillness in her demeanor as she reads her book, enjoying her own company in a way seems lost now at a time when kids are assault by a barrage of noise and colours. Opposite is a much larger canvas Robert Gemmell Hutchkinson’s chocolate boxy Seagulls and Sapphire Shells (1912). More children relaxing, this time on the edge of a cliff watching the gulls or dozing. It’s also a romantic image of times past, with strong brush strokes in the landscape, the sea and sky, giving way to deliberate work within the figures, but allowing the canvas to provide some of the textures.
Lord Leverhulme was a major benefactor in Bolton Museum department’s fortunes. He bought and refurbished the local Hall i' th' Wood before presenting it to the council in 1902 as a folk museum illustrating British life in the seventeenth century. Similarly, he gave the art collection a range of paintings, and most of them are on display, incongruous Dutch 17th century portraits; the best of which is of Oliver Cromwell, produced by a follower of Rover Walker, through whose eyes you can see the life lived, and the challenges ahead. Most of the rest seem fairly anonymous, their stories obscured. In contrast, John Downton’s Madonna across the wall is a statement of post-modern intent. Though painted in 1958, the artist has mingled together several centuries worth of art history to produce a small tempera work on a mahogany panel, and though as the gallery information says it has an early Renaissance and Flemish influence, it’s also the work of someone who’s seen and loved art deco and wondered what a devotional piece with that movement’s deliberate lines and shapes might look.
The centrepieces of that room are Thomas Moran’s three landscape paintings, The Coast of Florida, Nearing camp, Evening on the Upper Colorado River Wyoming and Sunset, Pueblo del Walper. As befits paintings with titles that monumental, Moran isn’t afraid to use colour and each glows with a Technicolor not seen often outside of the old movie houses, Florida enveloped by green, peach coloured rocks in Wyoming and bright orange hues for the Arizona sunset. This is the old west of Aaron Copland’s Billy The Kid and in fact Billy The Kid himself and like similar works appearing as part of the current Age of Steam exhibition at the Walker, they’re building towards the myth which would inspire film directors not too many decades later. All have tiny human figures underscoring the scale of the landscape and it’s just right that other versions of the work can be found in the States – the Smithsonian has a variation on the Wyoming image.
What really made the visit worthwhile was the Face To Face Exhibition which is running to September. The plan here is to investigate the changing styles of portraiture and how our mugs appear in paint, pencil and photography. There are the Two Polaroids by Andy Warhol. I’ve never been a fan to be honest, understand the philosophy, enjoying the stories of the studio but never really wanting to spend time over something which can be mass produced which is a paradox in an age with everything is being endlessly reproduced, which is what he was saying, probably. There is however something quite special about these shots of artist Joseph Beuys and Liza Minelli, both in the kinds of poses you’d find in a fashion magazine running counter to the idea of the Polaroid offering instant visual gratification. Liza looks so young in this; she’s wearing a red sequined dress and scarlet lipstick, her face shot from an angle which makes it seems like a perfect circle, the colour of her skin matching the wall behind her, making the whole composition seem like a comic book drawing, or poster.
Thomas Edward Martyn’s The Green Gown is the other treat, a jaw dropping image of a young dark haired woman wearing a long flowing emerald costume which just shimmers. There’s an amazing use of light and shade and shadow which highlights something very noble and gorgeous in her which is either down to the woman’s natural beauty, whoever she is, or the painters ability, or a mix of the two. You know I wouldn’t say this unless I meant it, but this may well be one of the best portraits I’ve ever seen and the postcard simply doesn’t do it justice. It’s good to know my head can still be turned in this way, even if its fairly predictable that it would be a pretty girl, decently painted. Lately I’ve been watching the BBC's The Private Life of the Masterpiece documentaries which tend to cover major works that changed the course of art history. Martyn’s painting isn’t one of those and is probably all too tradition for some tastes. But it is magical in its own way.
Sorry I was so cranky at the top of this. Perhaps my expectations were too high. Perhaps I was just browned off that the one piece I was looking forward to seeing Millais’s The Somnabulist was on loan to this. Perhaps I was expecting something akin to a Disneyworld for art and not a place where what looks like a major collection of Jacob Epstein sculptures, the largest I’ve seen anyway, are strewn to the edge of the entrance hall and through one of the ethnographic display spaces seemingly unloved and lacking respect. I expect that there’s probably a very passionate curator working behind the scenes in these cases, trying the best they can in desperate circumstances, as council funding for the arts is cut as the credit crunch constricts. The quality of the Face to Face exhibition proves this must be the case and that perhaps I just need to be a bit more understanding, less stolid and far breezier when I sit down to write about these visits...
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