Joash Woodrow – A Hidden Life in Pictures (Part 2)

Liz Kay continues her series of posts about artist Joash Woodrow 

(Catch up with Part 1)

Joash Woodrow and Cyril Satorsky - ‘Student Drawing’, 1944

Reading about the discovery of Joash Woodrow’s art, never exhibited and packed into a modest Leeds house, it would be easy to imagine him as an ‘outsider artist’. His style was uninhibited and he often used scrap materials. No-one who knew Woodrow as a young man, however, would have been surprised by his eventual success.

Woodrow’s parents were Polish-Jewish immigrants who ran a bookshop and gave their son a lifelong love of culture and progressive politics. With his sights set on an artistic career, Woodrow enrolled at Leeds College of Art in 1942 and won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art. In a class alongside future greats like Frank Auerbach and Peter Blake, Woodrow’s tutor marked him out as a rising star.

Someone who knew Woodrow well during this time was his childhood friend and fellow art student, Cyril Satorsky. Describing Woodrow as ‘extremely shy and ultrasensitive’, Satorsky also highlights Woodrow’s ‘hyper-real’ sense of humour and elaborate practical jokes. On one occasion, Woodrow carved an enormous ‘Easter Island Statue’ at a quarry in Leeds and convinced Satorsky it was an ancient monument. As cash-strapped students, they spent their time debating politics, reading Russian novels and visiting Leeds’ museums.

Woodrow’s earliest drawings include this collaboration with Satorsky, made while both artists were at Leeds College of Art. The drawing was initially torn up, but then given as a memento to their friend, J. Clark. Fortunately, Clark saved the drawing for over 60 years before donating it to the gallery.
The two young artists have adopted a style in which it is difficult to tell their hands apart, and which is quite different from both artists’ mature work. The tight lines and careful shading are in contrast to Woodrow’s more expressive style, while Satorsky has gone on to focus on bright and bold abstract painting..

Joash Woodrow –
‘Nude Female Studies’, 1944

Wartime and Inspirations

To explore this drawing in context, Satorsky’s recollections give a flavour of the times. The Second World War provides the backdrop, a time when ideas carried great power, laced with a sense of danger.

Horror and absurdity can be felt in Woodrow and Satorsky’s drawing, where one man points a gun at another who has a noose about his neck. The drawing’s violent imagery evokes powerful artistic statements about the brutality of war. The stylised figures and wide angle composition suggest an appreciation of Picasso’s Guernica.

Another inspiration may have been the anti-war ballet ‘The Green Table’, which Woodrow and Satorsky saw in Leeds. The performance by German political exiles Joos Ballet featured a dance of death in which the characters meet with grim fates. Impressed, the two students talked their way backstage to draw the dancers. Jotting the German names in their sketchbooks, the pair left to continue sketching near some anti-aircraft guns in a park, unwittingly leading the nearby military police to mistake them for German spies!  

Tensions were running high and art could be seen as a weapon. Satorsky describes how Woodrow ‘loved the combat’ of making art and could ‘lay down a mark like Mohammed Ali’s punch’, using ragged old brushes to stab at his canvases with unexpected precision.

Life Drawing at Leeds Art Gallery

 At art school, Woodrow’s approach to life-drawing class also caused controversy. Perhaps feeling stifled by technical exercises, Woodrow would change all the models’ poses in his drawings. This process of re-imagined life-drawing may be what we see in his drawing Nude Female Studies at Leeds Art Gallery, made in 1944, at Leeds College of Art. In this pencil drawing, two figures are rendered sharply, but ghostly figures also merge into abstract mark-making alongside these.
Woodrow’s studies were interrupted by national service in 1945, when he was posted in Egypt for three years as a cartographer.

Graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1953, Woodrow worked in London as an accountant, painting only in the evening. During this time, Woodrow suffered with depression, and an argument with a friend brought on a crisis that led to his return to the family home in Leeds. The next post will explore his fruitful relationship with the city he came back to.

By Liz Kay, Volunteer Cataloguer, Leeds Art Gallery.

Artists as Explorers

Part of the role of the Education team at Leeds Art Gallery is creating activities that align with schools curricula. We accept these challenges and try to work topics into exciting learning experiences outside the classroom.

‘All around the World’ was the latest topic a primary school asked us to work with. It would have been too easy to do a whistle-stop tour of artists who come from different countries or cover a stereotyped example of a specific culture. Instead, we understood it as explorers in their own right; with their investigatory processes of making artworks and wanted to address the journeys that lead viewers on when engaging with an artwork.

Inspiration: Chris Drury

Flicking through the gallery’s catalogue of artworks in the collection, I found 'Medicine Wheel' by Chris Drury (1982-1983) (View it on the artist's website). The large wheel shape contains one natural object for each day of the year, all collected by the artist on walks he took. It also contains twelve segments of paper, one for each month, made from the pulp of particular plants most evident during that month and a mushroom spore print at the very centre of the wheel.

Chris Drury is an environmental artist who makes site-specific nature based sculpture. His work makes connections between different phenomena in the world, specifically between nature and culture. He focuses on the environments in which we live, often using mapping to draw attention to how we use or abuse the landscape. Drury frequently collaborates with scientists, doctors and technicians to explore the sites he creates artworks about.

Journeys as artistic inspiration

Inspired by the artwork, we proposed a creative play space in which to explore the theme ‘Journeys’. We asked pupils to bring a photo or object from ‘all around the world’ to the activity, which would help showcase or add to the work that they had been undertaking in class. Young people used their imaginations and independent creative ideas to go on a journey with their object and to investigate what their object said about living in a particular place.

The play space was constructed as a large wheel installation on the floor with four sections of different activities. Pupils made new artworks that imagined the surroundings of the objects they brought through sound, 3D modelling, creative sorting and drawing. As an example, one pupil brought a picture of a landscape in Zimbabwe to the 3D modelling station; the pupil considered what else an explorer may see in the environment of the picture and made a model of an elephant.

At the end of the experience pupils shared their new creations, displaying the artworks in the wheel to make a collective artwork of imaginary journeys.

Taking an artist process and ‘reinventing the wheel,’ we created a learning experience that allowed children to go on their own imaginative journeys and making an artwork as a response. An artist and their working process provided inspiration for creative learning experiences. This also showcased the role an artist can play in communicating about the world, and how they question our surroundings.

By Lucy Courtney-Clegg

Artspace on the Move: Sorry We're Closed

Artist Lucy Courtney-Clegg reveals how she's been helping to create pop-up environments in
which people can experience art outside the gallery space

I joined Leeds Art Gallery’s education office during the gallery’s closure for roof repairs. For me, it was perfect timing. Outside of the gallery I work as an artist with a group called ‘Reet So’ and we specialise in interrupting public spaces with art. I was excited to get my teeth stuck into the placement and find ways for the Art Gallery’s learning programme to pop-up in city venues and shake-up experiences of art in schools.

Bringing the gallery to the people!
There’s a few of us at the moment in the education team: a student intern, a visitor assistant and myself working collaboratively as a ‘Think Tank’ to dream up new ideas for bringing the ideas of a gallery and its artworks to the people of Leeds. The gallery offers a place where you can see the world through the eyes of artists and it can make you think differently and reflect on our own experience.

The challenge is we don’t currently have an art gallery and it is impossible to recreate those wondrous high ceilings, spaces and atmosphere that the gallery brings to the experience of exploring art. But we can create pop-up experiences of art that interrupts the way we think about our everyday, lives that go beyond formal learning and play with the familiarity of a space.

Take ‘Situationism,’ a mid-20th century movement that created alternative life experiences through the construction of situations. They wanted to challenge the categorisation of art and culture as separate activities and to transform them into part of everyday life. These thoughts reminded me of something I experienced the other day across the road from the gallery; ‘The Weather Café’, “a unique environment in which to reflect, be still and drink tea” created by artist David Shearing.  With its own microclimate, animated by wind, sound and rain, it featured the voices of the people of Leeds and provided a snapshot of the current mood of the city.

Artspace on the Move
So what does this have to do with Leeds Art Gallery? Currently we are using Artspace, which previously had a permanent space in the gallery, where families engaged with artworks from the collection. We are now mobile, creating situations for experiencing art in public spaces such as Trinity Kitchen, in Leeds city centre, which is populated with street food stalls.

‘Artspace: On the Move’ was inspired by artist Martino Gamper and invited families to re-imagine broken objects from the centre’s shops into new artworks, questioning the role of consumerism in a consumerist location. It became a social space unifying families, in the middle of their shopping experience, through art.

The Weather Cafe
The following pop-up event, in the gallery’s ‘White Room’, was inspired by David Shearing’s The Weather Café. We invited families to come to our open space, conjure memories, and explore the weather and its relationship to moods. It was a grassy, messy space, not a space often imagined when you say the word ‘gallery’. But to me that is what Artspace is all about; playing, thinking, talking, being and experiencing art in ways that interrupts your experience of everyday life.

Exploring Weather: Artspace, Leeds Art Gallery

WHAT IS ART? 
This question came into my mind whilst volunteering at Leeds Art Gallery’s most recent Artspace. Artspace is an open access area with playful and creative activities inspired by artworks within the Gallery’s collection or temporary exhibition. 

For one week of the Easter school holiday we transformed the Gallery’s White Room into a space for exploring the weather and emotion, in particular how you can use weather as a way of meeting with and thinking about how you feel. We’d been inspired by the David Shearing’s Weather Café installation, which had been across the street from the 1 - 20 March (theweathercafe.co.uk). 

We selected three paintings from the collection to display: 'Blackpool Siesta' by John L. Cooper (1894-1943); 'Leeds Canal' (1914) by Charles Ginner; and 'The Café Suisse' (Café des Arcades, Dieppe) (1914) by Richard Walter Sickert. All offered insight into aspects of our project. They were hung at the very front of the White room and acted as a lure into the rest of the space which we designed to be as visually stimulating as possible.  

Artspace: Weather Moods invited people of all ages but especially children and their carers to use watercolour to paint weather images over weather stories they had written. There was also an immersive mood room with a series of projected images and sounds of different weathers and comfortable seating to encourage reflection on weather experiences.  

Other activities invited thinking about feelings as weather related phrases e.g. a face like a thundercloud.  These were displayed as if raindrops falling from an umbrella. 

Inflating Balloons we hoped would support playing with air and promote reflection on aspects of wind.

Whilst a paddling pool with books for reading about weather stories aimed to inspire children to imagine the weather when they can use such pools 

As Artspace filled with participant artworks and ideas, I couldn’t help thinking about how we were making our very own artwork as-installation-in-a-gallery, and from that I began to reflect on the question ‘what is Art?’.  Or perhaps more precisely, how do we value art? 

Artspace: Weather Moods was installed within the same room as exhibitions generally accepted and understood as Art by formal art institutions and audiences. I wondered, is the space we had created through the interaction between ideas, materials, participants and staff any less Art than what had been displayed in the room before? 

Our mood room, a sound and video combination, was shown in the same space that had previously housed a film for British Art Show 8. Did occupying this space make this installation Art? In a previous blog post I wrote about socially engaged artists such as Martino Gamper and Ciara Phillips who involve the public in their artistic processes, could our holiday Artspace be another example of socially engaged Art?

The more I began to think about the question what is Art and how we value it, the more I recognised that there is no one fixed answer. Reflecting on my thinking I have come to the conclusion that formal art institutions place value on Art for the rigor of the ideas, intention, and imaginative labour that went into its creation. (They may also value its historical significance, or because it is brand new and never seen before). In the education office we value our installation because it evidently inspired creativity, reflection and play. We value what is made by participants because it expresses their exploration, imagination and learning. I am now wondering whether comparing and contrasting these two frames may help unpack what is seen as ‘Art’.

As an Art History student I’m constantly thinking about questions like these, frequently I have more questions than answers. After my day in Artspace I came away with a renewed belief that there are many ways to value Art, and it is the multitude of possibilities that makes it so incredible. 

By Corinne Fosky, Placement Student

Artspace on the Move

Have you ever wondered what happens when an exhibition closes? Beyond the physical packing up and sending objects on for new exhibitions or into storage, what about the impression the exhibition leaves behind? Is it a clean break, or does it linger like perfume spray?

As the opening venue for British Art Show 8 there was an energy and excitement surrounding Leeds Art Gallery and the city itself, something we are hoping to continue even after the exhibition had moved on. We have been inspired by the artists Martino Gamper and Ciara Phillips who were interested in collaborating with members of the public.

Gamper, a self-described designer, not artist, worked with local artisans and skilled craftspeople to showcase the repairing of damaged and forgotten items. This included shoe-cobblers repairing soles of shoes, book binders re-binding books, and chair caners fixing chairs. Each artisan also added a design developed by Gamper, co-producing a ‘unique piece of design’ (as it says in the exhibition catalogue).This practise strengthened a conversation within our wider community about the value of objects in our culture. It also considered the way in which we as a society have a tendency to throw things out rather than expending energy to revive them.

During the recent half-term holiday, we took pop-up activities inspired by the collaborative and transformative qualities of Gamper’s work to Leeds Trinity Kitchen. We invited families and young people to repair or bring a new life to damaged or unwanted objects. Our team were on site to encourage imagination and help realise their designs and ideas (and operate the hot glue gun!).

These pictures show their artworks ranging from books to trophies, animals to new tools. 



Basket turned in to a squid



Toy car transformed in to a butterfly and clock made in to wall-art



Toy giraffe transformed in to doll and a cardboard tube turned in to cannon

Cardboard tube and wooden letters transformed into a trophy



By Corinne Foskey, Learning Officer Intern 

Introducing - The Picture Library Blog

This image from the late 1980s captures The Picture Library in an almost unrecognisable form. If it wasn't for the youthful Sheel Douglas, wearing very fashionable dungarees, or the old cloth bags, it could be a photograph of any fine art collection. (Image: Sheel Douglas and The Picture Library, c. 1988, photography John Freeman)

Hello and welcome to The Picture Library blog! 

When I tell the story of The Picture Library many are surprised to learn that for over half a century the scheme has offered the residents of Yorkshire the chance to enjoy original works of art at home. Established during the optimistic and progressive 1960s the scheme was an instant hit that quickly became an integral part of the Gallery; fast-forward to the late 1990s and the much loved service had become ragged; the works of art were in desperate need of conservation and the membership had begun to dwindle. 

To renew the scheme and reignite its relevance change was necessary, so in autumn 2009 we took the difficult decision to halt The Picture Library whilst we began the vital process of conserving and reframing the works of art. Twelve months later The Picture Library was re-launched to widespread support. We’ve since worked hard to improve the scheme further by acquiring new works of art, continuing our conservation programme and most recently making works available to swap almost every day of the year via the Gallery’s shop.

At its heart The Picture Library makes art part of everyday life. Pursuing this endeavour and broadening its scope we’ve collaborated with many organisations within Yorkshire working with artists, poets, medics and teachers to foster an active interest in the visual arts, to improve wellbeing in hospitals and to inspire learning in classrooms across Leeds. Most of these activities pass by unnoticed by the general visitor so we’ve introduced this newsletter to share with you these stories and to record the impact of your continual support of The Picture Library.

Our hope for this blog is to provide a platform for Picture Library news alongside regular features including articles introducing artists and artworks represented within the scheme’s collection. I sincerely hope it will be informative, enjoyable to read and of value to you. ​

Find out more about the scheme and how to join on The Picture Library website.

By Theodore Wilkins, Assistant Curator of Fine Art

Contemporary Art Society Annual Award 2014: Becky Beasley

Leeds Museums and Galleries, Leeds Art Gallery has been shortlisted for the fourth time, this time with artist Becky Beasley, for one of the highest value contemporary art prizes in the country, the Contemporary Art Society Annual Award for Museums which supports a UK-based museum or public gallery to work with an artist of their choice to commission a new work that, once completed, will remain within the museum’s permanent collection.

The other nominees this year are the Harris Museum & Art Gallery with artist Nathaniel Mellors; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art with Marvin Gaye Chetwynd; and the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester with Martin Boyce. The award, worth £40 000, with a potential for major impact on both the winning museum and their chosen artist will be announced on 24th November at an event at The Barbican, London.

• For further info see the Contemporary Art Society website
• Watch an interview with Becky Beasley from the Contemporary Art Society on Vimeo

By Curator Theodore Wilkins

Hummingbirds and the Greenish Puffleg

As a volunteer involved in the Skin Deep project, I have had the opportunity to handle rare, sometimes even extinct birds from the collection. As volunteers and interns, it is our task to catalogue the mounted bird and bird skin collection.

Each drawer contains a range of specimens. Some of the drawers I have catalogued contained wading birds, common British garden birds, birds of prey to exotic colourful birds that have beautifully vibrant plumage.

I was fortunate to get a drawer of hummingbird specimens, which, from the perspective of a recent Fine Art graduate, were the most stunning.

The Greenish Puffleg (Haplophaedia aureliae) originates from the humid climate of South America. Its name refers to the pure white down feather tufts found on the legs of both the male and females, like little white trousers. The image shows one a little worse for wear from our collection.

I have been very lucky to be involved in this project and I'm looking forward to discovering the next exciting drawer. Why don't you come along on one of the next Behind the Scenes tours to take a look for yourself?

By Hannah Tiffany, Natural Sciences volunteer, 2014.

You've been framed!



Madonna and Child tablet conserved
but needing a frame for display.

Detail of moulding being carved

Making things that are curved can be interesting technical challenges. The Madonna and Child tablet that has undergone conservation works is for display at Temple Newsam House. Missing its frame, a new one, of an appropriate design for the 17th century, is being made in Temple Newsam's conservation department. Starting from the tablet a template was made, and then divided into four pieces. Oak was chosen for its strength and density; softwood would be easier to carve, but because the tablet is heavy, and softwood is also prone to some movement and splitting, this makes it less than ideal for framing the sort of object we are talking about here. It is also historically accurate, oak would likely have been used in this instance, and certainly all good church and cathedral joinery is done in oak. Four pieces of quarter sawn oak were rough shaped, and their ends precisely surfaced so that the ends met cleanly. Quarter sawn oak is very straight grained, and stable. The four pieces were glued together under the pressure of a web cramp. After the glue had set a floating tenon was let in across each of the four joints. Precisely shaping the inside and outside curves was the next step. This was followed by laying out with a sharp pencil the lines of the mouldings to be carved, the carving. This was done entirely with an old hacksaw blade that I ground to make a kind of planing knife. It worked surprisingly well, and the carving was quicker than I thought it would be. Keeping the edge sharp is essential, of course. So, regularly, it is over to the diamond grit lapping stone to get an edge back, and then giving the new edge a tickle on the polishing wheel. Wicked edge achieved! Over the coming days I will update with all the procedures, because eventually this frame will be watergilded, and then toned down to give the sort of appearance of an old gilded surface.

Frame in oak being fabricated and shaped.

With the moulding carved and smoothed the frame is ready
for the next stages.

Onto the bare oak a coat of rabbit skin glue size is brushed on. Mixed 1 part rabbit skin glue granules to 10 parts water, and then gently heated into solution. The subsequent layers of gesso is the size in the same dilution with chalk (calcium carbonate) mixed in. More about gesso and its purpose when we get to that stage. The hot size when applied to the oak will be absorbed a long way into the timber. This will prevent excess rabbit skin glue in the gesso being absorbed into the oak. This would weaken the gesso and make it crumbly. The size also helps with bonding the gesso to the wood, forming a chemical bridge between the two. Powerful hydrogen bonding takes place between the size and the wood, and the size and the gesso, an interface between the wood and the gesso, and absorbed into both.

Rabbit skin glue size being brushed and worked
into the surface of the wood that will be gilded.

Gesso is a mixture of the rabbit skin glue size and powdered chalk. Its purpose is to enable an extremely smooth surface, on the item being gilded, to be created. The binding medium, rabbit skin glue is also used in the subsequent layers, the bole, and the size water applied at the gilding stage. The size water activates the dry glue in the gesso and bole, and bonds the gold leaf down to the surface.


Powdered chalk is mixed into the
size to make gesso. Enough chalk is mixed in
until the gesso has the appearance and
consistency of single cream.





Several coats, at least 12, of gesso are applied to the substrate.
The coats should all be applied the same day to ensure the
layers bond properly.

After enough gesso has been built up it needs smoothing,

and re-capturing of the detail that has gotten a little clogged up

with gesso. This is done with abrasive papers. Also with "water-

polishing". Fine cotton cloth slightly dampened slightly

dissolves the surface and allows a little re-distribution and smoothing.

Application of bole is the next stage. Bole is made of rabbit
skin glue size, and very fine grain coloured clays. Here
the clay is being crushed and mixed with water before being
added to the size.

Here the clay and size have been mixed, filtered for smoothness
and is ready to apply, fairly hot.

 Several coats of bole are applied. Yellow colour bole, and red bole

on areas that will be burnished (more about that at the

application of gold leaf stage!).

The coats of bole are made extremely smooth with
a succession of abrasive papers, finishing with
an abrasive of at least 6000 grit. Effectively this
action is polishing the bole. The surfaces are now
ready to receive the gold leaf.

Gold leaf is extremely thin. In water gilding it is bonded to the substrate by the glue in the bole and the gesso. This is re-activated with water. To help bonding further a little rabbit skin glue size is added to the water. A little ethanol (a kind of alcohol) is added too. This helps to break the surface tension of the water and helps it to wet the surface instead of beading. Gilders call this solution "size water". The gold leaf is cut to manageable, suitable, sizes and shapes with a gilder's knife. The gold is supported on a gilder's cushion at this stage, having been drawn out of the book of gold leaf it was stored in. A gilder's tip is a kind of wide, fine brush. It is used to pick the gold up. It has to be slightly sticky so that the gold transfers to the tip. I put a little Vaseline on the back of my left hand, and periodically, when the gold no longer stays on the tip, brush the tip over the Vaseline.

Laying the gold leaf

Picking up gold leaf with a kind of brush called a gilder's tip

Size water is applied to the bole. This activates the glue
in the bole, and gesso. As the water is drawn into
the porous surface the gold leaf is sucked down onto
the surface, and is bonded by the glue.

All the gold leaf down. Next step, after the gilding has
dried, is to dust off the excess, and then burnish the
two round mouldings.

Some hours after applying the gold leaf the gesso reaches the right
moisture content for burnishing. The tool for this is a polished agate stone.
Gentle pressure compresses the gesso and gold, and brings about
a deep and lustrous shine.

The tablet has been offered into the frame's rebate. Two battens
are carefully shaped to the contours of the back of the tablet.
When fixed into place the battens apply no tension to the
tablet. Plaster behaves well under compression. The same cannot
be said for its being under tension!

The frame has been toned down with some coats of weak size
with black and brown watercolour mixed in. This is very effective
in giving an aged appearance, taking down the very bright, new gold
without detracting from its lustre. Ready for installation by
Temple Newsam's technicians. Fait accompli!

Posted by Ian Fraser

Ellen Terry centre stage again in Leeds



Ellen Terry as Portia (Merchant of Venice),
sketched by Jim Dodgson (Kester),
a member of the Leeds Savage Club.
This was probably during her 1902 tour.

 The renowned Shakespearean actress Ellen Terry (1847-1928) visited Leeds many times during her career and performed with her stage partner Henry Irving at the Leeds Grand Theatre on many occasions.

We have a number of items in the Leeds museum and gallery collections relating to this great actress and they feature in the new "Performance" exhibition now open at Abbey House Museum (until December 2012).  The display includes a beautiful cream silk dress which was reputedly designed for Ellen Terry and was worn by the actress K.L. Langstaffe when playing Desdemona in 1898.  It was originally made by a top London dressmaker, Alice Mason of 4 New Burlington St. and has been lovingly conserved by Jacqueline Hyman of Heritage Science Services (http://www.textilerestoration.co.uk/).   Jacqueline says that she felt a personal connection to the dress as she was working on it because her great-grandfather had owned a theatre in Leeds and actually knew Ellen Terry, naming Jacqueline's grandmother Ellen in her honour.


Textile conservator Jacqueline Hyman
making final adjustments to the Ellen Terry
dress for display at Abbey House.



Leeds Grand Theatre, New Briggate, Sept. 8th 1881,
Henry Irving and Ellen Terry's performance of "Hamlet"



Medallion of Ellen Terry, 1936 (plaster)
by Albert Toft (1862-1949)



Francisco de Goya's Circus Lady

While documenting works purchased by the Leeds Art Collection Fund as part of my internship I came across a piece of work by Francisco de Goya with three different titles: The Circus Lady, and Skating on Thin Ice and also, my particular favourite, Punctual Folly. I was aware that alternative titles were often given to art works, but the weirdness of these three and the image of the curiously demure yet daredevilish lady astride her equally fearless horse compelled me to look a little further into the matter.

The image was produced as part of a series called Los Proverbios (proverbs) and was only published after the death of the artist. The title of the series and that of each image were in fact given by the publishing house. Goya’s fascination with human behaviour and the excesses that provailed at the time of Carnival, a celebration held throughout Europe in the severn days leading up to Lent sheds a little light on his interest in the circus lady. Whether it was Goya’s intention or the publisher’s interpretation, many of the images seem to be warning against the perils of reckless behaviour and selfish acts; however, connections between Goya’s work and the chosen proverbs have since been put into question. As it has been found inscribed on some of the images earliest impressions, the title Disperates is now often used to refer to the series. In Spanish the word disparate can denote something nonsensical, irrational or outragous and therefore in many ways seems far more appropriate. Yet, for me, despite their dubious origins, the titles given under the heading Los Proverbios only add to the charming quality of the The Circus Lady and the disperate character of this fascinating set of works.

Written by Helen Deevy, Leeds Art Collection Fund Intern, 2010

Leeds Savage Club relaunched

It isn't often that as a curator you get to see your collections inspire the rebirth of a long defunct organisation, but here in 2010 the Leeds Savage Club has sprung to life again. This seems to be in part inspired by display in Leeds City Museum's Collector's Cabinet gallery of memorabilia from the original artist's club which thrived in late Victorian and Edwardian Leeds under the leadership of their Chief Edmund Bogg (pictured left). The club brought artists, musicians and writers together to drink "firewater", dress up as "savages" and pool artistic ideas.

The new Leeds Savage Club has taken much inspiration from its precedessor, but dropped some of the less politically acceptable aspects (such as the "Red Indian" imagery and the ban on women members). They have also been very keen to avoid the fate of the original club which foundered when Edmund Bogg refused to retire as Chief. The new Chief will only be allowed to hold office for two years.

I was privileged to attend the launch party on Wednesday 28th April at Temple Mill to see the new savages at play. They proved to be very 21st century and involved in lots of new interactive projects - and not a feather head-dress in sight! http://leedssavage.com/

The venue, Temple Mill, was also another chance to step back into the City Museum Displays. The history of John Marshall's Egyptian-inspired flax mill is explored in the Leeds Story gallery.

John Sell Cotman; Howden Church, Yorkshire

John Sell Cotman, East End of Howden Church, Yorkshire, c.1811, Etching, Leeds City Art Gallery, Bequeathed by Sydney Decimus Kitson, 1949.

Perhaps a loose connection, but John Sell Cotman's 'Howden Church Yorkshire' is neither monstrous, nor an image of the nineteenth century's production of man traps...however, what it does give us is one of the finest etchings of Yorkshire's architecture by artist John Sell Cotman held at Leeds Art Gallery. And technically, all three figures in the etching would have been suitably manlike to experience a rather lethal injury in a man trap in the late nineteenth century when these were made for use. Tenuous, i am aware.

Perhaps instead we should acknowledge the quality of the work of a truly underrecognised artist who spent may many years producing works in and around Yorkshire. He was one of the very finest watercolourists that worked after the illustrious William Turner of 1775 - 1851.

This is a personal approach for me, as I live next door to this beautiful and still ruined (not by a minster trap) building. As the current intern working intimately with the Cotman Collection right now, I certainly hadn't expected to find my neighbouring building amongst the artist's etchings and even my rather miniature historic town of Howden repeatedly mentioned in his handwritten notes! An exhibition on the artist as soon as..? I think I shall take that on and no doubt we shall be seeing more of this talented artist at Leeds Art Gallery later in September of this year ...

And still… more monstrous behaviour

Bat Fowling; unknown to me until I caught sight of this coloured print dated October 30th 1813.

Despite the name Bat Fowling is an old fashioned method of catching birds. In the dark of the night the bird seeker would light his torch near a roost which would wake the creatures from their slumber. Dazzled and confused the birds would fly toward the flames where they were easily caught in nets, or even beaten down.

This print was published by John Wheble (active late 18th Century) of Warwick Square London, it is an etching on wove paper.

From the Victorian Moral Maze to Post War Britain

The spirits of any one time or the zeitgeist is captured in the objects people produce. In the field of art history this spirit is often articulated through a constantly evolving style. Historians like to pick dates and events from the past which wobbled or even shifted the zeitgeist onto a different track and from these points of view frame their arguments. I would like to put forward ‘turning points’ and 20th Century material culture as a starting point for this new year of Secret Lives of Objects.

At the starting blocks is Paul Nash and his painting 'The Shore'.





Paul Nash (1889 – 1948)
The Shore
1923
Oil on canvas

Before the Great War of 1914 - 1919 Paul Nash's landscape paintings celebrated the purity of nature and its primeval history. Injured at Ypres in 1917 he was posted back to London but then became an official war artist and was sent back to the front. His experience in the trenches marked him for life and is openly recorded in his paintings. In 1919 he ironically named a painting 'We are Making a New World' that depicted a bomb-blasted landscape. 'The Shore' depicts the coastline at Dymchurch in Kent, as a bleak, post-apocalyptic view.

From Little to Large

Working on the very small has its delights and difficulties – dealing with the large paintings is another country entirely. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a museum in possession of a large collection never has enough room to put it away. There is not enough space in the art store for some very large canvases and so they have to be rolled on great big rollers every time they come off display.
The photo shows the business of cleaning the reverse of the canvas before restretching it. The stretcher can just be seen in the background. The painting by is by John Walker titled Lesson II. To make matters a little more challenging the artist had used a trapezoid shaped stretcher. The painting is now up on the wall in the Silver gallery and I’m in no hurry to get it down again!

The beast with five fingers

Dummy boards were painted images meant to be propped up in a room to make the occupants feel they were not alone. This one is probably of a female servant and came to us with the Roger Warner bequest. At some time before she was acquired for Temple Newsam she had lost a hand and it was replaced with this hideous attempt. We all know hands are tricky to draw, but you would have thought whoever did it might have made a bit more effort. The fingernails were very crudely drawn in pencil. Options for treatment were discussed with curatorial staff – it was felt that the sheer ugliness of the old retouching was obtrusive and should be removed and re-done. It is rare that this amount of anatomical reconstruction is required in the treatment of an oil painting – most inpainting is carried out on very tiny losses. I had been attending a evening class in life drawing which honed some skills in observational drawing which proved very useful. After careful cleaning, a more anatomically correct hand was painted in acrylic, and varnished. She is now on display in the House in one of the new refurbished rooms.