History of the Fine Art Collections

History of the Fine Art Collections

The earliest collection of paintings to be acquired by the Norwich Museum was in 1841 when Captain William Manby, the inventor of early effective life saving equipment at sea, presented a unique collection of seventeen seascapes in oil and watercolour, originally commissioned by him to illustrate and promote his invention. Manby, who lived at Great Yarmouth, was the patron of William and John Cantiloe Joy and set them upon their careers as successful marine artists. The gift includes works by other notable marine painters of the day, including two by F. L. T. Francia, the only oil paintings known by this internationally recognised watercolourist.

It was not until 1894 when the Norwich Museum moved to Norwich Castle, that an art gallery was incorporated in the museum for the first time. The nucleus of the fine art collection was the gift of paintings collected by the East Anglian Art Society, which had been formed in 1876. Its collection of about 80 Norwich School paintings and watercolours was given to the Castle Museum for the new art gallery in 1894. In 1898 twenty major Norwich School paintings were bequeathed by J. J. Colman, the Norwich mustard manufacturer. Colman had been collecting Norwich School paintings since the 1850s under the guidance of James Reeve, Curator of Norwich Museum from 1851-1910, and it was Reeve who selected the paintings that formed the bequest. It was through Reeve’s discernment and knowledge that the Museum’s Norwich School collection was formed.

It has been possible to ascertain the full provenance of many of the works in the collection. James Reeve FGS (1833-1920), who acted as adviser to J. J. Colman, was ahead of his time and laid the foundations for future research on the Norwich School. The British Museum’s core collection of Norwich School works was purchased in 1902 from James Reeve, but these works do not match those at Norwich. He catalogued the Colman collection in detail, often tracing back provenance to the artist. His manuscript catalogues were included with the R. J. Colman Bequest. Since then, because much of the collection derived from local sources, provenances have been established by research into exhibition and auction catalogues, newspaper reports, etc., in Art Department records.

The museum owes its greatest debt to the bequest in 1946 of Russell James Colman, the son of J. J. Colman. Not only did R. J. Colman bequeath thousands of Norwich School paintings, watercolours and drawings, including many major works by Cotman and Crome, he also provided for the construction of two galleries in which to exhibit them. His bequest also included the Rev James Bulwer’s Norfolk Collection, and in 1954 R. J. Colman’s widow presented the Todd Collection. These collections represent a unique accumulation of a single region’s cultural heritage.

In the intervening years the museum has acquired numerous items through gift, bequest and purchase. It has also relied extensively on the Museums & Galleries Commission/Victoria & Albert Museum Purchase Grant Fund, the National Art Collections Fund, the Friends of the Norwich Museums and private sponsorship for assistance with purchases. At every stage new acquisitions have enhanced the collection. Most recently, the East Anglia Art Foundation has added its support to the acquisition of works of art for the collection.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NORWICH SCHOOL OF ARTISTS

‘... the only local school in English art history which is comparable with the earlier Italian schools’
Thames and Hudson Dictionary of Art and Artists, 1995

John Crome and Robert Ladbrooke founded the Norwich Society of Artists in 1803. It began as a club where local artists could meet once a fortnight to talk about art and exchange ideas. In 1805 it held its first exhibition. Exhibitions were then held annually until 1833, except for a break in 1826-7. It was the first society of artists to be formed outside London, and the artists connected with it became known nationally as the Norwich School.

Its two leading artists, John Crome and John Sell Cotman, are major figures in the history of British art. They both, in their different ways, inspired generations of artists. Crome as a landscape painter with his honest approach and beautifully composed subjects, and Cotman as a watercolour painter whose Greta period works are ranked as arguably the finest in the history of watercolour painting. Together with their followers they formed a School of Artists that holds an important place in the history of British art.

The Norwich School of Artists looked to the seventeenth century Dutch painters for inspiration. The views of the Dutch countryside, similar to the wide, flat landscapes, open skies and windmills of Norfolk, led John Crome and James Stark in particular to see the beauty of their immediate surroundings with fresh eyes. They based their work upon the real landscape in contrast to the traditional idea of painting imaginary scenes as arcadian landscapes. The history of British landscape painting cannot be written without reference to the Norwich School of Artists.

John Crome

'Continental artists whenever they remarked on the ancestry of 'modern' art always included Crome in the English triumvirate they most admired, the other two being Turner and Constable'.
Dr Miklos Rajnai, former Keeper of Art, Norwich Castle Museum

John Crome, was the founder of the Norwich Society (with Robert Ladbrooke), and the most influential artist of the School. It is the influence of his style on the work of the other Norwich artists that identifies their paintings as ‘Norwich School’. He was highly successful in his lifetime and was grouped with Constable and Turner as one of the three foremost British landscape painters. Crome’s reputation has been marred by the numerous paintings wrongly ascribed to him. However, over the last forty or so years researchers on the Norwich School have identified a group of twenty paintings in the Norwich collection which stylistically and historically can be firmly attributed to him. These are the paintings by which all other works by Crome in public and private collections throughout the world are judged. They include the magnificent Norwich River: Afternoon, regarded as his finest work, which was acquired in 1994 with the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, MGC/V&A Purchase Grant Fund, National Art collections Fund, Friends of the Norwich Museums and private funds. Crome rarely left Norwich, and most of his paintings are beautiful evocations of the Norwich river and countryside around the City. As such they stand as touchstones to the British sense of place in the early 19th century.

John Sell Cotman

The collection of watercolours by John Sell Cotman is outstanding. Cotman’s oeuvre divides into distinguishable periods, all of which are well represented in the collection. These comprise his early Norwich and Greta period work (several with related sketches), which are regarded as some of the finest in the history of watercolour painting (these include the famous Greta Bridge with which he is usually identified); a series of magical brown wash watercolours from his Normandy visits; numerous of his late so-called ‘paste’ medium watercolours in his blue and yellow phase, and a series of velvet brown monochrome watercolours painted on a final visit to Norfolk just before his death. He painted relatively few oils, which are rarely seen outside Norwich. Those in the museum show the complete range, from early family portraits to his final, unfinished painting. The provenances of the majority can be traced back to the artist’s sale or his family. These collections, together with sketches, drawing copies, etchings, personalia, etc, provide a complete picture of the artist and his working and teaching methods.

The Norwich School

‘Many provincial art institutions of this period, launched in the wake of the Norwich Society in richer and larger towns, soon floundered and none of them served as a nursery for a School of Art nor produced a crop of artists of the stature of Crome, Cotman, Stark, Vincent and Joseph Stannard’.
Miklos Rajnai, 1978

Like that of Crome and Cotman, a range of work in all media represents the oeuvres of most of the main Norwich School artists. The majority are regarded as their most important works. The artists were linked by friendship, family and master-pupil relationships, and the collections reflect the influences they had on each other. Although they are considered a school of landscape painters, their subject matter was diverse. Norfolk was the common link, although several of them produced paintings of their travels around this country and abroad. Their work gives a rich and unique picture of the county: busy river scenes, heathland, agriculture, cottages, wooded lanes, cityscapes, churches, the coastline, beaches, seascapes and shipwrecks. Many of the works can be identified with exhibits with the Norwich Society of Artists or in London at the Royal Academy, British Institution, etc. Most of the artists printed and published etchings. Some painted portraits, miniatures, figurative subjects, even a three-panel screen. Others wrote treatises, or notes on theory and colour, all of which material is in the collection.

The collections provide a comprehensive view of art in Norwich in the nineteenth century. The vast amount of records on the artists and collections, which have been amassed over the years, make Norwich Castle Study Centre, together with the displays in the Norwich Castle art galleries, the focus of research on the Norwich School.

For those seeking further information on the Norwich School of Artists, see links on this website to Norwich School of Artists Information Sheet and Norwich School of Artists booklist. In addition, the Arts Council mounted bicentenary exhibitions for both Crome (1968, Norwich Castle Museum and the Tate Gallery) and Cotman (1982, Victoria & Albert Museum). Also the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art published a dictionary of the Norwich Society of Artists (1976) based on the exhibition catalogues at Norwich, and research on the collection by Andrew Hemingway has resulted in several published accounts (see Hemingway, Appendix VII). In 2000 a selection of works from Norwich was shown at the launch of Tate Britain, Romantic Landscape, The Norwich School of Painters, (Blayney Brown, Hemingway and Lyles 2000).

GGS Creative Graphics in association with Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery is able to offer high quality canvas giclee prints of a selection of some of the museum's most important paintings. For further details go to www.pictures2go.co.uk

Art Department
Norwich Castle Study Centre
Shirehall
Market Avenue
tel. 01603 493635
fax. 01603 493623
Norwich NR1 3JQ

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