ART FUND ADDITIONS to our collections
Last updated | 23/09/2010
Perth Museum and Art Gallery has added to its award-winning
collection in recent months, with assistance from the Art Fund and
the National Fund for Acquisitions.
The Art Fund, the UK's leading independent art charity, has
supported the acquisitions with a total of £6,000 towards
three new purchases.
The first of these sees a fitting return to Perth for a
unique vase by Vincent Ysart. The
Perth-based Ysart family had a huge impact on the production of art
glass in Scotland and their Monart and Vasart glass has inspired
future generations of Scottish art glass as well as individual
makers. The vase, which was made as a birthday gift for his
wife during the 1950's, is currently taking pride of place in the
museum's permanent display of Perth glass.
The other two works join the collection of over 4,000 examples of
Fine Art at the Museum.
'Bike Perch' by Derrick Guild featured last year
in Guild's Perth Festival of the Arts exhibition 'Picnic Hamper for
Heaven'. One of the most striking pieces from that show, it
depicts a variety of beautifully painted bird life perched upon a
bicycle.
Derrick's childhood in Perth in the 1960s and 70s was marked by his
regular visits to the Museum and Art Gallery in George Street,
where he believes that early exposure to art, natural history and
historical artefacts entered his subconscious and still to this day
subliminally inspires his work. The artist considers Bike
Perch to be his most important painting to date and made a generous
reduction in the asking price in order that it might be secured for
the public museum and art gallery in his home town.
Thomas Duncan's Sketch for The Entrance of Prince Charles
Edward Stuart to Edinburgh after the Battle of Prestonpans
is a preparatory study painted around 1838 for the artist's major
painting
Prince Charles Edward Stuart and the Highlanders
entering Edinburgh on the Morning after the Battle of
Prestonpans. The sketch is one of a number of studies
which Duncan is known to have executed for his most ambitious
painting.
Thomas Duncan RSA ARA (1807 - 1845) was born in Kinclaven,
Perthshire. He attended Perth Academy where his friendship
with fellow painter D O Hill RSA (1802 - 70) was first
nurtured. He became Master of the School of Colour and
subsequently Master of the Academy in 1844. He was a founder
member of the Scottish Academy and also exhibited with the Royal
Academy in London. Outwith the collections of the National
Galleries of Scotland, Perth Museum and Art Gallery has the largest
and most important holding of the work of Thomas Duncan.
David Barrie, Director of the Art Fund, said "Ysart's striking vase
was blown at a glassworks in central Perth during the 1950's and
both Duncan and Guild were born locally. These three works
each demonstrate great technical and artistic skill, and I am very
pleased The Art Fund has ensure they now have a home in Perth
Museum and Art Gallery's permanent collection".
These purchases were also made possible thanks to assistance from
the National Fund for Acquisitions administered with Government
funds by the National Museums of Scotland. Both paintings
will feature in future exhibitions at Perth Museum and Art
Gallery.
More information about The Art Fund, as well as details of all the
other artworks which it has helped Perth to secure, is available at
www.artfund.org/
More information about
Thomas Duncan can be found on another of our pages.
