Collection: Mercer Art Gallery

Collection-level records:

• Collection overview (Cornucopia)

  Fine Art Collection

  2000 works of art, mainly 19th and 20th century, representative of British art from Sir Thomas Lawrence in the 18th century to John Piper, Ivon Hitchens, Patrick Heron and Edward Wadsworth. New acquisitions from Andy Goldsworthy and David Mach. William Powell Frith, a leading Victorian artist, was born and raised in the area, and is well represented in the collection with such renowned pieces as ‘Many Happy Returns’ and L’adieu du Marie Stuart. The collection includes many prominent Victorians such as Burne-Jones, Atkinson Grimshaw, Herring and Miles Birket Foster. Local artists are represented by watercolours of David Rose, Victorian watercolourist Bernard Evans and recent naive works by Knaresborough artist Joe Baker Fountain. Photographs include some of the earliest war photography from the Crimea, and early Victorian photographs by Fenton, Robertson, Le Gray, and Julia Margaret Cameron. The prints include works by Durer, Tissot, Crome and Nevinson, along with historical topographical images of Harrogate and area including a number of pre-war railway posters.

  Subjects

  Fine Art

  Archaeology Collection

  Around 1200 items were bequeathed by B W J Kent in 1969, including an Egyptian mummy case of 26th dynasty, a collection of glass vessels from the Roman empire and 100 ceramic vessels from ancient Greece. Kent Collection has pottery vessels from South America, ancient Cypriot pottery and Egyptian antiquities – ushabti figures, amulets, stone vessels, wooden sculptures and jewellery. J R Ogden Collection includes a range of Egyptian antiquities, and a small collection of material associated with the history of writing – baked clay tablets from Mesopotamia with cuneiform script, samples of Egyptian hieroglyphs and some Roman material. British archaeology is well represented with collections of prehistoric material including stone tools, metal implements and pottery vessels, Roman, Anglo-Saxon and medieval periods, particularly with local material from the 500 square miles of the Harrogate District. Recent acquisitions include a rare Iron Age dagger, a medieval finger ring, pottery sherds from a previously unknown medieval kiln, and a hoard of silver coins dating from the Civil War.

  Subjects

  Archaeology

  Source: Cornucopia

  Date: Not known, but before 2015

  Licence: CC BY-NC