Collection: Peter Scott Gallery

Collection-level records:

• Collection history (Collection development policy)

  Beginning of the Collection

  Lancaster University was founded by Royal Charter in 1964 and moved to its purpose-built campus in 1967, moving from its original site within Lancaster City Centre. From the early 1970s LU began building an art collection. This activity was primarily guided by the University’s ‘Embellishment Committee’ – which acted on behalf of the University to make the campus more appealing to the public and its growing student population. This committee, and the development of art acquisitions, was primarily driven by Michael Argles, a library staff member and unofficially the first curator before the gallery was fully formed. Other committee members included university academic and non-academic staff, and student members. The most notable are: HRH Princess Alexandra (Chancellor), Sir Charles Frederick Carter (Vice Chancellor), Peter Shepherd (who conducted artist proposals and focused on campus sculpture), Peter F. Scott CBE (acting chairman, in the absence of the Vice Chancellor, and later patron/namesake of PSG), and a circulating entourage of artists who submitted proposals and advised the committee.

  The art collection mainly consisted of works by contemporary British artists, and acquisition was made both by purchase and commission. This collection comprised mainly artists’ original prints, with some oil paintings, watercolours, and a small number of public realm sculptures through residencies under the aegis of the Granada fellowship programme. The bulk of works in the collection dating from this period were associated with two specific areas: The North West of England; and Cornwall (artists associated with St. Ives). Towards the end of the 1970s the Embellishment Committee ceased to function, and focus shifted to estate management and design features rather than art commissions or purchases.

  The earliest form of the PSG, or the Scott Gallery as it was then known, opened in 1974 at the southern end of the campus in Pendle College (occupying the building’s roof space). Showcasing items bought by the embellishments committee, touring exhibitions from private galleries and student art & design shows. The gallery was given its first committed staff member in 1983 – Helen Brown, as an Exhibitions Organiser for three years until Mary Gavagan became the gallery’s first official curator from 1986 to 2009. Following 2009, PSG became part of the university’s integrated professional arts organisation alongside the Nuffield Theatre and the Concert Series based at the Great Hall. This would become LA. The gallery moved to its present location within the Great Hall Complex on the North side of the campus in 1988, becoming the Peter Scott Gallery.

  In 2001, the Peter Scott Gallery Charitable Trust was established with Lord Shuttleworth as Chair for the following 18 years. A portion of the collection (the Irene Manton bequest – see below) was transferred by the University to the Trust, with the University retaining direct ownership over the remainder. Both collections have continued to grow and are managed together by Lancaster Arts on behalf of the University, under terms set out in an agreement between the University and the Trust. The Peter Scott Gallery has been an Accredited Museum since 2010.

  The Irene Manton Bequest

  In 1988 LU received a substantial collection – the Irene Manton Bequest. This group of paintings and prints was augmented in 1995 by the transfer of further works that formerly belonged to Professor Manton, which had been held at Leeds University since her death. These works complemented LU’s existing collection, as most of the works in the Bequest were artists’ original prints, reflecting Professor Manton’s particular interest in prints and printmaking. Some interesting examples included are works by: Jean Arp’s Gathering of Forms (1966), Eduardo Chillida’s series of prints for Le Chemin des Devins’ suivi de ‘Menerbes (1966), the illustrated book Constellations with one lithograph and twenty-two pochoir reproductions after gouache works by Joan Miró (1959), two prints by Ben Shahn Decalogue (1960) and Pleiades (1960), the Hommage au Carre series by Joseph Albers (1964), and many more. With this large bequest a more international collection was formed.

  In addition to the collection of artists’ original prints, other groups which can be identified within the collection are:

  Chinese and Japanese paintings and prints: this part of the bequest includes examples of seventeenth century Chinese art as well as works by twentieth century Chinese artists. Manton first began to collect art after visiting an exhibition of Chinese Art at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1935. As a scientist she was particularly interested in the detailed studies of nature produced by Chinese artists. Works in this collection include scroll and fan paintings, ink rubbings, and prints.

  A small antiquities collection (79 items) – see below for further information.

  Archival documents relating to Irene Manton.

  The Chambers Gift & Bequest

  In 1994 LU was given a substantial ceramics collection. The collection comprises over 300 items of Royal Lancastrian Pottery donated by Miss Mary Chambers (19102002), on behalf of herself and her brother Arthur Chambers. In August 2002 the museum received a substantial bequest of archive material from Miss Mary Chambers. Miss Chambers was the daughter of John Chambers (1869-1945), who was the Chief Designer at Pilkington’s Tile and Pottery Company during what is generally considered to be its golden era (1898-1918). Among the thousands of items in the bequest were delicate illustrations and designs, posters, architectural plans, photographs, rare books and catalogues, diaries, paperwork, stencils for tiles, artists’ materials, and ceramics.

  Artists featured within the archive are Alphonse Mucha, Walter Crane, Lewis F. Day, C. F. A. Voysey, as well as notable works by artists who were employed by Pilkington’s. Overall, the Chambers Collection (comprising of 17,497 objects approx.) is of national significance due to its varied and rich nature, unknown works by famous creators and the stories it highlights.

  Gifts Made by A Donor Who Wished to Remain Anonymous (19932006)

  Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s the University received generous donations of art from a donor who resided in Morecambe. The donor wished to remain anonymous in their generous contribution to the collection. The artworks received comprised mainly of works by the Darwen born artist James Hargreaves Morton (1881-1918), otherwise known as the ‘Cotton-town impressionist’. There were single works by the artists: Francis Dodd, Ben Nelson, Harold Sutton-Palmer, Albert

  Goodwin, Joseph Knight, Sidney Filmore, Dorothy Apted, Muirhead Bone, and Arthur Briscoe, totalling approximately over 130 works. The gifts significantly strengthened the representation of artists from the north of England, bolstering regional significance, and extended the temporal range of the collection to include the 19^th century as well as the early 20^th century.

  Acquisitions and gifts in the Twenty-First Century

  Both the University owned collection and the PSGCT owned collection have continued to grow through gifts and acquisitions over the past two decades. This has included substantial gifts of contemporary art into the PSGCT owned collection via the Contemporary Art Society’s Museum member scheme (Peter Liversidge 2018, Sena Başöz 2022), as well as acquisitions of work from artists involved in Lancaster Arts’ contemporary combined arts programme. Occasional gifts to the University have included further items of Pilkington’s pottery.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2023

  Licence: CC BY-NC

• Collection overview (Collection development policy)

  Paintings, drawings, prints and photography

  Paintings & Watercolours

  There are over 300 watercolours and paintings in the collection. They vary in style from European modernist examples of abstraction (Wilhelmina Barns-Graham’s ‘Oblong Cobalt Blue on Violet’ [1969] and Luigi Pericle’s ‘Grated Jadegate’ [1962] for example) to more representational landscape, portrait and still life painting. The paintings in the collection vary in size and technique, with some measuring at nearly 6ft high to others being made on scrolls or fans. The geographic locus is varied, including Europe, Asia, North America with some sparse material from Africa. A primary theme in some of the European paintings is the attention to form and colour, many having at times a ‘cellular’/organic appearance which may have been what drew Irene Manton’s eye when collecting these pieces.

  Some paintings/watercolours are held in sketchbooks (Norman Adams and E.E. Clarke) and are prime examples of each artist’s work – especially of the North West and Northern England.

  Collage

  There are a small number of collage works within the collection, including pieces by William Tucker, Lee Strasburger, and Theresa Bajenko.

  Drawings

  The drawings in the collection span a variety of media including graphite, ink and charcoal, and include both European and Chinese and Japanese examples. Depictions of landscapes and nature from the North West are particularly strongly represented through the collection of James Hargreaves Morton’s works. Morton’s drawings comprise mainly of scenic views of the Darwen and Blackburn area, particularly of the Pennines and moorlands. There are also drawings of rural life, pastoral scenes and farm animals.

  The drawings found in the Norman Adams Sketchbook(s) and E.E. Clarke collection within the Chamber’s Archive, both created in the mid-20^th century, are numerous and depict views of Yorkshire (Ribblesdale & Douk Ghyll, and Gordale Scar specifically – Adams), The Lake District (Clarke) and Italy (Clarke, again).

  In the minority within the collection are drawings of urban life. The drawings by Lowry and Lynton Lamb, Tsung Yu, Cliff Rowe and Muirhead Bone are the few examples of cities and towns within the drawings collection.

  A small minority of drawings are of figures associated with the university and of buildings on campus (Grizedale College).

  Prints & Etchings

  At around 550 works, prints dominate the art collection, having been the focus of both the initial phase of purchasing by the university in the 1960s and 1970s, and of Professor Irene Manton’s collecting dues to her interest in the history of print making and in prints as an affordable means of making art accessible to everyone.

  The collection is international in scope (ranging from First Nation/Inuit, Africa, India, a wide scope of the history of Japanese and Chinese print making (18^thc. – 20^thc.), European Modernism, Abstract Expressionism to local artists within Northern England). Some of our earliest prints come from the Northern Renaissance movement in the 15^th century (works by Hanns. S. Lautensack (1553) and Albrecht Dürer (1505)). Evidence of a range of print methods in the collection vary from lithographs to screen-prints, woodcuts to giclée printing, dry point etching and even printmaking equipment in the form of a Japanese wood printing block from the 18^th century.⁵ Prints by Pablo Picasso, Joan Mirò, Rembrandt, Dürer, and Hockney are present within the collection.

  Photography

  The majority of photography within the collection is contained within the Chambers Bequest and Gift. These photographs were made partly to document the factory life of the Pilkington’s site at Clifton Junction, to document inspiration for possible designs and patterns, commemorative purposes and personal photography. Another collection of photography is E. E. Clarke’s personal documentation of his walks in and around the Lake District and Cumbria. These also include photos of his residence and colleagues, wildlife, topographical features and for the majority, in general, natural landscapes. Both Clarke’s and Chamber’s collections can be considered archival and personal to their taste rather than specifically artistic in scope.

  The PSG also has a robust collection of art photography, including a collection of photography by Mel Brimfield. It explores both contemporary performance and theatre practises as well as a ‘Vasari-minded’ camp exploration into the lives of artists and B-Movie horror (Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Jackson Pollock and Vincent Van Gogh). A stark and monochromatic exploration into organic and geological form by Paul Kenny in the form of a photographic print series was the result of an artist’s residency c.2004/2005.

  Sculpture

  The sculpture collection includes both sculpture in the public realm around the campus (and an associated maquette), and smaller works for interior display.

  Campus Sculpture

  Sculptures around campus were commissioned or acquired for the university to compliment the landscaping and Brutalist styling of the buildings, particularly in the early decades. These include Barbara Hepworth’s Dual Form (1965, bronze) (BH 396, edition of 7, with other versions situated at the Guildhall, St Ives; Leeds City Art Gallery; Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo, The Netherlands; The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C., USA; and the Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, USA). Annelise Henecka’s Metamorphosis of Daphne (1973, cast concrete) and John Hoskin’s Abstract Form (1973, aluminium)¹ were both commissioned for the campus as result of artist residencies during the early 1970s, and both Henecka and Hoskin taught at the university.

  From the late 1990s to the 2000s, a committee was established to commission further sculptures for the benefit of the campus. Bull’s Head and Angel in Boots (c.1995, limestone) were acquired from Shawn Williamson, a Cumbria-based sculptor and alumnus of Lancaster University (in the form of St Martin’s College) and Sesqui from Charles Hadcock, who went on to be chair of the PSGCT (2017-2023).

  While there are a number of memorial and commemorative monuments and plaques around the university, these are not considered to be part of the collection and therefore are not included within the scope of this policy document.

  Gallery Sculpture

  The collection includes smaller sculptural works in a variety of media including metal, stone, plaster, wood and acrylic/plastic. These include Rory McEwen’s Prismatic Perspex Box (1967, acrylic and Perspex) and Oliver Bevan’s Light Box which both rely on light and optical illusion/play. Other examples are Jimmy Boyle’s Adieu to All That (2005, clay, bronze and marble), Hannah Frank’s Conversation (1977, bronze) and Ben Turnbull’s EVERY HOME SHOULD HAVE ONE (BUGSY MALONE) (2012, mixed media).

  Applied arts

  Ceramics

  Chambers Bequest and Gift contains a significant collection of Pilkington’s and Royal Lancastrian Ware ceramics. These take a variety of forms including moulds, decorative tiles, hat pins, buttons, jars, vases, dishes, bowls, plates, mosaic tiles and animal forms, giving a chronological and stylist spread from the 1880s to the 1950s.

  The Chambers Bequest is complemented by a variety of twentieth and twenty-first century ceramics by artists including Halima Cassell, Emmanuel Cooper, Pamela Leung, James Tower and Jason Wason.

  Textiles

  The collection includes a very small number of textile pieces. These include Gay Swift’s textile collage Night Flowers (1970) and Garth Gratrix’s beach towel artworks such as Seaside (2021).

  Antiquities

  Lancaster University’s Collection includes a number of antiquities collected by Irène Manton. The collection includes Roman, Greek, Cypriot and Egyptian vessels in ceramic and glass, and a selection of artefacts which relate to Professor Manton’s interest in the history of writing, viniculture, ancient faience making, ecological ornamentation and other areas if collecting linked to her wide-ranging academic enquiries.

  Examples of items from the collection include a Roman glass beaker, an Egyptian papyrus fragment from a Book of the Dead, an Ethiopian prayer scroll, a Persian seal stamp in bronze, Cypriot wares, a Greek Kylix, and an inscribed brick from Babylonia. Manton included replicas as well as originals in her collection.

  The provenance of some parts of the antiquities collection is problematic, reflecting Manton’s pattern of purchasing from dealers in the 1960s and 1970s who offered certificates of authenticity but little further provenance information and whose sources may have included those illegally removing antiquities from Cyprus or Turkey, for example. It is possible that future research will pave the way for restitution claims, and in the short term the museum will work with decolonisation initiatives within the university to consider how these objects can be used as a learning resource around critical heritage and help expand understandings of repatriation, archaeological context and provenance.

  Digital & Film

  The PSG holds a number of films in its collection that were acquired in the 2010s.

  Notable examples include:

  • Jumpers (what must I do to be saved) (2013) by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, a commissioned video installation that looks at a live experiment in manipulation and compliance.
  • Four performance films by Mel Brimfield: Death and Dumb Part 2 (2013), Clement Greenberg – Lee Krasner = Jackson Pollock (2013), Between Genius and Desire – Jackson (after Ed Harris) (2013), An Audience with Willy Little (film excerpt of live performance) (2013).
  • A solitary film that combines film and painting by Taiwanese artist Wu Chi-Tsung, Landscape in the mist 001 (2012).

  Installation

  Installation pieces by the artists Peter Liversidge and Sena Başöz have been acquired recently and reflect a broadening of the range of art practices collected. Liversidge’s Physical Jukebox (2023) is an immersive installation activated by the audience, while An Invisible Thread (2023) is a site-specific work within the University Library. Başöz’s Forough (2018) acts as a ‘flying archive’ blending ecology, historiography and sound into one unified experience that resonates with the trauma of Turkey’s history and the country’s wildlife.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2023

  Licence: CC BY-NC