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Collecting in interesting times Anne Stewart
Anne Stewart Senior Curator of Art, Ulster Museum, National Museums NI
Anne Stewart is Senior Curator of Art at the Ulster Museum, National Museums NI. Her recent exhibitions include Willie Doherty WHERE/DOVE (2020–21) co-curated with Daniele De Luigi, FMAV Modena and BLUE SKY THINKING New Acquisitions at the Ulster Museum (2021–22). Her interests include Italian art and the Irish on the Grand Tour.
Collecting in interesting times
New acquisitions in a time of pandemic The Art Collection, Ulster Museum, Belfast, National Museums NI
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, curatorial life at the Ulster Museum changed with dramatic speed. Exhibitions closed within days of opening and carefully planned galleries entered ghostly limbo. One benefit however, particularly during the eerie silence of the early months, was the time and space allowed to reflect on the history of the collection and to reconsider its strengths and limitations. Fortunately it was also a time of collecting.
During 2020–21, five notable acquisitions entered the collection. The first two were gifts, Moses Striking the Rock (1620s), by Flemish artist Hendrick van Balen (enabled through the Art Fund) and an exquisite pastel Portrait of the Hon. Mrs. Bridget Gunning (1758) by Francis Cotes from a private collection in Northern Ireland. A sculpture installation of 180 lead parakeets, Blue Sky Thinking (2019) by Patrick Goddard, was purchased with Art Fund support. A new work was commissioned (in partnership with the Fondazione Modena Arti Visive, Modena) from Northern Ireland’s leading contemporary artist Willie Doherty which resulted in the impressive video work Where/Dove (2020). Finally, during one of the bleakest periods of the pandemic, Tissot’s magnificent Quiet (1881) was negotiated as a hybrid-acceptance in lieu of tax assisted by grants from the Department for Communities, the Art Fund and the National Heritage Memorial Fund.
The Ulster Museum art collection has depth and distinction. Spanning the 15th century to the contemporary, it represents the national collection of Northern Ireland in painting, sculpture, works on paper, silver, glass, ceramics and costume. Within fine arts two areas are outstanding; Irish art from the 17th century to the present, and 20th century and contemporary painting, sculpture and timebased media. The collection of pre-1900 British and European paintings is smaller
but contains works of international importance. Dedicated collecting began in the 1920s, when the Lloyd Patterson Bequest enabled the purchase of works by modern British artists, at a time when few museums collected contemporary art. Successive curators have strengthened and expanded this area to form one of the most impressive collections of modern art in the UK outside London. The presence of very significant quality in areas such as American Colour field and German Group Zero allows fascinating connections between the contemporary and the historic and ensures the vitality of the collection. The acquisition of Quiet by James (Jacques) Joseph Tissot (1836–1902) represented an important moment for the collection. Before its arrival the Ulster Museum had no significant 19th century French painting and also, with the exception of a dramatic Cassandra by Frederick Sandys, no PreRaphaelite paintings. The latter absence is unusual for a UK national museum especially in the light of the many connections that can be drawn between the historical romanticism of the Pre-Raphaelites and Irish Celtic Revival painting. Quiet is a portrait of Kathleen Kelly (1854–1882), later Mrs. Newton, Tissot’s ‘mysterious Irish muse’ and the inspiration for some of his most famous paintings. Born in Agra, India, of Irish parents, Kathleen Kelly’s story involved an arranged marriage, seduction, divorce and life in London as Tissot’s mistress and muse. Known to society only through Tissot’s portraits, Kathleen was surrounded by an air of mystery. Indeed Tissot capitalised on her enigmatic presence, entitling one of her portraits La Mystérieuse. In Tissot’s circle Kathleen was known as ‘la ravissante irlandaise’ and Tissot celebrated her Irish ancestry naming one painting Mavoureen
(Irish for ‘my beloved’) and another La Belle Irlandaise. Fascinated by Kathleen’s beauty, Tissot painted her ceaselessly until her early death from tuberculosis, aged 28. Kathleen Newton’s role as ‘la belle irlandaise’ parallels another famous ‘Irish muse’ represented in the collection; Hazel, Lady Lavery (1880–1935), the American-born wife of the Belfastborn painter Sir John Lavery (1857–1941). Possessed of arresting looks and theatrical poise, Hazel was the subject of many of Lavery’s most successful female portraits, including in 1927, her portrayal of Kathleen ni Houlihan, the personification of Ireland, which appeared on Irish banknotes until the 1970s.
Irish portraiture, encompassing artists and sitters associated with Ireland in the broadest sense, is a particular strength of the collection. The sitter in Francis Cotes’s pastel Portrait of the Hon. Mrs. Bridget Gunning (1716–1770) was daughter of Theobald Bourke, 6th Viscount Mayo, and a descendant of Gráinne O’Malley the ‘Pirate Queen’ of Connacht. Married to Colonel John Gunning of Castle Coote, County Roscommon she is best known for her beautiful daughters, the ‘Gunning Sisters’, who reputedly appeared on the Dublin stage before captivating London society. Maria married the Earl of Coventry and Elizabeth married successively the Dukes of Hamilton and Argyll. Francis Cotes (1726–1770) likewise had family connections with Ireland and his striking portrait of 1758 is notable for its magnificently detailed costume. It is close in date to the Ulster Museum’s pastel portrait of the Irish sitter George 1st Earl Macartney (1737–1806) by Swedish artist Gustaf Lundberg (1695–1786). Born in Lissanoure, County Antrim, Earl Macartney led the first diplomatic mission to China in 1792. Lundberg’s pastel, drawn in Stockholm in 1767, depicts Macartney wearing full court dress on his return from a mission to Russia. Portraits which include noteworthy depictions of costume have a special significance to the collection. In 1976, the Ulster Museum’s historic costume collection was destroyed by terrorist fire bomb and the new collection, which was begun almost immediately, is now one of the most impressive in the UK. This association between costume and painting makes the Tissot and the Cotes particularly relevant acquisitions.
The Flemish collection has been greatly strengthened by the gift of Moses Striking
the Rock by Hendrick van Balen, the Elder (1573/5–1632) one of the leading painters in Antwerp in the early 1600s. Other notable Flemish paintings in the collection include a School of Bruges Virgin and Child, known as the ‘Carrickfergus Madonna’, a St. Christopher night-scene by Jacob Jordaens, a Holy Family with St Elizabeth by Jacob van Oost and two finely detailed depictions of the seasons Spring and Winter (1633) by Pieter Brueghel the Younger. Moses striking the Rock complements one of the finest Dutch paintings in the collection The Children of Israel Worshipping the Golden Calf by Jan Symonsz Pynas (1582–1631). As a pair of early seventeenth century depictions of scenes from the Book of Exodus, the Pynas and the van Balen allow comparison of taste and workshop practice in Amsterdam and Antwerp. Moses striking the Rock also resonates with contemporary concerns about the mass migration of people through inhospitable terrain and the preciousness of fresh water.
The Ulster Museum collection continues to be formed around the ideas and innovations emerging in contemporary art. A sculpture installation of 180 ring-necked parakeets Blue Sky Thinking (2019) by Patrick Goddard (born 1984) addresses the scale and immediacy of climate emergency and explores themes of migration and naturalisation. Made from recycled lead from London roofs, the individuality and presence of each bird cumulatively gives the work a disturbing and mesmeric quality. A non-indigenous species, the parakeet has become naturalised in England, particularly in the parks and gardens of London, where its vivid plumage and alien screeching creates an exotic if increasingly familiar presence. Blue Sky Thinking gives rise to palpable shock at the present destruction and death of such creatures. The haunting presence of Blue Sky Thinking forms an interesting counterpart to Birdman (1962) by Elisabeth Frink, a gift to the collection in 2017 from the estate of her son Lin Jammet.
Northern Ireland’s foremost contemporary artist Willie Doherty (born 1959) has an established international reputation in photography and time-based media. A major retrospective exhibition of his work WHERE/DOVE, co-curated with the Fondazione Modena Arti Visive, Modena was planned for 2020–21. Initiated as part of the British Council UK/ITALY 2020 season ‘Being Present’, the exhibition focused on the theme of borders, both physical and imagined, a subject which has dominated Doherty’s work for over four decades. A new work was commissioned for the exhibition, resulting in a two channel video installation Where/Dove (2020), now in the Ulster Museum collection, which examines the complex experience of the border in Ireland. Doherty has observed that ‘Where/Dove creates a view of the border landscape as a labyrinthine world of political and ideological intervention, tangled histories, unacknowledged stories and secrets, and as a place shaped by natural processes of decay and renewal.’ During the early months of the pandemic plans for the exhibition were repeatedly revised as events unfolded. Modena was one of the first areas of Europe to suffer restrictive containment in consequence of the pandemic and this added powerful resonance to Doherty’s work which itself relates to the physical and psychological nature of borders. WHERE/DOVE finally opened in Modena in spring 2021 and in Belfast in June 2021. In both venues it was the first post-pandemic exhibition in the city.
Plans for the future include a complete re-hang of the collection in 2022. This will highlight the most recent acquisitions, all now linked by their arrival during the time of the pandemic. An interesting time indeed in the history of collecting at the Ulster Museum.
