Paintings

This is a portrait of the artist’s second wife, Dorothy McNeill, known as Dorelia, or Dodo.  The couple met in 1903 and began a passionate affair in which Dorelia lived with both John and his first wife, Ida Nettleship, whom he had married in 1901.  This ménage à trois continued until Ida’s death in 1907.  Dorelia and John later married, living together, despite his numerous affairs, until the painter’s death in 1961.

A brilliant draughtsman, John worked mainly as a portraitist, including the Queen and Winston Churchill amongst his sitters.  Despite his connections with society, he and his family lived a bohemian lifestyle, rather like early hippies or New-Agers, wearing gypsy style clothing, even living for a time in a gypsy caravan.  His interest in gypsies was serious and he sought them out wherever he went.  He campaigned for gypsy and traveller rites and was elected president of the Gypsy Lore Society in 1936.

Edwin Austen Abbey was an illustrator and painter.  He was born in Philadelphia, on 1 April 1852.  At the age of fourteen he took up drawing lessons. From around 1871, he prepared drawings for Harper’s Weekly and Harper’s Monthly, as well as for books such as Charles Dickens’ Christmas Stories of 1876.

His work was inspired largely by that of the English illustrators of the 1860s.  He developed a pen and ink style characterised by compositions that were created to resemble architecture; glittering light effects; attention to detail; and an insight into human emotions.

In December 1878, Harper’s magazine arranged for Abbey to travel to England in order to absorb its ambience directly.  He planned to stay for a year, but remained in England for most of the rest of his life.

This oil on canvas is titled After A Gale, it was painted by William Trost Richards (1833-1905) in 1903 and purchased by the museum in the same year. Trost was an American artist from Philadelphia who was influenced by John Ruskin, and the Pre-Raphaelites. In the 1870s he began to devote his attention to marine painting and travelled to Europe in search of dramatic coastal scenery – including the UK, France and Norway.

The painting was selected by the Harris LGBTQ group to feature in the LGBT+ History Month Trail in 2019 and 2020. Phil, a member of the group, wrote the following interpretation inspired by their response to the painting:

“I have chosen this painting because it is one of the finest in the Harris collection. For me it is also an unwitting symbol of the unwritten history of gay culture and the sea. Churchill famously referred to the Navy as ‘nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash’ – even though homosexuality was illegal in the military until 2000.

Pirate ships were another male dominated, maritime world. Before the Reformation, people attracted to others of their own gender might have joined a monastery or nunnery. From the 1550s men who didn’t fit in might have been attracted by piracy. It was a masculine world in which same sex relationships were tolerated and celebrated.”

The sunny harvest scene in the foreground is a picture of rural life as it had been for centuries. Across the Ribble and Penwortham Bridge looms the darker atmosphere of industrial Preston, with its rapidly expanding streets of mills and houses.

In the early 19th century, farming was being relocated from the town centre to the green spaces outside its boundaries. The desperate need to provide housing for the rapidly expanding population meant that many of the narrow garden plots and town fields, used for centuries to grow crops, were now packed with dangerous, cramped and unsanitary houses.

Windmills are visible in the distance – Preston was an important corn-milling centre at this time – but smoking chimneys now dominate the skyline

Puck was painted by Richard Dadd, the infamous Victorian artist best know for his ‘fairy paintings’. Puck is a character from Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The painting once belonged to Preston solicitor Thomas Birchall. After many years the painting has returned to Preston and is now part of the Harris’ permanent collection. This is an oil painting on canvas.

The Harris holds an important collection of paintings by artists who were born or who have lived in Lancashire that dates from the 18^th century to the present day. The collection includes mostly portraits and local landscapes.

Arthur Devis was born in Preston, he was the son of a cabinetmaker. Although he lived mostly in London, he maintained strong links with Lancashire and received a number of commissions from local families.

This portrait of the Rev. Streynsham Master, Vicar of Croston, and his wife Margaret is a type portrait known as a ‘conversation piece’. Fashionable in the 18^th century, they show family groups or friends in informal domestic or rural settings.

The first major addition to the Harris’ art collection was a bequest from Preston lawyer Richard Newsham in 1883. This collection of over one hundred oil paintings and watercolours by prominent Victorian artists, is still considered the core of the collection today.

A favourite painting in the Newsham Collection is In the Bey’s Garden, painted in 1865 by John Frederick Lewis. The woman in the painting is meant to be the wife of a Bey, or Turkish provincial governor but is actually the artist’s wife, Marian.

Lewis travelled widely and lived in Cairo for 10 years. Back in Britain, he continued to paint Orientalist works for the rest of his career.

There are over 800 oil paintings and over 6,000, watercolours, drawings and prints at the Harris. The collection includes 18^th century portraits and landscapes, Victorian and 20^th century paintings, prints and drawings by British and European artists from around 1400 to the present day, and work by regional artists.

This portrait of Pauline Gunn, the artist’s wife, caused a sensation when it was first displayed at the Royal Academy in London. It was voted picture of the year and described as ‘the Mona Lisa of 1944’ by the Daily Mail.

The Harris purchased the painting. Visitors flocked to see her when the painting first arrived in Preston. They were captivated by her gaze and sometimes outraged by the yellow dress, made with extravagant amounts of fabric during war time rationing. At the time, Gunn was one of Britain’s most popular portrait painters. His seemingly effortless style brought him numerous commissions, including the Royal Family, prime ministers, and leading artistic and literary figures of the day.

Today, Pauline in the Yellow Dress is still our most popular painting.