Picture book par excellence (From Darlington and Stockton Times)

Picture book par excellence

2:05pm Friday 26th June 2009

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PAINTINGS from the Darlington Borough Collection will be exhibited in the coming weeks to help publicise the new County Durham Catalogue.

The exhibition in the Myles Meehan Gallery opens on Friday, July 10, and runs until Saturday, August 22.

The Public Catalogue Foundation recently catalogued the collection as part of a national project to photograph and record all oil, acrylic and tempera paintings in publiclyowned collections throughout the UK. It is producing a series of catalogues on a county basis.

The exhibition will focus on oils and acrylic paintings included in the County Durham Catalogue. A free preview on Thursday, July 9, from 6pm- 8pm, is open to all. There will be a gallery talk the following day, Friday, July 10, at noon, by Sally Pelham, of the Public Catalogue Foundation.

The gallery is open from 9am- 9pm daily except Sunday.

Work owned by Darlington library, which also features in the book, will be shown at the Crown Street branch over the same period.

The 360-page County Durham Catalogue contains pictures of more than 2,500 oil paintings.

Half of this number are at the Bowes Museum, in Barnard Castle, where the book launch was held.

Paintings owned by Auckland Castle, in Bishop Auckland, Beamish Museum, Durham University, Durham County Picture book par excellence PAINTINGS from the Darlington Borough Collection will be exhibited in the coming weeks to help publicise the new County Durham Catalogue.

The exhibition in the Myles Meehan Gallery opens on Friday, July 10, and runs until Saturday, August 22.

The Public Catalogue Foundation recently catalogued the collection as part of a national project to photograph and record all oil, acrylic and tempera paintings in publiclyowned collections throughout the UK. It is producing a series of catalogues on a county basis.

The exhibition will focus on oils and acrylic paintings included in the County Durham Catalogue. A free preview on Thursday, July 9, from 6pm- 8pm, is open to all. There will be a gallery talk the following day, Friday, July 10, at noon, by Sally Pelham, of the Public Catalogue Foundation.

The gallery is open from 9am- 9pm daily except Sunday.

Work owned by Darlington library, which also features in the book, will be shown at the Crown Street branch over the same period.

The 360-page County Durham Catalogue contains pictures of more than 2,500 oil paintings.

Half of this number are at the Bowes Museum, in Barnard Castle, where the book launch was held.

Paintings owned by Auckland Castle, in Bishop Auckland, Beamish Museum, Durham University, Durham County Council and other public bodies are displayed in the catalogue, each accompanied by the title, artist’s name, size details, medium and a date.

The front cover shows El Greco’s The Tears of St Peter, one of the most celebrated paintings at the Bowes.

The launch was attended by Fred Hohler, founder and chairman of the Public Catalogue Foundation, who said paintings at the Bowes were of international importance.

“The Bowes has an extraordinary collection of oil paintings and is lucky because it can display the majority of the art it owns, whereas many museums don’t have that luxury. This catalogue shows all those paintings belonging to places that perhaps can only show a tiny percentage of their work.”

In his foreword, Mr Hohler describes the Bowes as “a Northern version of the Wallace collection”.

Pictures in the catalogue are reproduced in high quality colour as thumbnail images, interspersed with occasional full-page reproductions of some of the most significant or popular pictures in the county.

The Bowes entries include paintings by Goya, Boudin, Courbet, Monticelli, Canaletto, Gainsborough, Reynolds and Richard Wilson.

Adrian Jenkins, director, said: “The catalogue makes our collection much more accessible, but the same applies for collections across the region. We have plenty of hidden gems here, but there are hidden gems all over County Durham.”

The Darlington collection, which spans 150 years, boasts a Graham Sutherland – Fallen Tree Against Sunset – as well paintings by Myles Meehan, a local artist, who gave his name to the gallery where the exhibition will be held.

Strictly speaking, the book is already out-of-date as the district councils listed as owning works are now part of the new unitary authority for County Durham and no longer exist in their own right, which may confuse browsers from outside the region keen to track down a particular work.

It costs £15 for paperback, £25 in hardback, and is available at museum shops and online at thepcf.org.uk.

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