Bath in November II

   

     Tuesday, our final day in the city.  The morning was spent mainly shopping; in the afternoon, however, we visited the art collections in the City.

     Our first stop was the Victoria Art Gallery, the municipal gallery and collection.  It is housed in a splendid turn-of-the-century building by the Scots architect J M Brydon (1840-1901).  Eclectic and lavish - the detailing is very fine.  On a corner site with a circular, rather French vestibule linking (like a hinge) the staircase etc. with the first floor gallery.  The latter is a single, long top lit space with a coved ceiling and walls coloured blue, which makes a welcome and splendid foil to the pictures.  (Such a contrast to the dreary grey and white colour scheme at the Glynn Vivian Gallery, here in the infernal city.  Both art and architecture deserve better.) 
    Pictures are displayed 'skied', as they would have been in the past, and anti-clockwise around the room chronologically (?).  The overall effect is very confident.  Highlights are work by the local artists Rosemary & Clifford Ellis, and the portrait of Charles Baker by George Frederick Swaish (no, I haven't heard of him either).

     Later, as the light began to fade we walked up Great Pulteney St. to the Holburne Museum.  I've talked about it briefly before. The collection is a marvel, of national standard.  It is the work of Sir Thomas William Holburne, 5th Baronet  Menstrie (1793-1874).  Sir Thomas lived in Cavendish Crescent with his three sisters.  At the time of his death his collection numbered some 4,000 objects.  In 1882 his sister, Mary, bequeathed the collection to the city.

    The second home of the collection was the splendid former Bath Savings Bank in Charlotte St. (George Alexander, 1841).   In 1911, however, the collection trustees bought the former Sydney Hotel at the far end of Great Pulteney St., and employed Sir Reginald Blomfield to convert the building into a gallery.  The result, unsurprisingly, is rather Frenchified - he was, after all, the author of the two volume 'A History of French Architecture'.  The museum opened to the public in 1916, in the midst of WWI.

    The collection, which now numbers some 13,000 objects, is, as I have said, quite spectacular.  There are objets d'art, ceramics, textiles, furniture and paintings.  Artists include Guardi, Zoffany, Brangwyn, and Gainsborough.  In particular there is a room dedicated to the Northern Renaissance, and it is utterly splendid.  A real Schatzkammer.  Some stunning panel paintings.  I was particularly impressed by a portrait 'Unknown Man' attributed to Jan Cornelis Vermeyen.