Two stunning new paintings have gone on display in the galleries at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts – both of them new acquisitions to the permanent collection, and both major ‘firsts’.
Nude: Miss Bentham, painted in 1906, by the American artist George Bellows, has been purchased for the University-based gallery by its trustees, the Henry Barber Trust. It is the gallery’s first studio nude – and was previously owned by none other than the father of Pop Art, Andy Warhol. It is also only the second picture by Bellows – probably the most important painter of New York’s so-called ‘Ashcan School’ – in a UK collection: the National Gallery, London, bought the first example in February 2014.
The Bellows is now hanging in the Barber’s Blue Gallery, in a visually stunning grouping alongside major works by Manet, Degas and Renoir. The Barber’s Director, Nicola Kalinsky, is currently working with Dr John Fagg, Director of the American and Canadian Studies Centre at the University and author of On the Cusp: Stephen Crane, George Bellows and Modernism, (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2009) to organise an exhibition centring on the painting and the Ashcan school’s treatment of the nude.
The Barber is also celebrating the arrival in the collection of its first art work by a living artist: Primrose Hill –Winter, 1981-2, by Frank Auerbach – widely rated as one of the world’s greatest living painters. It captures the moment at dusk when the park-like landscape is lit by the last glimmers of daylight and the streetlamps have just flickered into life – or, perhaps, the corresponding moment at dawn. It’s also the first work in the collection to feature someone pushing a children’s buggy! Allocated to the Barber by the Government under the largest-ever AIL (Acceptance in Lieu of Inheritance Tax) scheme bequest, the work is one of 40 paintings, drawings and prints by Auerbach that have been allocated to galleries around the UK. The works were also owned by a famous artist – Auerbach’s friend Lucian Freud.
This impressive work can be seen in the Red Gallery, flanked, perhaps surprisingly – but immensely effectively – by splendid landscapes by Rubens and Claude.