Bowes Museum
Encyclopedia
Barnard Castle
Barnard Castle is an historical town in Teesdale, County Durham, England. It is named after the castle around which it grew up. It sits on the north side of the River Tees, opposite Startforth, south southwest of Newcastle upon Tyne, south southwest of Sunderland, west of Middlesbrough and ...
, Teesdale
Teesdale
Teesdale is a dale, or valley, of the east side of the Pennines in England. Large parts of Teesdale fall within the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty - the second largest AONB in England and Wales. The River Tees rises below Cross Fell, the highest hill in the Pennines, and its...
, County Durham
County Durham
County Durham is a ceremonial county and unitary district in north east England. The county town is Durham. The largest settlement in the ceremonial county is the town of Darlington...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
.
The museum contains an El Greco
El Greco
El Greco was a painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El Greco" was a nickname, a reference to his ethnic Greek origin, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος .El Greco was born on Crete, which was at...
, paintings by Francisco Goya
Francisco Goya
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown, and through his works was both a commentator on and chronicler of his era...
, Canaletto
Canaletto
Giovanni Antonio Canal better known as Canaletto , was a Venetian painter famous for his landscapes, or vedute, of Venice. He was also an important printmaker in etching.- Early career :...
, Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Jean-Honoré Fragonard was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific artists active in the last decades of the Ancien Régime, Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings , of which only five...
, François Boucher
François Boucher
François Boucher was a French painter, a proponent of Rococo taste, known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories representing the arts or pastoral occupations, intended as a sort of two-dimensional furniture...
and a sizable collection of decorative art, ceramics
Ceramic art
In art history, ceramics and ceramic art mean art objects such as figures, tiles, and tableware made from clay and other raw materials by the process of pottery. Some ceramic products are regarded as fine art, while others are regarded as decorative, industrial or applied art objects, or as...
, textile
Textile
A textile or cloth is a flexible woven material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres often referred to as thread or yarn. Yarn is produced by spinning raw fibres of wool, flax, cotton, or other material to produce long strands...
s, tapestries
Tapestry
Tapestry is a form of textile art, traditionally woven on a vertical loom, however it can also be woven on a floor loom as well. It is composed of two sets of interlaced threads, those running parallel to the length and those parallel to the width ; the warp threads are set up under tension on a...
, clocks and costumes, as well as older items from local history. A great attraction is the 18th century Silver Swan
Silver Swan (automaton)
The Silver Swan is an automaton dating from the 18th Century and is housed in the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, Teesdale, County Durham, England....
automaton
Automaton
An automaton is a self-operating machine. The word is sometimes used to describe a robot, more specifically an autonomous robot. An alternative spelling, now obsolete, is automation.-Etymology:...
, which periodically preens itself, looks round and appears to catch and swallow a fish.
History
The Bowes Museum was purpose-built as a public art gallery for John Bowes, the illegitimate son of John BowesJohn Bowes, 10th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne
John Bowes, 10th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne was the eldest son of John Bowes, 9th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne and Mary Bowes, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne...
the 10th Earl of Strathmore, and Kinghorne
Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne
The title Earl of Kinghorne was created in the Peerage of Scotland in 1606 for Patrick Lyon. In 1677, the designation of the earldom changed to "Strathmore and Kinghorne". A second Earldom was bestowed on the fourteenth Earl in the Peerage of the United Kingdom in 1937, the title being Strathmore...
, and his wife Joséphine Benoîte, Countess of Montalbo
Montalbo, Cuenca
Montalbo is a municipality in the province of Cuenca, part of the autonomous community of Castile-La Mancha, in the country of Spain.-External links:*...
, who both died before it opened in 1892.
It was designed by the French architect Jules Pellechet in a grand French style within landscaped gardens. The building was described by Nikolaus Pevsner
Nikolaus Pevsner
Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner, CBE, FBA was a German-born British scholar of history of art and, especially, of history of architecture...
as "... big bold and incongruous, looking exactly like the town hall of a major provincial town in France. In scale it is just as gloriously inappropriate for the town to which it belongs (and to which it gives some international fame) as in style".
A major redevelopment of the Bowes Museum began in 2005. To date, improvements have been made to visitor facilities (shop, cafe, toilets); galleries (new Fashion & Textile gallery, Silver gallery and English Interiors gallery); and study/learning facilities. The three art galleries were up-dated on the second floor of the museum.
The museum hosts an internationally significant programme of exhibitions, recently featuring works by Monet, Raphael, Turner, Sisley, Galle, William Morris, and Toulouse Lautrec.
Further reading
- Charles E. Hardy - John Bowes and the Bowes Museum (1970, reprinted 1982) ISBN 0-9508165-0-7
- Caroline Chapman - John and Josephine: The Creation of The Bowes Museum (2010)
External links
- The Bowes Museum website
- Paintings from the Bowes Museum on VADSVADS (organisation)VADS is a UK organisation that provides digital images and other visual arts resources free and copyright cleared for use in UK higher education and further education. It has provided services to the academic community for 11 years, and has built up a portfolio of visual art collections...
- Information from the 24 Hour Museum24 Hour MuseumCulture24, originally the 24 Hour Museum, is a British charity which publishes two websites, Culture24 and Show Me, about visual culture and heritage in the United Kingdom, as well as supplying data and support services to other cultural websites including Engaging Places.It operates independently,...