Arts and Design

'We bought things we liked': amateurs' stunning gallery gift


It started with a caravan trip down to Cornwall … and now Yorkshire art collectors Terence Bacon and John Oldham have made an astonishing gift to one of Britain’s leading art galleries.

This week, the Hepworth Wakefield gallery is to announce the arrival later this year of a hundred important works of art, from the sought-after ceramics of pioneering potter Lucie Rie to the paintings of Terry Frost.

This extraordinary gift of work held in a little-known private local collection is intended as a recognition of Bacon and Oldham’s personal feeling for the gallery. “We used to drive to see sculptor Barbara Hepworth’s garden in St Ives, which is an oasis, and so when we heard about the new gallery near us, we gave it the once over,” said retired civil servant Bacon, 68, who lives with Oldham, a 75-year-old retired National Health Service manager.

“John and I thought it was a wonderful gallery with great work and a wonderful building, full of people enjoying themselves. We had started travelling around in our caravan, and buying things we really liked but we never thought to set out to build a collection. None of it was purchased with investment in mind. That has been our whole ethos, though some of our friends thought we were bonkers.”

Andrew Bonacina, chief curator at The Hepworth Wakefield, which was designed by David Chipperfield, spoke to the Observer this weekend to praise “the incredible connoisseurial eye” of the couple, who live nearby. “They’ve been involved in the art scene in Yorkshire for a long time and were fans of Leeds Art Gallery. They visited here after we opened in 2011 and then became patrons, coming to all our shows.

“By now, all our curators have visited their home to see the collection they have built up slowly on relatively modest means at one time or another.”

The Hepworth Wakefield gallery in West Yorkshire.



The Hepworth Wakefield gallery in West Yorkshire. Photograph: travellinglight/Alamy

The gallery, named after Hepworth, who was born in Wakefield in 1903, now aims to give visitors an idea of how Oldham and Bacon found some of the artworks they bought. Many are worth tens of thousands of pounds now but were originally much more affordable. “We will try to present some of the stories once the gallery reopens because people are often fascinated to hear how they get to the gallery,” said Bonacina.

One of the director’s favourite works is a piece of pottery by Rie (1902-95), the renowned London studio potter who began by making buttons. Two of the artist’s “bottle” forms were the start of the collection, spotted by chance in the window of St Ives’ New Craftsman Gallery during a Cornish holiday.

“They stopped us in our tracks. After a great deal of discussion, we took the plunge. I believe they touched us so profoundly because we unconsciously recognised something intrinsically beautiful, which we had unknowingly been looking for,” said Bacon. “It sounds dreadfully pretentious but in a funny way it feels as though they chose us. A real life-changer!”

Bonacina is also excited about gifted works by the British artist and potter John Ward, now in his 80s, and under-represented in British gallery and museum collections. “They have one of the biggest collections of Ward’s work, including around 43 pots. His ceramics are deeply infused by the landscape near his home in Pembrokeshire, Wales, even though they often have geometric patterns. The surface textiles of the works are also drawn from the landscape, so it is possible to make links with Hepworth’s work.”

A Frost painting has also been chosen to join a couple that are already in the Wakefield gallery. Frost (1915-2003) was a leading abstract painter, also based in Cornwall.

“John and Terry have also given us a work by Craigie Aitchison,” said Bonacina. “It is one of the first things they bought, and they have talked to me since about how they spent time in his studio and have become his friend.”

Other artists represented in the gift include Angus Suttie (1946-93), Euan Uglow (1932-2000), Rose Hilton (1931-2019), Leeds-born Trevor Bell (1930-2017) and Alison Britton.

Ceramics have been key part of Wakefield’s art collection since the 1920s, and the gallery has successfully applied for a £30,000 Art Fund new collection award to buy postwar ceramics.



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