Bromance: Southampton City Art Gallery and the National Gallery

Southampton City Art Gallery. 28 May – 4 September 2021.

There was MUCH more to look at here than I expected. I've been before and did think it was a very very nice gallery.

The exhibition I saw, "Creating a National Collection", gave me a great snapshot into the depth and variety of the gallery's holdings, as well as collecting habits and “strategic purchasing” of the advisors. (You know all about strategic purchasing if you’ve ever gone on a night out with only a tenner).

I was a bit brain dead when I strolled in as I’d just had a job interview, so the point of the exhibition didn’t really sink in until after I left and digested the wall text properly. (I’d taken photos on my phone of the important looking bits.)

It was about Southampton’s bromance with the National Gallery (and later the Tate). Paintings from each were paired together in a timeline adjacent to the gallery’s family tree of curators and advisors from the NG. Some bloke, Southampton Councillor Robert Chipperfield, provided a tonne of cash (trust fund) in his will and 137 paintings in the hope of initiating a stonking art collection for the city in 1911. However, his will specified that the Director of the National Gallery should be nominated as art advisor for all future purchases using his trust fund.

So, various directors of the NG got on board through the years to advise the “Chipperfield Bequest Sub-Committee” (try saying that with a mouthful of scotch egg). One chap Kenneth Clark was keen that Southampton should acquire pictures of “outstanding merit yet of reasonable price.” If Ken was still about, I’m sure he’d be impressed with the TU fashion range at Sainsbury’s. Ken then drafted a collections policy in 1936 to collect modern art as well as historic. Thank Christ for that, you can’t dine out on Renaissance and Baroque forever you know.

By 1985, change was afoot. The current National Gallery advisor, Michael Levey, admitted that Modern Art was not his specialism, and passed the torch to another white man, this time at the Tate, David Brown. From then on the Tate became Southampton’s chief advice point, solidified officially in 2012.

I did what I normally do in galleries and walked round each room very excitedly, then go back and stop at the pieces I’m most drawn to. Some of my faves are below.

WHAT I THOUGHT OVERALL:

Some very impressive bits n bobs. Bit too much wall text though.