Yale Bulletin and Calendar

October 4, 2002|Volume 31, Number 5

John Robert Cozens' 1783 watercolor "Florence from a Wood near the Cascine" was among the works acquired by collector Sir Hickman Bacon that will be on view in the new exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art.

Show features Edwardian collector's
'unusual' acquisitions

The Yale Center for British Art will be the only American venue for the exhibition "Romantic Watercolor: The Hickman Bacon Collection," featuring an assemblage of works that has never been shown in this country before.

The show will be on view Oct. 10-Jan. 5. A complementary exhibition, "The Romantic Landscape Print: 'The Chiaroscuro of Nature,'" opened Sept. 25.

From the 1890s to the eve of World War I, Sir Hickman Bacon (1855-1945) collected over 400 British landscape drawings and watercolors. Bacon "had unusual tastes for his time, which allowed him to acquire masterworks for very modest sums," say the exhibit organizers.

One of the most prized holdings in the collection, for example, is a group of watercolors by John Sell Cotman, who is today regarded as one of the geniuses of Romantic painting. Bacon acquired his Cotman works just prior to World War I, before the 1922 exhibition at the Tate Gallery in London that launched the artist's popularity.

Similarly, Bacon did not seek the finished topographical watercolors by J.M.W. Turner that were valued in the Edwardian period, but rather the later, more ethereal works by the artist, which only became popular with the advent of abstract expressionism in the 1940s and 1950s. Other Romantic painters whose works Bacon acquired are John Robert Cozens and Thomas Girtin. Today the collection, which remained in the family, is considered one of the greatest still in private hands, say the organizers.

The "Romantic Watercolor" exhibition showcases 82 works from the Hickman Bacon collection. The show will include a small display on the techniques of watercolor painting in the early 19th century, including drawing manuals and paint boxes from the collections of the Yale Center for British Art. Also on view from the center's own works will be a select group of large watercolors created for public exhibition -- the sort of elaborate works that did not appeal to Bacon but played a role in the development of Romantic watercolor painting.

"Romantic Watercolor: The Hickman Bacon Collection" was organized by Dulwich Picture Gallery in association with the Yale Center for British Art. The New Haven show is supported by a grant from the David T. Langrock Foundation.

The watercolors on view were selected by Eric Shanes, an independent art historian, who also wrote the accompanying catalogue, which is on sale in the center's museum shop. Shanes will give a lecture about the Hickman Bacon Collection at 5:15 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 9, at the center. The talk is open to the public free of charge.

The Yale Center for British Art, located at 1080 Chapel St., is open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday and noon-5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free, and the museum is wheelchair accessible.

A listing of weekly museum tours and events is available by calling the recording at (203) 432-2800, or visiting the website at www.yale.edu/ycba.

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