Giles Waterfield’s book studies the gestation, motives, intentions, aims and functions of provincial museums in Britain in the 50 years leading up to the First World War, a subject that has never been scrutinised in such detail before.
The People’s Galleries is the summation of comprehensive studies that Waterfield has made over the past 25 years. His interest first manifested itself in two exhibitions: Palaces of Art (1991) at Dulwich Picture Gallery examined the architecture of these new institutions, and Art Treasures of England (1998) at the Royal Academy reviewed the art in regional collections. The subject and scope of his latest book was rehearsed in the Paul Mellon Lectures at the National Gallery in 2007. Now his findings are published with a comprehensive breadth and eye for detail that is expressed with the author’s customary stylish elegance.
The formation of British museums was quite unlike their continental cousins. British public collections did not come from aristocratic sources, neither were they dispersed from central government sources; indeed, their development was marked by an absence of any enthusiasm or commitment from national or local authorities. Natural history and archaeological societies mirrored literary and philosophical institutions in many provincial centres and county towns, and a number of regional exhibitions shown in temporary structures demonstrated the breadth of public interest and curiosity.
In size and ambition the Manchester Art Treasures exhibition of 1857 provided the acme of the genre, though while the temporary exhibitions might be seen as a flagship for regional promotion and prestige, anything of permanence was widely regarded as an unnecessary frippery. Building costs were generally met by private philanthropy spiced with a paternalistic desire to provide the underprivileged with an educational resource. From the 1860s a network of museums and art galleries sprang up throughout Britain, with the heaviest concentration in the industrial north, reflecting the source of philanthropic new money that generally provided these pioneering facilities.
At the end of the 19th century museum opening hours stretched into the evenings to enable workers to visit them, and the number of visitors they welcomed were enviably large. The aim of donors was in many cases to provide a temple to the arts, often not designed by the best architects. With the exception of a number of worthy bequests, instead of containing original artefacts, sculptures were represented by plaster casts, and paintings and drawings by photographic reproductions. Their link with temporary exhibitions of contemporary work remained unbroken and often these provided the only source for additions to the permanent collection.
The provision of museums was based on individual enthusiasm and municipal rivalry rather than corporate responsibility, and although Glasgow and Birmingham fared well, the city authorities in Leeds maintained a dogged philistinism and dragged their feet. However enlightened, museums could not compete with the music hall, cinema and spectator sport. Visitor numbers fell and, as art history began to gel into an academic discipline, so museum professionals emerged and their relationship with councils began to reach some degree of equanimity.
This admirably researched book ends on a bitter-sweet note. With the notable exceptions of a handful of museums that have benefited from imaginative capital developments funded by the National Lottery, many of the institutions examined in its pages are presently under threat of ever-decreasing revenue budgets and, with a local government status of non-statutory organisations, have became an easy target for government spending cuts.
The likelihood that many will survive in future decades seems, at best, to be wishful thinking.
• Hugh Belsey is currently writing a catalogue raisonné of the portraits of Thomas Gainsborough
The People’s Galleries: Art Museums and Exhibitions in Britain, 1800–1914
Giles Waterfield
Yale University Press in association with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 372pp, £45 (hb)