Under “New acquisitions for 2007-8″ below, we reported on three acquisitions made during the past year. Today’s update gives details of three other acquisitions made by the Fine Art Curator during the same period, together with a report on the ‘Neudecker installation’ in the new Egypt Gallery, also commissioned by the Fine Art Department.

There is also a report on an item acquired by the Applied Art Curator with the help of The Friends .

(See also the Acquisitions page)

Dated 7 July 2008

Arthur Wilde Parsons RWA, lived in Redland, Bristol and was one of the celebrated Bristol Savages group of artists. He worked, and exhibited, at the Royal Academy from 1876.

There are 14 of his works in the Bristol Art Gallery collection: 4 watercolours and 10 oils. One oil, “Weston Pier and Sands”, has been on display in the Victorian gallery for many years.

He painted large historical scenes, such as “The Launch of the Great Western”, and specialised in marine subjects. Having helped found the Savages in 1904, there are several of his works in their collection including a very fine seascape: “Waves breaking over Cornish Cliffs”.

He was quiet and reserved, with a beard and a pipe. A past Savages president, Charlie Thomas, wrote of him: “his kindly and genial personality endeared him to his brothers of the brush”. We can see this from the chalk on brown paper self-portrait, signed with his initials and dated 1900.

The cost of £250 to purchase this work was met in full by The Friends.

This item is included in the current ‘What’s New?’ exhibition in the Watercolour Gallery

This has been the year of the Smyths of Ashton Court!

This pair of portraits are of Florence (nee Smyth), and her husband Thomas Upton. They married in 1799 and she was his second wife. Florence’s elder brother Hugh Smyth was from 1802, the baronet, and lived at Ashton Court.

Thomas and Florence’s only child, also called Thomas, was born in 1800. He was later to be the father of the last baronet of Ashton Court, Sir Greville Upton Smyth, who died in 1901.

After their marriage, the Uptons’ moved to Ingmire Hall in Sedbergh, Westmorland, and wintered in Bath, where these drawings were made. Florence did not like it in the North, and on her husband’s death in 1832 she moved to Laura Place, Pulteney Street, Bath. In old age, one of her grandchildren described her as “a small, alarming-looking old lady, in a high-pointed cap. She had some old servants and I was as much afraid of them as I was of her”…..

The portraits are in pencil and watercolour by John Hay Bell a resident of Wood Street, Bath from 1798-1809. Little is known of him, although he was a good portraitist and his accuracy in drawing fashionable dress is of great interest to costume historians. Certainly it was understandable that the Uptons’ should choose a Bath artist, as there was no portraitist working in Bristol at the time who could produce this quality of work.

The full cost of the pair of portraits was £2,800, which The Friends paid in full.

These items are included in the current ‘What’s New?’ exhibition in the Watercolour Gallery

This painted jug is inscribed on the bottom ‘View of Diamond Cottage Henbury 1820″. It was made of earthenware by the Bristol Pottery in Temple Back, and is decorated almost certainly by William Fifield, who is said to have worked at the pottery for about 50 years. A surviving trade card, dated 1820, in the V & A, and the fact that he signed some of his work suggests that he may have been partly independent of the company. He is mainly known for flower painting, but also did landscapes and portraits.

He was born in Bath in 1777, and was later apprenticed to a glass stainer. He was married to Mary Anne Moore at St Michaels, Bristol on 19 September 1813 — there may have been an earlier marriage. Mary Anne died in 1828 aged 35, and in 1841 William, described as a painter, was recorded as living at Stone Place, off Temple Backs with two of his (at least) 4 children. By 1847 at the age of 70, he had married again to Sarah White, who was in her early twenties. Four years later, the census shows him (this time described as an enameller of china), living at 7 Gough’s Court, again probably off Temple Backs, with his wife, now aged 26 and described as a pottery transferrer. William died on 14 August 1857 of acute bronchitis.

The jug cost £1,000 which The Friends paid in full.