Oil Paintings

Oil Paintings
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THE art treasures of the North East should be drawing many more visitors to the region, it has been claimed.
A project to reveal and promote the internationally important collections in the North East has resulted in a catalogue of colour images of more than 2,500 oil paintings held by Tyne and Wear Museums.
It includes over 1,000 paintings from the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle and around 700 in the Shipley Art Gallery in Gateshead.
The project, backed by a range of donors including the Northern Rock Foundation, Fenwick Ltd and Renaissance North East, is a collaboration between the North East Regional Museums Hub and the Public Catalogue Foundation.
The foundation, a charity, was set up in 2003 with the aim of increasing public access to the 200,000 oil paintings in public ownership in the UK.
It is believed that the UK holds in its galleries and civic buildings arguably the greatest publicly owned collection of oil paintings in the world.
This includes works in places ranging from museums and galleries to council buildings, universities and hospitals.
At any one time 80% of these are in storage or in locations without routine public access.
A further two catalogues are planned to cover works in the North East.
Foundation chairman Dr Fred Hohler said that the collection of oil paintings at the Laing Art Gallery, for example, was of national importance and its strength in 20th Century British art was remarkable.
"So why is it not a greater place of popular cultural pilgrimage, for visitors from home and abroad?" said Dr Hohler.
"Why is it that in Italy and Spain, Venice, Florence, Barcelona and Seville are visited as readily as the metropolis, but that in Britain London rules alone?
"London is only a fraction of what is on offer in Britain. Why does someone not say so, and in a voice loud enough for all to hear?
"The reason lies in the failure to recognise that the regional collections such as the Laing, with their extraordinary wealth of art, are all parts of one national collection and that they need to be understood and promoted as such."
In addition to its oil paintings, the Laing Art Gallery also has more than 4,000 watercolours. Dr Hohler said that one idea was to hold regional exhibitions in London during the 2012 Olympics to show visitors what can be seen outside the capital.
Ged Bell, chairman of Tyne and Wear Museums, said: "This volume will serve to open up the entirety of our exceptional collections to a much wider audience."
Also covered in the catalogue are works from South Shields Museum and Art Gallery, Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens and the Discovery Museum in Newcastle.