Barber Institute of Fine Arts
Encyclopedia
The Barber Institute of Fine Arts is an art gallery
and concert hall in Birmingham
, England
. It is situated in purpose-built premises on the campus of the University of Birmingham
.
The Grade II listed Art Deco
building was designed by Robert Atkinson
in the 1930s and opened in 1939 by Queen Mary
. The first building to be purpose-built for the study of art history in the United Kingdom
, it was described by architectural historian Sir John Summerson
as representing "better than almost any other building (except, perhaps the RIBA in Portland Place) the spirit of English architecture in the 1930s." The layout of the museum is centred around a central concert hall which is surrounded by lecture halls, offices and libraries on the ground floor and art galleries on the first floor.
In the 2005 Penguin Books
publication Britain's Best Museums and Galleries, the Barber Institute was one of only five galleries outside London to receive five stars for having "Outstanding collections of international significance" (the others were the National Gallery of Scotland
, Oxford University's Ashmolean Museum
, Cambridge University's Fitzwilliam Museum
and the Walker Art Gallery
, Liverpool
).
The Institute is located 5 km southwest of the city centre at the East Gate of the university campus and has one of the most outstanding collections of art assembled in Britain in the 20th century, including works by Gwen John
, André Derain
, Fernand Léger
, René Magritte
and Egon Schiele
. It was set up by Dame Martha Constance Hattie Barber in memory of her husband William Henry Barber, a wealthy property developer and solicitor
who made his fortune expanding Birmingham's sprawling suburbs. Dame Martha was a descendant of the old Birmingham family of Bellowsmakers known as Onions and was an heiress in her own right.
By his mid-thirties the couple had retired but their connections with the city remained strong. In 1924 William Henry Barber received a baronetcy for 'Political Services to Birmingham'.
He died three years later. Lady Barber decided to make a permanent contribution to the city in his memory. In 1932, the Barber Institute of Fine Arts was established, and was bequeathed to the University 'for the study and encouragement of art and music'. Lady Barber died 4 months later leaving all of her assets to the trustees of the Institute. This money was used to expand the collection and fund the construction of a new building. In order to ensure that only artworks of the highest quality were bought for the Barber Institute, its founding trust deed stipulated that all purchases should be 'of that standard of quality as required by the National Gallery
and the Wallace Collection
'.
, Claude Monet
, Auguste Rodin
, Pablo Picasso
and Rembrandt, displayed in spacious and elegant galleries on the first floor of the Institute. The Renaissance
is represented by masterpieces by Giovanni Bellini
, Veronese
and Simone Martini
(e.g. his St John the Evangelist of 1320), the 17th century by Rubens, Van Dyck
, Poussin
and Murillo
.
The collections of French impressionism
and post-impressionism
include artworks by Degas
, Monet, Renoir
, Van Gogh and Gauguin
. Among the British
artists represented are Aubrey Beardsley
, Gainsborough
, Reynolds
, Rossetti
and Turner
. There is also a fine collection of sculpture
(including works by Rodin
and Degas) and of portrait miniature
s and objets d'art
. Standing at the entrance is an equestrian statue of George I
, the oldest public sculpture in Birmingham.
The institute also has one of the world's largest coin collections
, especially of Roman and Byzantine coins. This outstanding collection was supplemented in 1967 with 15,000 coins, from Phillip Whitting and Geoffrey Haines. Many concerts take place at the Barber throughout the year, as well as a music festival
which is held in June.
860 items of the Shaw-Hellier
collection are held at the Barber's music library
, though not the Hellier Stradivarius
.
Art gallery
An art gallery or art museum is a building or space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art.Museums can be public or private, but what distinguishes a museum is the ownership of a collection...
and concert hall in Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. It is situated in purpose-built premises on the campus of the University of Birmingham
University of Birmingham
The University of Birmingham is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Birmingham Medical School and Mason Science College . Birmingham was the first Redbrick university to gain a charter and thus...
.
The Grade II listed Art Deco
Art Deco
Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...
building was designed by Robert Atkinson
Robert Atkinson (architect)
Robert Atkinson, OBE was an English architect primarily working in the Art Deco style.Atkinson was born in Wigton, Cumberland and studied at University College, Nottingham before studying abroad in Paris, Italy and America. He was a talented draughtsman and worked for C.E. Mallows from 1905...
in the 1930s and opened in 1939 by Queen Mary
Mary of Teck
Mary of Teck was the queen consort of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Empress of India, as the wife of King-Emperor George V....
. The first building to be purpose-built for the study of art history in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, it was described by architectural historian Sir John Summerson
John Summerson
Sir John Newenham Summerson CH CBE was one of the leading British architectural historians of the 20th century....
as representing "better than almost any other building (except, perhaps the RIBA in Portland Place) the spirit of English architecture in the 1930s." The layout of the museum is centred around a central concert hall which is surrounded by lecture halls, offices and libraries on the ground floor and art galleries on the first floor.
In the 2005 Penguin Books
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
publication Britain's Best Museums and Galleries, the Barber Institute was one of only five galleries outside London to receive five stars for having "Outstanding collections of international significance" (the others were the National Gallery of Scotland
National Gallery of Scotland
The National Gallery of Scotland, in Edinburgh, is the national art gallery of Scotland. An elaborate neoclassical edifice, it stands on The Mound, between the two sections of Edinburgh's Princes Street Gardens...
, Oxford University's Ashmolean Museum
Ashmolean Museum
The Ashmolean Museum on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is the world's first university museum...
, Cambridge University's Fitzwilliam Museum
Fitzwilliam Museum
The Fitzwilliam Museum is the art and antiquities museum of the University of Cambridge, located on Trumpington Street opposite Fitzwilliam Street in central Cambridge, England. It receives around 300,000 visitors annually. Admission is free....
and the Walker Art Gallery
Walker Art Gallery
The Walker Art Gallery is an art gallery in Liverpool, which houses one of the largest art collections in England, outside of London. It is part of the National Museums Liverpool group, and is promoted as "the National Gallery of the North" because it is not a local or regional gallery but is part...
, Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
).
Location and history
Gwen John
Gwendolen Mary John was a Welsh artist who worked in France for most of her career. She is noted for her still lifes and for her portraits, especially of anonymous female sitters...
, André Derain
André Derain
André Derain was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse.-Early years:...
, Fernand Léger
Fernand Léger
Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...
, René Magritte
René Magritte
René François Ghislain Magritte[p] was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images...
and Egon Schiele
Egon Schiele
Egon Schiele was an Austrian painter. A protégé of Gustav Klimt, Schiele was a major figurative painter of the early 20th century. His work is noted for its intensity, and the many self-portraits the artist produced...
. It was set up by Dame Martha Constance Hattie Barber in memory of her husband William Henry Barber, a wealthy property developer and solicitor
Solicitor
Solicitors are lawyers who traditionally deal with any legal matter including conducting proceedings in courts. In the United Kingdom, a few Australian states and the Republic of Ireland, the legal profession is split between solicitors and barristers , and a lawyer will usually only hold one title...
who made his fortune expanding Birmingham's sprawling suburbs. Dame Martha was a descendant of the old Birmingham family of Bellowsmakers known as Onions and was an heiress in her own right.
By his mid-thirties the couple had retired but their connections with the city remained strong. In 1924 William Henry Barber received a baronetcy for 'Political Services to Birmingham'.
He died three years later. Lady Barber decided to make a permanent contribution to the city in his memory. In 1932, the Barber Institute of Fine Arts was established, and was bequeathed to the University 'for the study and encouragement of art and music'. Lady Barber died 4 months later leaving all of her assets to the trustees of the Institute. This money was used to expand the collection and fund the construction of a new building. In order to ensure that only artworks of the highest quality were bought for the Barber Institute, its founding trust deed stipulated that all purchases should be 'of that standard of quality as required by the National Gallery
National Gallery, London
The National Gallery is an art museum on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media...
and the Wallace Collection
Wallace Collection
The Wallace Collection is a museum in London, with a world-famous range of fine and decorative arts from the 15th to the 19th centuries with large holdings of French 18th-century paintings, furniture, arms & armour, porcelain and Old Master paintings arranged into 25 galleries.It was established in...
'.
Collections
The collection is full of famous works by artists such as Vincent Van GoghVincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...
, Claude Monet
Claude Monet
Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...
, Auguste Rodin
Auguste Rodin
François-Auguste-René Rodin , known as Auguste Rodin , was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past...
, Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
and Rembrandt, displayed in spacious and elegant galleries on the first floor of the Institute. The Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
is represented by masterpieces by Giovanni Bellini
Giovanni Bellini
Giovanni Bellini was an Italian Renaissance painter, probably the best known of the Bellini family of Venetian painters. His father was Jacopo Bellini, his brother was Gentile Bellini, and his brother-in-law was Andrea Mantegna. He is considered to have revolutionized Venetian painting, moving it...
, Veronese
Paolo Veronese
Paolo Veronese was an Italian painter of the Renaissance in Venice, famous for paintings such as The Wedding at Cana and The Feast in the House of Levi...
and Simone Martini
Simone Martini
Simone Martini was an Italian painter born in Siena.He was a major figure in the development of early Italian painting and greatly influenced the development of the International Gothic style....
(e.g. his St John the Evangelist of 1320), the 17th century by Rubens, Van Dyck
Anthony van Dyck
Sir Anthony van Dyck was a Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England. He is most famous for his portraits of Charles I of England and his family and court, painted with a relaxed elegance that was to be the dominant influence on English portrait-painting for the next...
, Poussin
Nicolas Poussin
Nicolas Poussin was a French painter in the classical style. His work predominantly features clarity, logic, and order, and favors line over color. His work serves as an alternative to the dominant Baroque style of the 17th century...
and Murillo
Bartolomé Estéban Murillo
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo was a Spanish Baroque painter. Although he is best known for his religious works, Murillo also produced a considerable number of paintings of contemporary women and children...
.
The collections of French impressionism
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
and post-impressionism
Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism...
include artworks by Degas
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas[p] , born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist...
, Monet, Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to...
, Van Gogh and Gauguin
Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...
. Among the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
artists represented are Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley was an English illustrator and author. His drawings, done in black ink and influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts, emphasized the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the Aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James A....
, Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter.-Suffolk:Thomas Gainsborough was born in Sudbury, Suffolk. He was the youngest son of John Gainsborough, a weaver and maker of woolen goods. At the age of thirteen he impressed his father with his penciling skills so that he let...
, Reynolds
Joshua Reynolds
Sir Joshua Reynolds RA FRS FRSA was an influential 18th-century English painter, specialising in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect. He was one of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy...
, Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...
and Turner
J. M. W. Turner
Joseph Mallord William Turner RA was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting...
. There is also a fine collection of sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
(including works by Rodin
Auguste Rodin
François-Auguste-René Rodin , known as Auguste Rodin , was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past...
and Degas) and of portrait miniature
Miniature (illuminated manuscript)
The word miniature, derived from the Latin minium, red lead, is a picture in an ancient or medieval illuminated manuscript; the simple decoration of the early codices having been miniated or delineated with that pigment...
s and objets d'art
Work of art
A work of art, artwork, art piece, or art object is an aesthetic item or artistic creation.The term "a work of art" can apply to:*an example of fine art, such as a painting or sculpture*a fine work of architecture or landscape design...
. Standing at the entrance is an equestrian statue of George I
George I of Great Britain
George I was King of Great Britain and Ireland from 1 August 1714 until his death, and ruler of the Duchy and Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg in the Holy Roman Empire from 1698....
, the oldest public sculpture in Birmingham.
The institute also has one of the world's largest coin collections
Coin collecting
Coin collecting is the collecting or trading of coins or other forms of minted legal tender.Coins of interest to collectors often include those that circulated for only a brief time, coins with mint errors and especially beautiful or historically significant pieces. Coin collecting can be...
, especially of Roman and Byzantine coins. This outstanding collection was supplemented in 1967 with 15,000 coins, from Phillip Whitting and Geoffrey Haines. Many concerts take place at the Barber throughout the year, as well as a music festival
Music festival
A music festival is a festival oriented towards music that is sometimes presented with a theme such as musical genre, nationality or locality of musicians, or holiday. They are commonly held outdoors, and are often inclusive of other attractions such as food and merchandise vending machines,...
which is held in June.
860 items of the Shaw-Hellier
The Wodehouse
The Wodehouse is a country house near Wombourne, Staffordshire, notable as the seat of the Georgian landscape designer and musicologist Sir Samuel Hellier and, a century later, Colonel Thomas Bradney Shaw-Hellier, director of the Royal Military School of Music. For almost 200 years the family...
collection are held at the Barber's music library
Music library
A music library contains music-related materials for patron use. Collections may also include non-print materials, such as digitized music scores or audio recordings. Use of such materials may be limited to specific patron groups, especially in private academic institutions...
, though not the Hellier Stradivarius
Hellier Stradivarius
The Hellier Stradivarius of circa 1679 is a violin made by Antonio Stradivari of Cremona, Italy. It derives its name from the Hellier family, who might well have bought it directly from the luthier himself....
.
External links
- Official website
- Your Icons Highlights from the Barber Institute collection