In the centenary year of Richard George Hatton’s death in February 1926 and the naming of the Hatton Gallery in his honour, this article follows on from the one in the Spring Bulletin that focused on Hatton’s life and achievements, to look at aspects of the art collection that also bears his name.
In 1912, in his role as Director, Hatton wrote his first departmental report for the Fine Art Department of Armstrong College, University of Durham, in its newly built King Edward VII School of Art. Reporting on the large number of books, photographs and examples that had been added to the school’s equipment, he acknowledged the generosity of donors that had added to “our store of treasures”. What, however, might this store of treasures have contained at that time and during the remaining years of Hatton’s tenure?
By 1912 the Art Department’s history had already spanned 75 years. stretching back to 1837, it originated from the establishment of the North of England Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in their Higher Departments and in their Application to Manufactures, whose included instituting an academy for the instruction of students, creating a collection of books and casts, providing lectures and exhibitions and, ultimately, a permanent gallery of art works that would be open to the public.
It seems that from the Society’s earliest days the acquisition of plaster casts was a priority to support the rigorous study of the antique figure, architectural ornament and other objects that made up the core of art and design education at the time. The casts became an integral presence in the art school environment and, increasing in number through donations and purchase, they followed the Newcastle Art School through its various permutations and locations, from art class to university fine art department, from rooms in the Newcastle Central Exchange Buildings via premises in Westgate Road, huts in the Durham College of Science grounds, accommodation in what is now the Armstrong Building, to its own King Edward VII building. The numerous casts would have been a constant, familiar and valuable resource throughout Hatton’s time, even if, by 1895, in his guide to equipping the basics of an Antique Room, he was describing the full-size onesas “good, but very cumbersome, and more-over they swallow up capital as well as space, and preside in a depressing manner over the whole school”. It is possible that the remains of some of the plaster casts scattered around the Fine Art building today may be remnants of its earlier history, but they have their own story, and they are not part of the Hatton Collection. This article will focus on other objects that are in the collection, and that Hatton may have regarded as part of the “store of treasures”.
To do this we need to step back to 1885, prior to Hatton’s arrival as second master, when William Cosens Way (1833-1905) was the Art School’s headmaster and its future location was uncertain pending the termination of the lease on its Westgate Road premises. Its Art Committee had asked Cosens Way to submit a schedule of the Society’s property for a fire cover policy to which he reported back a value for antique figures and furniture of around £64,000 in today’s currency, and around £79,000 for pictures. That list may have included the portrait of Cosens Way (accession/object number NEWHG:OP.0013) painted by Alphonse Legros (1837-1911); one of the few early accessions that have survived into the Hatton Collection today.
The back of the painting describes it as a ‘demonstration’. A long account in the Newcastle Courant of 14 November1879 explains its circumstances at an event a week earlier. Legros, who was Professor of Fine Art at the London Slade School of Art executed it during one of his tours of the country, which included visits to Sunderland and the Newcastle Art School’s rooms in Westgate Road. He would demonstrate his draughtsmanship in doing portrait sketches in two-hour sessions in front of an invited audience of art students and “local worthies”. In this case Cosens Way was the sitter, who was “a good model, who knew how to sit” and had “a capital face with the right form and colours for a painter to copy”. Cosens Way was also probably already acquainted with Legros through connections made by the members of the Newcastle Art School and the Art Committee, whose networks of shared artistic interests linked Newcastle with London and who had organised Legros’s Newcastle portraiture session.
From 1895, with the Art School settled in its new accommodation in the College of Science building and with Hatton as Head Art Master, the College’s annual calendars (reports) listed regular donations from the Trustees of the British Museum to the College of Science library – these were series of reproductions from their collections of engravings and woodcuts, decorative alphabets and illuminated manuscripts. These must have been a valuable teaching resource for Hatton’s students as well as sources of reference for Hatton’s own textbooks, and they may explain the works in the Hatton Collection which are recorded to have come directly from him.
Such an example may be the fifty-four works from a series of woodcuts titled The Triumph of Maximilian I, (NEWHG:W.0009-W.0023, W.0035-W.0037, W.0040-W.0065, W.0078-W.0087) designed by the 16th century German woodcut printmaker and painter Hans Burgkmair (1475-1531). These woodcuts, taken from a series of original miniature paintings commissioned by the Emperor Maximilian in 1512 were printed in five editions over three centuries. Hatton, it seems, purchased a set of woodcuts from the 1796 edition of 135 prints, in 1903. In his 1895 book Figure Drawing and Composition, Hatton marks out Burgkmair’s Triumph of Maximilian as one of several German works demanding special attention for its excellent drawing and composition. There were no images in this edition but in his subsequent 1905 book, Figure Composition, Hatton does feature examples of Burgkmair’s woodcuts, some of which correspond to those now in the Hatton Collection.
The study of design, decoration and ornament, with a strong emphasis on learning through copying examples, made up a significant part of the syllabus of every art school in this period. At Newcastle, where the curriculum was evolving and broadening its offer of craft skills and the staff to teach them, by 1904, students could include the study Costume and Armour, Figure Design, Jewellery, Illumination and Ornamental Writing, for which these examples would have been a valuable and probably engrossing teaching aid. Hatton’s use of these images suggests that he may have purchased them as a teaching aid and for reference in writing and for reproduction in his 1905 book.
This may also be why other works in the Hatton Collection which are acknowledged to have come from Hatton, but which have little surviving information to explain why or how he acquired them.
These are the sixteen Illuminated manuscripts consisting of 14th, 15th and 16th-century pages and fragments depicting letters and borders taken from choir books and liturgical texts (NEWHG:IM.0001-IM.0016), together with ten 19th-century Indian Miniatures (NEWHG:Min.0001-Min.0010). There is also an 18th– century reprint of a 16th-century engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi (NEWHG:E.0028) after a design by Raphael, depicting episodes from Virgil’s Aeneid, its ambitious subject matter and complex composition in the style of classical relief sculptures being considered one of the most important of Raimondi’s career. It is quite possible that Hatton also purchased these items as teaching aids to be studied or copied, to respond to the introduction of the courses referred to above, or to inform his own publications. Hatton’s own Arts and Crafts sensibilities and his desire to support the creative aspirations of his students while having to conform to the demands of the rigid national art examinations could be the reason he sought out examples of works in their original hand and colour. These were in vivid, dazzling contrast to the predominantly monochrome reproductions available to them through art school instruction manuals, and, despite their high quality, facsimiles produced by the British Museum. Hatton may have wished to offer them as inspiration to his students as examples of the complex and inventive compositions that artists and craftsmen could achieve despite the conventions within which they would have operated.
In 1904 the College of Science was renamed Armstrong College, University of Durham. Its Art Department continued to be overseen by the Art Committee, which, from 1905 to 1911 was chaired by George Howard (1843-1911), 9th Earl of Carlisle, of Castle Howard. Howard was an artist who had been taught by and subsequently became a major patron of Alphonse Legros, as well as the Pre-Raphaelites. Through his friendships with William Morris (1834-1896) and architect Philip Webb (1831-1915) he was also involved in the Arts and Crafts Movement. Howard made several donations to the College, including three works by Legros, and a drawing, possibly a portrait of Legros, by Dorothea Landau (1881-1941). These do not seem to have survived into the Hatton Collection; however, Howard was also responsible for some remarkable works that have. These are the late-17th-century ship drawings by William van de Velde (facing page), father and son that may have originally been given to Armstrong College’s Naval Architecture Department rather than the Art Department as there are records of a later controversy between the two over their custodianship, restoration and conservation. There are now seven drawings by the Van de Veldes in the Hatton Collection (NEWHG:D.0034-0036, D.0039-D.0040, D.0042, D.0047), so it seems that Howard’s donations did find their final home in the Art Department.
In 1911 Walter John James (1869-1932), a painter and member of the Royal Society of Painter Etchers and Engravers, followed Howard as committee chairman. James taught etching to the advanced students and in 1910 had donated seven of his own etchings, possibly to complement his teaching. It seems these are lost but the collection does have examples of his work that probably came with a significant bequest later in the decade. Walter James became 3rd Baron Northbourne in 1923 and after his death his contribution to the Art School was commemorated by a stained-glass window bearing his coat of arms in its library (now the Ex Libris Gallery), commissioned from the stained glass designer Douglas Strachan (1875-1950).
Donations continued during this decade from committee members and their families, indicating the important role their political, industrial and cultural capital played in contributing resources to Armstrong College and its art department. The first of these donations that now survive are from 1911, as the Fine Art Department was preparing its final move into the bigger, purpose-built King Edward VII School of Art, made possible by the generous donation of the mining magnate John Bell Simpson. These are two drawings of a Lioness (NEWHG:D.0106) and a Tiger (NEWHG:D.0107), by the Royal Academician, John Macallan Swan (1846 -1910), a renowned animal painter and sculptor, particularly of big cats. These two drawings were purchased and presented to Armstrong College by a Dutch collector, J C J Drucker, who also donated work to the Tate Gallery, the National Gallery and elsewhere. It is unclear who or what prompted Drucker’s donation but the records state that they were selected from the artist’s studio by Sir Charles Holroyd, Director of the National Gallery, who, like Walter James, was a member of the Society of Painter-Etchers. It is therefore possible that there were exchanges between Holroyd, James and Drucker that prompted this philanthropy towards the College as its art department was preparing to move into its new building.
In September 1914 Hatton reported that the Fine Art Department’s store of examples had been considerably augmented and that generous gifts continued to come in as “valuable aids to our study”. Soon after, however, on the onset of the First World War, it had to vacate its new premises to various locations around Newcastle to make way for the 1st Northern General Hospital. When the war ended the Art Committee and Hatton must have felt a collective sense of relief on returning to its own building, with Hatton now holding the status of professor, and with advanced courses being delivered in Fine Art, Design and Architecture. However, the Art Department had been impacted by the deaths of a number of its members and their families, some of whose personal tragedies were, in turn, to impact on the size and content of its resources.
The first significant donation of this period came from the family of artist and committee member John Charlton (born 1849) following his death in 1917. It comprised 136 sketchbooks of animal studies made by him and by his son, Hugh Vaughan Charlton (1883-1916). John was a successful artist of animals and military scenes who had studied at the Art School back in 1864 and some of his works date to that time. In 1905 he joined the Art Committee alongside fellow artist Robert Jobling (1841-1923). Charlton’s works are in numerous collections including at the Laing Art Gallery. Hugh, one of two of John’s sons killed in action within a week of each other in 1916, studied at the Art
School decades later. Like his father he was a talented animal painter and their sketchbooks, according to Hatton, formed a valuable collection of animal studies.
In 1919 the most substantial donation of over one thousand works was made by another but unrelated Charlton, George Frederick Charlton, in memory of his brother, William Henry Charlton (1846-1918). William Henry had also studied at the Art School and, on retiring from his business as a corn-merchant, devoted his time to his art. The bequest consisted of a diverse collection of William Henry Charlton’s own drawings, watercolours and oils, as well as drawings, etchings and lithographs by eminent modern artists such as William Strang (1859-1921), who had studied at the Slade under Alphonse Legros and Walter John James, as mentioned above. The number also included drawings, mainly featuring animals, given to Charlton by Joseph Crawhall Junior (1861-1913), a member of a group of radical young painters in Scotland in the late 19th century known as the Glasgow Boys.
Moving into the 1920s, records indicate that at least two donations from this era have survived into the present day collection. One is a drawing by the Italian Baroque painter and draughtsman Giovanni Francesco Barbieri or Guercino (1591-1666), A Baby in a Woman’s Arms (NEWHG:D.0051) possibly the first original work of the 17th century to be gifted to Armstrong College by art committee member and later chairman, Walter Corder (1861-1933). Another is an etching by the 18th century Italian artist, Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) from his publication Magnificence di Roma (NEWHG:E.0016), probablythe first of many of this artist’s work now in the collection. This Piranesi was gifted by a local, well-known print collector, Richard Mitchell, who may have been a founder member of the Newcastle Print Society. Mitchell’s name appears in many newspaper reports on the Society’s activities and on his lectures and contributions to print exhibitions that took place at the Laing and in the Art School gallery.
These donations would have contributed to the breadth of the Department’s art historical collections in the decade that it achieved degree-awarding status, with Fine Art as a subject on the Bachelor of Arts Pass Degree and Fine Art and Architecture major subjects on the Honours Degree course. In May 1922 Hatton reported to the Art Committee that, as a result of these developments, additional resources were needed and, as the Department had inadequate funds to provide “authentic examples” to support the study of historical technique, it relied on the further generosity of benefactors for the gift of pictures and craftwork by old masters. Hatton’s plea seems to have borne fruit, for in the following year an extensive list of gifts, including works by old masters such as Vermeer, Holbein, Titian and Rembrandt, were recorded. These were not, however, original art works but high quality colour reproductions from the Medici Society. It would have been rare for the students and staff to have experienced the original works first-hand or to have found them reproduced in colour elsewhere, so the Medici prints, together with other donations, must have been considered a valuable resource, treated and treasured as sources for the study of design, decoration, technique, artistry and craftsmanship.
In Hatton’s time the Art Department relied predominantly on donors, including, it seems, Hatton himself, for creating its “store of treasures”, which consisted of some original and significant historical works, many examples of craftsmanship, mainly in reproduction, alongside numerous contemporary works collected by or created by local benefactors who were closely connected to the Department’s activities. These treasures may have been displayed on the studio walls for constant reference or poured over in the library. As a result, many may have disintegrated through wear and tear or disappeared as they lost their relevance with the changing style and content of art education and as demands on space increased and successive professors and teachers cleared out their desks and studios. Many of the early donations to the Art School do not seem to have survived into the Hatton Collection today; others, such as the Charlton collections only did so by chance, rescued, according to a Newcastle Journal report from July 1993, from a “cobwebby corner” en route to a skip, during a studio clear out.
Richard Hatton died on 19 February 1926. His love for art and his commitment to sharing it and teaching it helped lay the foundations for Fine Art at Newcastle University as it is today. His contribution is commemorated in the name of its gallery and the art collection, some of the contents of which would have been familiar to, initiated by and treasured by Hatton himself. It is poignant, therefore, that a portrait in the Hatton Collection store, recorded as of an unknown man by an unknown artist, has only recently been recognised as that of the man after whom the collection is named.
Hatton’s portrait, together with that of Hatton’s own practice as an artist, will be the subject of a future article for this bulletin.
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Further information
Oil paintings and sculpture in the Hatton Collection can be found at ArtUK, by browsing the Hatton Collection artuk.org/discover/artworks/view_as/grid/search/2026–keyword:hatton-gallery or by searching the artist’s name, for example “Alphonse Legros”: artuk.org/discover/artworks/view_as/grid/search/2026–keyword:hatton-gallery-legros or by A wider range of Hatton Collection works, including prints, watercolours and drawings can be found by searching the artist’s name or the Hatton Collection object numbers listed in this article, at North East Museums Collections Search: northeastmuseums.org.uk/collections/collections-search
Dr Melanie Stephenson
Friends of the Hatton 