|
Date: |
|
Description: | The Museum owes its superb collection of works by Degas to Andrew S. Gow (1886-1978), a Classics don and Fellow of Trinity College. GowÃ's dominating passion for the work of Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas, (1834-1917), and his efforts to establish a truly representative collection of the artist's work led him to research provenances and histories for many Degas artifacts alongside leading dealers and scholars in London and Paris. Gow became associated with the Fitzwilliam Museum through its Director, Louis Clarke and served as a Museum Syndic for more than 30 years.
GowÃ's Degas collection started in 1938 with a black chalk drawing and rapidly increased after the second world war, including two modest sized paintings. Paul-Andre Lemoisne (author of the seminal Degas catalogue) considered that by the end of the 1940s Gow had assembled a Ãtres bel ensembleÃ' of Degas items, part of a modest but choice collection of drawings, prints and other Ãfine thingsÃ' such as paintings and bronzes by later C19th French artists.
After Gow died in 1978 the bulk of this collection went to Fitzwilliam Museum through National Art Collections Fund. Deposits included attractive oil studies by Forain, Isabey and good drawings by Delacroix, Maillol and Matisse, as well as a noteable Degas holding including two paintings, fifteen drawings, six prints and counterproofs of drawings, seventeen impressions from cancelled plates and two bronzes (held by the Department of Applied Arts). The items range over whole of DegasÃ' artistic career. The most exciting of the prints from the Gow Collection are: Mary Cassatt au Louvre, Musee des Antiques and the Femme a sa Toilette, la cuvette (one of GowsÃ' most expensive acquisitions).
GowÃ's lasting legacy at the museum also lay in the establishment a fund which bears his name for the acquisition of French paintings. In 2000, thanks to it, and the support of the National Art Collections Fund, of which he was an active member for over 20 years, the Museum was able to acquire a luminous early landscape by Degas, a purchase entirely in keeping with his own taste for DegasÃ's early work. | Subjects: | French (cultural identity) Bronze Fine arts Sculpture Paintings Prints Drawings | Source: | Cornucopia - Discovering UK Collections | FAX: | 01223 332 923 | Telephone: | 01223 332 900 | Identifier: | oai:www.cornucopia.org.uk:8426 | Go to resource |
|
|