I always enjoy the Edinburgh festival, and go up there most years, especially (as you might expect) mooching round the world-class art collections and exhibitions. It was a surprise to me this year to realise that this is the fiftieth year of the National Galleries of Scotland collecting modern and contemporary art for the nation – the first in Britain to do this. This fact makes the collecting policy that once existed at Tullie House all the more remarkable. The City Council set up a Purchase Scheme in 1933 to collect contemporary art for the people of Carlisle, some 36 years before this formal practice in Edinburgh. There’s an exhibition dedicated to the ‘Art for Carlisle’ story, where you can read more about the purchase scheme. For this blog I’ve included another painting that was part of this scheme. You can read more about this work below.
Lunatis VII 1968 oil on canvas by Paul Feiler.
A series of concentric rings and circles populate the white ground in an abstract composition. Feiler's painting was bought in 1968 from the Royal Academy by Roger De Grey for the city's Art Purchase Scheme.
This German artist trained in London and soon became associated with the post-war Modernists in St Ives, and Feiler still lives in Cornwall today. This painting is one of the earliest works where Feiler began to move away from a nature-inspired Abstract Expressionism to compositions of mechanically organised geometric forms; the circle and square still remains a central motif. A major retrospective of Feiler's work was held at Tate St Ives in 1996.
Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, purchased by Roger de Grey 1971
Image © Paul Feiler. By permission of Redfern Gallery.
Click here to view exhibitions designed for Secondary school students and their teachers.
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