Arts for All - Scotland Forever 1881

Many of the paintings housed in Leeds Art Gallery were given to the City. This was the first gift to the collection, from Colonel Harding, when the building was put up by the city Corporation in 1889 at a cost of over £10,000. One of the great favourites in the permanent collection.

Scotland Forever by Lady Elizabeth Butler.

Probably the best known painting of the gallant charge of the Royal North Dragoons, The Scots Greys at the Battle of Waterloo. According to an eyewitness Alexander Armour at the start of the charge the Greys had to pass through the ranks of the Highland Brigade and Armour recalled The highlanders were then ordered to wheel back, when they did so we rushed through them at the same time they heard us calling Now my boys Scotland Forever.

'When I visited Leeds Art Gallery to find out which piece of work they would allow me to embroider I had hoped to work on The Surgeons by Barbara Hepworth but there were problems. I was told this was the best known picture in the gallery and many people's favourite.
The picture was quite well known to me, it is reproduced in a book of famous paintings which my father owned. I was allowed to look at the pictures on Sunday afternoons.
The work was so detailed I thought that the only way to approach it was to start with a print.
I began to stitch into the print but found that the paint was starting to lift,so the only answer was to stitch the entire surface.
The sky took on an energy all its own, I hope it does no violence to the quality of the original.'

Freda Copley October 2004

Arts for All - Paula Rego Poster

This painting by Paula Rego was used as a poster advertising the Leeds Art Collections Fund, and thus was included on the Arts for All panel.

The fund was founded in 1912 and is one of the earliest "Friends" bodies in Great Britain. Through subscriptions and fund raising events the LACF enriches the collections of the Leeds Galleries including helping with the purchase of this painting.

1993

Rego depicts a mature artist, a sculptress - as can be seen from the background - having a reflective smoke after setting her two apprentices their daily task to paint a still life of an assortment of cabbages and objects on a table. The work is not a self-portrait as Rego used Lila Nunez as her model. Rego describes her sculptress as 'a type of George Sand character', Sand was famous for smoking a pipe and leading a resolutely independent life in a masculine way, but she also had a very feminine personality. The artist is placed at the centre of the painting with everything else subordinate to it and circulating round it. Imaginative power is what so distinguishes this work and, indeed, Paula Rego's art as a whole.

Included today to congratulate Dame Paula Rego on her DBE in today's Birthday honours list.

Congratulations to Graham Nash and John Cale too.

Joan Holah hand stitched this piece on printed fabric (70 hours)

Arts for All

Arts for All was the final panel completed. It represents a decorative pin board with postcards of examples of arts in Leeds. I've added it today in celebration of the exhibition at the V & A.

When the first 15 panels had been made there was a difficult time finding a home for them all. At first they were displayed in the stable courtyard at Harewood, then they moved to The Royal Armouries. The latter was a more suitable venue because there was free access to them but this, again, was only a temporary home.

Leeds City Council offered another temporary display site in a first floor corridor of the Central Library and its here that the Arts Panel was unveiled. Finally, last year, the Council, Library and Tapestry Trustees agreed that the Library would be the permanent exhibition space; and after redecoration, re-hanging and interpretation boards were added there was a re-union for the volunteers and friends to celebrate.

The background patchwork was made, almost entirely, by Chris Richardson of Night Owls quilters group