Student Exhibition Set for the Beecroft

Local fashion and design students are set to exhibit at Southend’s critically acclaimed art gallery the Beecroft Art Gallery...

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Rare Butterfly Sighted in Southend

A rare species of butterfly has been seen in Southend....

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Head of MLA visits Southend

Southend was pleased to welcome Roy Clare, Chief Executive of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, on a fact-finding visit on 3^rd November.

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Prittlewell Priory receives Heritage Lottery Fund Award

The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has announced that £1.27million has been earmarked for the refurbishment of Prittlewell Priory.

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Friends purchase rare example of Postal History for Museum

The Friends of Southend Museums have purchased a rare Victorian envelope, with fascinating local connections, for the Museums Service.

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EKCO Plastics come to the Museum

Recently a fascinating archive of historic photographs came to light at the Ecomold factory.

These chart the history of EKCO, and particularly EKCO plastics, from the Second World War to the 1970s and beyond.

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Beecroft Old Masters Online

Clare Hunt, Keeper of Art for Southend Museums has been participating in a national project called the National Inventory of European Paintings. The project, which is administered by the National Gallery, aims to catalogue and make available online, all of the European oil paintings dating from 1200-1900 in museums and galleries in the country.

Some years ago, Clare obtained funding to enable her to research the paintings at the Beecroft Art Gallery which fit into this category, of which there are 48. The research enabled her to date pictures, identify artists (and correct some attributions that were wrong), and find out who owned some of them before they came to Southend Museums. The results of this research, and images of the 48 paintings, are now available on-line.

Image: ‘Breakfast Still Life’ by Gerrit Willemz Heda. 17th century. This artist’s father was also a painter of still life and Clare found a picture by him in the National Gallery which included the same silver chalice as the one here. They obviously shared a studio and studio props!

This inventory records nearly 8,000 pre-1900, continental European oil paintings in over 200 UK public collections. You can discover a wide range of information about European art in other UK public collections too, and find out about holdings of particular artists and schools, and search for particular works.

This website also includes:
• Further information about how to use the database
• Further information about the project that supported the creation of the inventory
• A full list of all the museums involved

Image: ‘Harvesting Scene’ Flemish School, around 1700.  Clare found out that this picture, which is one of a pair, used to be owned by the Countess of Orford who lived in North Devon. She sold the pictures at Christies in 1952 where they were bought by the Friends of the Beecroft Art Gallery.

if you would like to visit the website, click here (will open a new window).