Bolton Museum And Art Gallery

[poliphilo]

We went over to Bolton Museum for a lunchtime talk by Matthew Constantine, senior manager of collections. It was a clever talk, dealing with ten items from the Collection- each one linked to the next in some way or other-  beginning and ending with the sad remains of George Romney's painting of the shipwreck scene from the Tempest, originally painted for Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery. After Boydell's venture went bust Romney's huge canvas passed through several hands, hung for a while in Bolton public baths and was eventually chopped up in 1959 by a curator who kept what he thought were the best bits and threw the rest away. Among the bits he liked was a portrait of Emma Hamilton as Miranda. 

Bolton Museum contains all sorts- from stuffed animals to Epstein bronzes. Its Egyptian collection is one of the biggest in the country. Among its finest- and least likely- holdings are three paintings by the 19th century American landscape painter Thomas Moran.

Comments

[veronikos.livejournal.com]

I didn't realize it had a large Egyptian collection. I will go see it. I see, however, from the museum website that many of the objects are headed to China on tour.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The collection at the Manchester museum is even better. Both museums benefited from having patrons who backed the Egyptian excavations of Flinders Petrie.