FLAG NEWSLETTER — AUGUST 2026

Friends of Leamington Art Gallery & Museum

www.friendsofleamingtonartgallery.co.uk

CHAIR’S REPORT

The last few months have proved challenging, with the very hot weather making outdoor activities unpleasant at times. It is therefore pleasing to report that our visits have continued to be well supported and they have made a significant contribution to funds to support the Art Gallery & Museum.

FLAG members have been on half a dozen trips this year, visiting Dulwich Gallery, the Ashmolean and several stately homes. I should like to thank everyone who helps to organise both trips and talks, often behind the scenes and always with great dedication.

I am also pleased to take the opportunity of expressing our sincere thanks to Shirley Adams, who has just stepped down as Treasurer after several years of managing our finances. We have been able to appoint Sophie Small to the role, who comes to us after a financial career in the commercial world and was looking for ‘something a little different’.

We have pledged funds to the mounting and framing of the Terry Frost print given to FLAG for its 50th anniversary and increased the contribution towards the planned acquisition of the Gainsborough portrait of Henry Wise to reflect the V & A Purchase Grant requirement to have 10 per cent from a local funder.

We are also exploring support for a proposed exhibition on Hidden Histories. The initial application to HLF was unsuccessful and LSAG&M are currently refocusing the bid to concentrate on events in the Pump Rooms during the 1970s.

Looking further ahead, we are planning a return of the Adopt an Artwork scheme to run in conjunction with the main Gallery rehang. You may recall the scheme involved FLAG members being invited to a private view with the opportunity to have their names associated with a chosen artwork.

Donations will go towards the acquisition of three paintings by Elizabeth Whitehead. These were purchased by David Barby and are to be offered to the gallery by Janet, his widow.

Next year will also be FLAG’s 60th anniversary and we are planning to celebrate this milestone.

Despite a small dip in numbers, our membership has remained strong, and together the subscriptions and attendance at events continue to underpin everything we do.

FLAG remains steadfast in its core purpose: to support, promote and champion the Art Gallery and Museum for the benefit of the local community and its visitors.

In a constantly changing world, the continued enthusiasm and commitment of our members has been both encouraging and vital.

Paul Baker
Chair

MEETING DATES

These are the dates for our new season of meetings 26/27, starting in the autumn. We have added another afternoon meeting in November as these proved popular last time.

They do have to be on Wednesdays, due to other hall bookings, but evening meetings remain on Tuesdays.

All meetings are held at the Dormer Conference Centre in Dormer Place.

Tuesday 13th October — 7.30pm

Wednesday 18th November — 2.30pm

Wednesday 16th December — 2.30pm

Wednesday 20th January — 2.30pm

Wednesday 17th February — 2.30pm

Tuesday 9th March — 7.30pm

Tuesday 13th April — 7.30pm

We are working on the programme of talks which will be ready in September. We’ll email members with details of the speakers nearer the time.

Charges for attending meetings

We really don’t want to put up our entrance charge, but speakers’ fees are increasing, so we do need lots of you to support and enjoy the meetings.

You can of course bring a guest if you so wish.

The entrance fee for 26/27 will remain at £3.00 for members and £5.00 for guests, to include refreshments.

OPEN 26: Mo Enright presenting FLAG’s People’s Choice Award to Verity Clark.

ANNA ANCHER – PAINTING LIGHT

Perhaps it is not surprising to learn that the exhibition, in Dulwich Picture Gallery, is the first on the Danish artist, Anna Ancher to be held in the UK.

Scandinavian art is poorly represented in British public collections and women artists of past centuries have been routinely side-lined and neglected. However, when an intrepid group of FLAG members arrived at Dulwich Picture Gallery on a dark, wet January day, the exhibition was buzzing with visitors, and it is not hard to see why.

Ancher lived and worked for most of her life amongst the impoverished fishing community of Skagen on Denmark’s northernmost tip.

She became a central figure in a colony of artists known as the Skagen Painters and it is, I think, significant that she was the only member of the group to be born and raised in Skagen.

Looking at her work, it seems that the bleak, flat landscape with its pale northern light and the lined weather-beaten faces of the inhabitants, are part of her own lifeblood.

That close connection comes across in the variety of subject-matter she tackled – landscapes, the seashore, portraits and scenes of everyday life – and the warmth and empathy that she portrays.

This particularly comes out in her depiction of light which is subtly present even in the darkest cottage interiors. Soft beams of sunlight glow through gauze curtains, creep across tiled floors and along white-washed walls, and flicker over the faces of young and old.

Solitary female figures in domestic spaces recall Vermeer and Ancher’s portraits, particularly of elderly sitters, have a Rembrandt-like humanity in their tenderness.

I particularly admired a small-scale head and shoulders portrait of an elderly fisherman. His rough, weather-beaten face and intense, anxious gaze conveyed vividly the harsh, isolated way of life at Skagen.

Nevertheless, Ancher was not isolated in her own life, travelling with her husband in Europe and, most significantly, spending some time in Paris in the 1880s.

Her observation of reflective rainbow colours on, for example, a white tablecloth or a painted garden bench show the impact of French Impressionism.

Like the Impressionist painters, the most ordinary, everyday subjects she chose to depict, have a glowing luminosity which conveys so vividly a particular time and place – her own world.

Jane Farrington

IN BLOOM AT THE ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM

A glorious spring day in Oxford with lilacs in full bloom along the Woodstock Road and tulips lining the riverbanks – the best possible approach to In Bloom – How Plants Changed Our World.

The take-home impression was intriguing but infuriating. The exhibition was ‘eclectic’ but not always in a good way. The overhype in the introduction hinted at a scope that was never going to be possible, even if there was something for everyone to enjoy, just not enough in any one category.

One of the highlights was the range of materials – both local (the Bodleian archives, the University Botany department, the Ashmolean) and further afield which gave us the rare opportunity to look at pages of florilegia – ‘coffee table books’ of other eras, several of which bankrupted their creators.

I appreciated the chance to compare and contrast early (1600) still-life paintings of flowers with stark modern plant portraits. I’ll go to any exhibition which includes Brigid Edwards’ Poppy Head water colour (1999).

The first room focused on collecting plants. I am more familiar with 18th and 19th century collectors, so it was interesting to discover much earlier collectors, mostly apothecaries and aristocrats, and have a tantalising introduction to notable names like the Tradescants and Mary Somerset, Duchess of Beaufort who created the gardens at Badminton.

A new personality to me was Jacob Bobat, the elder, who was superintendent of the Oxford Physic Garden. His portrait shows him sporting a splendid beard which he tipped with silver and in addition he kept a pet goat.

I was thrilled to see my first portrait of Carl Linnaeus (on the left), ‘father of modern taxonomy’ disguised as an Icelandic Sami nomad, but disappointed that no link was made to the latest taxonomic changes made as a result of DNA analysis.

A focal point at this stage of the exhibition was the ‘family tree’ of plant collectors which provoked much disagreement about who was included and who should have been.

The exhibition hinted at the various plant manias but failed to really show their impact.

There will always be fashionable plants. Recent times have seen gentler fashions, for example, for roses and rhododendrons, contrasting with the manias for tulips and orchids. There could be a whole exhibition for each one of those.

A promised topic of the exhibition was ‘How Plants Changed Our World’ but tea and opium were the only examples. Why so limited?

Rubber, cotton, tobacco, cannabis, quinine, rice and coffee have all influenced global trade, economics or had political importance.

Clearly more exhibitions are needed.

Elizabeth Ballantine

KNEBWORTH HOUSE

Despite the intense heat, a group of us set off valiantly for Knebworth House.

Our coffee stop was to be at Newport Pagnell but we settled for the famous motorway services instead, to save us from being fried to a crisp. It also gave us a chance to appreciate the 1960s architecture – a nostalgia trip.

After a very warm welcome at Knebworth we were split into two groups for the afternoon tour of the house with time to look around the beautiful and very well maintained gardens before lunch.

Knebworth House has been the home of the Lytton family since 1490.

In the 1840s Edward Bulwer-Lytton (author, poet, dramatist and statesman) transformed the building into the high gothic fantasy we see today, complete with turrets, griffins and gargoyles.

The interior is of various styles, including the magnificent Jacobean banqueting hall, a unique example of 17th century change in fashion from traditional English to Italian Palladian.

High gothic contrasts with Regency elegance and the 20th-century designs of Sir Edwin Lutyens.

Our excellent guide also pointed out some unusual objects including a child’s chair which was also a music box – the nurse would wind up the mechanism and sit the child down (whose weight made the music play) so that she could get on with other jobs.

If the music stopped, the child had started to wander!

Another oddity was a 19th-century French painting of a country church set in a landscape. A small working clock face had been screwed into the church tower which chimed, with a softer echo for another church at some distance depicted in the painting.

Important visitors include Queen Elizabeth I, Charles Dickens and Sir Winston Churchill.

The house is world famous for its huge open-air rock concerts and as a film location.

Instead of exploring the 28 acres of parkland we all wilted languidly in the shade before tea and cake and our return to Leamington Spa.

Thanks to Lyn for a wonderful day.

A waxwork of Edward Bulwer-Lytton – the long stick is his opium pipe and probably responsible for his vacant expression. It was his opening line, ‘It was a dark and stormy night’, that was much copied by Snoopy in the Peanuts cartoon.

Alan Buckley

GLOUCESTER CATHEDRAL AND MISERDEN

We had an interesting and enjoyable and day visiting two very different places.

In the morning, we had an excellent guided tour of the magnificent Gloucester Cathedral, which was founded in the 11th century.

The nave is a magnificent example of Norman Romanesque with its colonnade of huge cylindrical pillars, and sitting there it was possible to observe all four medieval architectural styles within the building: Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular.

The fan vaulting on the roof of the choir is exceptionally beautiful and there are many interesting and curious misericords to admire in the choir stalls.

We also enjoyed the wonderful East Window with original medieval stained glass showing the coronation of the Virgin Mary.

When completed in 1350, it was the largest window in existence, and still ranks as the second largest in England (the largest being the baptistry window in Coventry cathedral).

Gloucester also has a royal tomb with a very fine alabaster effigy of Edward II, who was famously murdered at Berkeley Castle.

His widow Isabella, daughter of Philip IV of France, was a consummate politician, and had his body brought to the abbey at Gloucester and set about erecting his memorial.

It soon became a shrine for pilgrimage, earning enough funds that the abbey was able to complete the vaulting in the choir and presbytery.

Perhaps though the most extraordinary part of the cathedral is the cloisters.

Rebuilt in the 14th century, they are one of the earliest surviving examples of fan vaulting.

In the cloisters we saw the scriptorium with little alcoves, or carrels, where the monks studied and also the lavatorium where they washed.

The cloisters enclose a lovely and peaceful courtyard garden which has a wonderful view of the tower.

Stained glass window by Thomas Denny in a little chantry chapel which is now a memorial to local poet Ivor Gurney (1890-1937), who had been a chorister at Gloucester.

MISERDEN

After lunch we set off towards Stroud for the short drive to Miserden, passing through the charming village of Miserden itself with its 17th-century limestone cottages.

Despite rather chilly weather, we had a relaxing afternoon exploring the extensive grounds, part of the Miserden Estate now owned by the Wills family.

The estate was part of the dowry of Catherine Parr when she married Henry VIII and remained hers until her death in 1548.

The gardens were laid out in the 17th century and we enjoyed the wonderful variety of plants and trees, including scented lilacs, a Handkerchief tree and an enormous 200-year-old sycamore growing across a drystone wall.

In 2018 it won the Historic Houses Garden of the Year Award, celebrated by the planter on the right.

Miserden has deep flower borders which are also long (some over 90 metres), set against yew topiary designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens.

He was also responsible for redesigning the east wing of the house following a fire in 1918 and was a regular visitor.

One very unusual feature is a set of grass steps designed by Lutyens which had been planted with little blue and white Lobelia to decorate each step (in the foreground in the photo on the right).

We were able to enjoy homemade cake and tea in the grounds before we set off home.

We had the grounds almost to ourselves so the visit was wonderfully peaceful with stunning views across the surrounding Cotswold countryside.

Cherry Rosewall

ART GALLERY NEWS

As we work our way through a hot July, we are reaching the final stages of the roof repair work and the doors at the front of the Royal Pump Rooms are being replaced.

We are looking forward to a summer of fun family activities while our sumptuous exhibition Unruly Desires - Sunil Gupta & Charan Singh inspires visitors with large-scale portraits exploring ideas of love, identity and intimacy in glorious colour.

Exhibitions and displays

Prior to Unruly Desires was our OPEN 26 exhibition, which ran from 20th February to 3rd May.

Showcasing the work of artists living and working in the West Midlands, OPEN 26 was a fabulous window on their work.

The winner of the OPEN 26 Artist’s Award, Paul Goalby, will be displaying his work in a Spotlight display in 2028 and we were delighted to award FLAG’s People’s Choice Award to Verity Clark.

OPEN 26: Mo Enright presenting FLAG’s
People’s Choice Award to Verity Clark

Paul Goalby, winner of OPEN 26’s Artist’s Award, at the presentation.

In October we will be rehanging the main gallery.

This two-year display will coincide with the centenary of the opening of the Art Gallery in 1928, but will also cover the 2027 60th anniversary of the establishment of FLAG.

We are currently working with a group of FLAG volunteers, a school group and our own Front of House team to select works for the display.

On 25th September we will open our next exhibition, Sustain: from the past, for the future.

We’re facing a nature crisis, but there’s hope.

This exhibition explores how people in the past lived more sustainably, using fewer resources, less energy, and making space for nature.

These examples from history can inspire us to make positive changes today.

The displays include everyday objects that were repaired, reused, and made from sustainable materials, as well as artworks showing the transformation of our landscape.

Hear from scientists, environmentalists and local changemakers, and find out how we, as individuals and communities, can make a difference.

This project is part of the Fixing Our Broken Planet programme in partnership with the Natural History Museum, London and runs until 10th January 2027.

You can find out more at the Natural History Museum's Fixing Our Broken Planet pages.

COLLECTIONS

Simeon Solomon, Sleepers and One that Waketh

This beautiful and very popular painting is currently on display in the Unruly Desires exhibition but will undergo conservation to remove gold paint from the original gilded frame and then travel to the US to be included in Delaware Art Museum’s major Solomon retrospective in 2027.

We are very grateful to Delaware Art Museum for their generosity in supporting the cost of the conservation as well as the framing of the new Sunil Gupta acquisitions, which were inspired by Solomon’s work.

We have acquired a number of significant artworks over the last few months – a beautiful print and book by artist Phyllis Bray, some wonderful mid-sized sculptures by Alma Ramsey-Hosking (several of which are on display in the main gallery), two expressionist landscape paintings by Leslie Marr and an early oil painting of anemones by Terry Frost completed while he was still a young artist based in Leamington.

We are submitting applications for funding to support the acquisition of Thomas Gainsborough’s portrait of local landowner Henry Wise and relying on a pledge of support from FLAG as evidence of local support to make our case.

Additions to the Museum collection include a group of items acquired from AP shortly before the factory closed. It includes an early glass brake fluid bottle, several clutch masters and the iconic ‘AP’ sign from the factory.

Continuing the motor manufacturing theme, we have also been given a presentation box of model vehicles and retirement folder from Warwick-based refuse collection vehicle manufacturer, Dennis Eagle Ltd.

Recently three of our long-standing Arts Society volunteers decided to retire, Janet, Kate and Jan.

We are very sorry to see them go, and very thankful for their many years helping us behind the scenes on important projects like mounting our samplers for better storage and display.

With the end of roof disruption in sight, Abi has recently inducted a new cohort of volunteers.

Their first project is to condition check and re-pack our rolled textile collection.

This will be very useful for our upcoming exhibition Grassroots, which will feature a number of protest banners in the collection.

LEARNING & ENGAGEMENT

It has been a busy few months at the Art Gallery & Museum as we have developed and embedded our regular programme of activities.

We now run the following on a regular basis:

Arty Tots
Home Education sessions
Art Cart holiday sessions
Friday Focus
Create Together workshops (parent/adult and child art workshop)
Adult Create artist-led workshops

As well as these events and workshops we have welcomed primary school children, been in to schools, welcomed Trinity School and Warwick University students as a youth panel whilst planning the September Sustain exhibition and attended and participated in the Resonate Festival run by Warwick Institute of Engagement where we set up an artist workshop based on the Copyists aspect of the A Different View exhibition.

Through a difficult few months (roof works!), we have continued to strive to deliver high quality, value for money and affordable events and the public have generally responded in good numbers.

Looking forward we will continue our regular programme and look at new ways to develop our school programme, linking activities to our forthcoming exhibitions and the gallery re-hang.

We will also endeavour to develop our presence in the town, firstly, by having our own space at Art in the Park in August and then looking at innovative ways of developing our presence to audiences that don’t currently engage with us.

Finally, we will be holding our yearly Christmas afternoon, so we will be asking if members of FLAG would like to join us and help with refreshments and enjoy the afternoon with us.

Thank you for all your support, it is very much appreciated.

Staff update

In August we will be advertising for a new Arts Officer.

We are also welcoming Naomi Lawrence to the Arts Team in the new role of Volunteer Coordinator.

We are, as ever, supported by a fabulous and hard-working team of casual Exhibitions & Collections Assistants and Learning & Engagement Assistants.

In addition, last month we offered work experience to Georgia from the Sixth Form at North Leamington School and an internship to Liv, from University of Warwick, who did a number of tasks including some in-depth research into a landscape sketchbook we plan to include in next summer’s exhibition, Painting the Picturesque.

Over the last few weeks we have updated the display in the main gallery and re-opened the mezzanine level in the museum, so we are ready to welcome and inspire visitors over the summer.

Very best wishes,

Chloe Johnson, Vicki Slade and all the Collections & Engagement Team

July 2026

AT THE ART GALLERY SINCE OUR LAST NEWSLETTER…

From the Childish Things exhibition which featured the pastimes of children since Victorian times, this is Wandering Thoughts by David Alison, a leading Scottish portraitist. It was painted in 1928.

A Different View featured women artists from the gallery's collection, a number of them born before the end of the 19th century.

This is Lady with Powder Puff, painted around 1936 by Celia Bedford.

This is Still Waters by Neil Moore, submitted to OPEN 26.

FLAG IS NOW ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER

Both the blog and Facebook pages have information about forthcoming trips and talks, news from the art gallery and up-and-coming art events locally.

FLAG on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/friendsofleamingtonspaartgallery

Website: