Housed within the Burtons Collections are a number of noteworthy artefacts, in addition we also have a number of highly significant paintings, many of which are directly related or connected to the local area. Selected works from the Permanent Collection are displayed annually and those visitors undertaking research are welcome to view particular works by appointment at other times.
Hubert Coop, the co-founder of the Burton Art Gallery and Museum, began the gallery’s collection of oils and watercolours. He was a fine artist himself and collected works by other painters of his own era, such as E. Aubrey Hunt, Sir George Clausen RA, Arthur Friedenson, Sir John Lavery, Sir Alfred Munnings, and John Littlejohns. Since the opening of the gallery in 1951, the collection has increased with purchases by the Friends of the Gallery and gifts from the public, and now contains works by some of the local artists who have exhibited here in the past.
To date The Permanent Collection includes works by;
Sir John Lavery (1856-1941, born in Belfast, and studied at Glasgow and subsequently in Paris, where he was influenced by Whistler and the Impressionists. He was a member of the Glasgow school before settling in London in 1895. Lavery had an immensely successful career as a fashionable portrait artist.
E. Aubrey Hunt, born in Weymouth Massachusetts U.S.A. in 1856, Hunt travelled widely in France and North Africa, and died in England in 1922. Hunt was a friend of Hubert Coop. His portrait by Sir John Lavery was given to Hubert Coop by Hunt’s wife, saying
‘Would you like to have this portrait of Aubrey by Lavery? Having him looking like a missionary that never made a convert, just won’t do!’
Sir George Clausen R.A was an English painter of Danish parentage. In the late 1870’s he visited Holland and Paris, where he came under the influence of Bastien-Lepage. Later he reverted to the habit of composing in the studio from open-air studies and developed a modified Impressionist technique.
Sheila Hutchinson
Hutchinson was born in Weare Gifford in 1906, and moved to Bideford with her parents as a child. She studied at Bideford School of Art, and in London, where she earned her living as a calligrapher. She returned to Bideford in 1939 and worked as a freelance calligrapher. Hutchinson’s work can be seen in rolls of honour in churches, civic offices, town halls and schools all over the country. She is best remembered for her watercolour paintings of North Devon, particularly an entire record of all the bridges and the landscape of the River Torridge, from its source to the sea. These paintings, 74 in all, were first shown in the Bideford Art School in 1951 for the festival of Britain celebrations, and are now housed in the Burton Art Gallery and Museum. The gallery is fortunate to possess a fine collection of her other watercolours and calligraphy. Sheila Hutchinson went to school with Mary Burton in whose memory her father, Thomas Burton, built the gallery in 1951. Sheila died in 1999 aged 92.
The Permanent Collection also includes a large selection of works by Hubert Coop RBA. Born at Olney, Buckinghamshire, in 1873, the son of the Rev. Thomas Coop, Hubert Coop was educated at Birmingham and Wolverhampton, and was elected to the Royal Society of British Artists at the age of 22. His paintings both in oil and watercolour, tend to fall into two groups: those painted quickly out of doors, and those painted in the studio in more detail.
Hubert Coop came to Bideford in the late 1920’s and stayed ‘because he enjoyed the subjects he found on the estuary, the river valleys and the neighbourhood, and his paintings inevitably captured the clear beauty and colour he saw there.’ (Bideford Gazette 1953). He had exhibited at the Royal Academy, Liverpool, Glasgow and Manchester. In Bideford he helped to promote the development of the visual arts, and became Vice - President of what is now the Westward Ho! and Bideford Art Society.
