Modern Art at Temple Newsam: Revisiting Philip Hendy’s wartime exhibitions

Clare Nadal’s talk provided an update on her current research project, investigating the extraordinary range of exhibitions which drew crowds to Temple Newsam during the war years when Leeds Art Gallery was closed and the collections safely away in storage. Artists shown ranged from popular established artists Augustus John and Walter Sickert, through to pairings of contemporary sculptors and painters including Jacob Epstein and Matthew Smith; Barbara Hepworth and Paul Nash; and Henry Moore and Ivon Hitchens. Other artists shown included Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Philip Wilson Steer, Ben Nicholson and Stanley Spencer, attracting tens of thousands of visitors before the re-opening of Leeds Art Gallery in 1948.

The surprising discoveries were finding out just how high profile these exhibitions were. Not only was Temple Newsam taking works directly from the National Gallery as a leading regional gallery but they were successfully organising touring exhibitions under the very difficult conditions of the war years. It was fascinating to hear how some of the rooms were transformed into “white cube” spaces suitable for modern art, and how Temple Newsam led the way in showing that historic houses could also be used as venues for contemporary works of art, something we take for granted today.

It’s also easy to forget that siting works there by Henry Moore in 1952 was considered wildly daring – examples from the letters pages of the Yorkshire Post formed a lively counterbalance to critical praise. Clare’s lecture also highlighted purchases made for the city of Leeds by Leeds Art Fund. With time and distance, these can now be seen within the wider context of Leeds’s twentieth century collection and several examples are currently on display in the recently opened exhibition An Axis of Abstraction: Art in Cornwall and Yorkshire – Then and Now at Leeds Art Gallery.

Event report written by: Olivia Stross