museums and institutions:
museums and institutions:
museums and institutions:
Attributed works:
I. Holywells Park, Ipswich, by Thomas Gainsborough, c. 1748-50. Purchased with grants from the NACF, National Heritage Memorial Fund, Pilgrim Trust and V. & A. Purchase Grant Fund, 1995. (Ipswich Borough Council Museums and Galleries Collection.) This early painting was commissioned from Gainsborough by the Ipswich brewer, John Cobbold; it shows the chain of fresh-water reservoirs sunk by Cobbold to supply his brewery. It is one of only a few works by the artist of a specific, topographically recognisable landscape.
Attributed works:
II. Portrait of Harriet, Viscountess Tracy, by Thomas Gainsborough. c. 1763. 126.4 by 101 cm. Purchased with grants from the NACF and the V. & A. Purchase Grant Fund, 1993. (Gainsborough's House, Sudbury.) A portrait clearly showing the influence of Van Dyck, in particular the pose of Lady Mary Herbert in the Pembroke family group at Wilton.
Attributed works:
III. Portrait of Lambe Barry, by Thomas Gainsborough, c. 1759. 75.5 by 63 cm. Purchased with grants from the NACF and the V. & A. Purchase Grant Fund, 2001. (Gainsborough's House, Sudbury.) Barry (1704-68) was a Suffolk landowner painted by Gainsborough in 1756 as settlement for a debt. This second, more sophisticated work may have been painted in Bath where Barry is known to have been in 1758 and 1759.
Attributed works:
IV. Study for portrait of Ann Ford, by Thomas Gainsborough. c. 1760. Black and white chalk on blue paper, 30.5 by 23 cm. Purchased with grants from the NACF and the V. & A. Purchase Grant Fund, 2001. (Gainsborough's House, Sudbury.) One of two known preparatory drawings (the other is in the British Museum) for the well-known full-length seated portrait Ann Ford, later Mrs Philip Thicknesse in the Cincinnati Art Museum.
Attributed works:
IX. Still life with upturned roemer, by Willem Claesz. Heda. 1638. Panel, 35.3 by 49.7 cm. Accepted in lieu of tax from HM Government, 1998. (Norfolk Museums Service; Castle Museum, Norwich.) This is a characteristic work by one of the foremost still-life painters in seventeenth-century Holland, especially renowned for his skilful depiction of light reflections, as can be seen in this fine example.
Attributed works:
V. Study of a woodman, by Thomas Gainsborough, c. 1787. Black and white chalk with stump on buff paper, 48.2 by 32 cm. Purchased with grants from the NACF and the V. & A. Purchase Grant Fund, 1999. (Gainsborough's House, Sudbury.) One of five recorded drawings related to Gainsborough's late painting The woodman (destroyed by fire in 1810) and known only from a print by Peter Simon published in 1791.
Attributed works:
VI. Peasants going to market, by Thomas Gainsborough. c. 1770-74. Black and white chalk with stump, wash and gouache on brown paper, 41.4 by 53.8 cm. Purchased with grants from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the NACF and the V. & A. Purchase Grant Fund, 1993. (Gainsborough's House, Sudbury.) This is one of Gainsborough's most spirited and ambitious compositional drawings on the theme of people going to or coming from market that occupied him in the 1770s. The design is based on Rembrandt's 1651 etching The Flight into Egypt with other elements taken from putti busts by Duquesnoy and one of the Figurine etchings by Salvator Rosa.
Attributed works:
VII. Lady Leigh as a shepherdess, by Mary Beale. c. 1685. 58.5 by 48 cm. Richard Jeffree Bequest through the NACF, 1992. (Manor House Museum, Bury St Edmunds.) This painting by Mary Beale forms part of the extensive bequest, including fourteen works by Beale, of Richard Jeffree, a pioneer in the reassessment of the seventeenth-century painter's work. Beale was the daughter of the vicar of Barrow, near Bury St Edmunds.
Attributed works:
VIII. Seeing (La vue), by Francis Hayman. 1753. Panel, 30.5 by 24.2 cm. Purchased with grants from the NACF and the V. & A. Purchase Grant Fund, 2000. (Gainsborough's House, Sudbury.) This panel is the only one to survive of a group of five depicting the senses. They are known from prints engraved by Richard Houston in 1753 and given titles in English and French, presumably to maximise their commercial potential.
Attributed works:
X. Descent from the Cross after Rubens, by Thomas Gainsborough. Late 1760s. 125.5 by 101.5 cm. Purchased with grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the NACF and the V. & A. Purchase Grant Fund, 1998. (Gainsborough's House, Sudbury.) Almost certainly based on the 1626 engraving after Rubens by Lucas Vorsterman, this is perhaps the most lyrically inventive of Gainsborough's copies after the old masters. He would have seen the altar-piece itself on his visit to Antwerp in 1783.
Attributed works:
XI. Portrait of Margaret, Mrs Thomas Gainsborough, by Thomas Gainsborough. c. 1785. Card, 15.2 by 11.4 cm. Presented anonymously, 1998. (Gainsborough's House, Sudbury.) This small portrait of the artist's wife (1728-97) is painted on compacted cardboard generally used to cover books; it is the same material as used by Gainsborough Dupont in a number of small-scale copies of his uncle's portraits in the 1780s.
Attributed works:
XII. Norwich river: afternoon, by John Crome. c. 1812-19. 71 by 99.5 cm. Purchased with grants from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the NACF, Friends of the Norwich Museums and other bequest funds, 1994. (Norfolk Museums Service; Norwich Castle Museum.) This late painting by Crome shows the River Wensum in Norwich, the scene of two further riverside views by Crome in the Norwich Castle Museum; it was first shown in the city's Society of Artists annual exhibition in 1819.
Attributed works:
XIII. Sir Andrew Fountaine, by Louis François Roubiliac. c. 1747. Painted terracotta, 54.5 cm. high. Purchased with grants from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the NACF, the V. & A. Purchase Grant Fund and Friends of the Norwich Museums, 1992. (Norwich Castle Museum.) A bust of the collector and patron (1676-1753) who lived at Narford Hall, Norfolk, a place of pilgrimage for admirers of Fountaine's collections of, in particular, fine art, maiolica, medals and Limoges enamels.
Attributed works:
XVI. Les Andelys, by Maurice de Vlaminck. c. 1911. 59.8 by 72.7 cm. Accepted in lieu of tax from HM Government, 1996. (Norwich Castle Museum.) Painted in the more subdued palette that followed Vlaminck's brilliant fauvist years, this is a typical compositionally unsettled landscape of Les Andelys, near the river Seine, south-east of Rouen.
Attributed works:
XVII. Seascape with steamer, by Emile Nolde. c. 1946. Water-colour on paper, 26.5 by 22.7 cm. Bequeathed by Lady Adeane to the Tate in East Anglia Foundation, 1993. (Norwich Castle Museum.) This late, vivid water-colour almost certainly depicts the north German coast at Seebüll, Schleswig-Holstein, where Nolde lived from 1927 to his death in 1956.
Attributed works:
XVIII. Blue inkstand on the mantelshelf, by Edouard Vuillard. c. 1900. Oil on paper laid on panel, 33.6 by 40.6 cm. Purchased with various funds including the V. & A. Purchase Grant Fund and Friends of the Norwich Museums, 1997. (Norwich Castle Museum.) The objects in this still life, including books and a box, are seen from the right end of a deep mantelshelf, probably in Vuillard's studio; the composition has similarities with the artist's Mantelpiece in the National Gallery, painted in 1905.
Western art unattributed:
XIV. St John the Evangelist. Anonymous. c. 1160-80. Gilded cast bronze, 9.5 cm. high. Purchased with grants from the NACF and the Heritage Lottery Fund, 1999. (Joint purchase by Ipswich Borough Council and St Edmundsbury Borough Council; Ipswich Museum and Moyse's Hall, Bury St Edmunds.) Of uncertain French or English origin, this beautifully expressive Mosan-style figure, presumably part of a Crucifixion group, was found in 1972 on farmland near Bury St Edmunds.
Western art unattributed:
XV. The Boss Hall Grave Treasures. English, c. 550-625. Jewellery in gold with cut garnets. Purchased with grants from the NACF, the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Pilgrim Trust and the V. & A. Purchase Grant Fund, 1995. (Ipswich Borough Council Museums and Galleries.) The jewellery was found in 1991 in a cemetery dating to the sixth and seventh centuries at Boss Hall, Ipswich, alongside utensils, vases, spearheads and ornaments. The spectacular gold and garnet brooch is seen here next to several necklace pendants, also of cruciform design.
