The Garman Ryan Collection is a permanent collection of art works housed at The New Art Gallery Walsall and comprises 365 works of art, including prints, sketches, sculptures, drawings and paintings collected by Kathleen Garman (later wife of the sculptor Jacob Epstein) and lifelong friend Sally Ryan.
The Garman Ryan collection features many examples of works by key European artists of late 19th and early 20th Century, including Van Gogh, Picasso, Monet, Turner and Degas. There are a high number of works on paper within the collection and a number of sketches relating to major works by European artists, such as Delacroix's charcoal sketch of a New Born Lamb. It also includes a selection of sculpture, vessels and votive objects from cultures in Africa, Asia and South America. There are a significant number of works by Jacob Epstein within the collection. The collection contains the largest single holding of works by Jacob Epstein anywhere. Many of these works are bronze portrait busts, a mix of family members and commissioned portraits. There are also studies for key works, such as Study for Rock Drill.
It is unclear at exactly what point Kathleen Garman and Sally Ryan conceived of making a collection of art. It has been suggested that the collection was, in part, in response to the death of Jacob Epstein (Kathleen's husband) whose work and own personal artefacts feature heavily within the collection. The Collection was largely assembled between 1959 and 1973.
Kathleen was the sole beneficiary of Epstein's estate upon his death, and although she sold much of his collection in accordance with his will, she retained a number of objects that were said to be of significance to her. Sally Ryan was able to fund the collection of artworks due to a large inheritance received from her grandfather Thomas Fortune Ryan, a successful American tobacco and transport magnate. A number of Sally Ryan's own works also form part of the Garman Ryan collection. Kathleen Garman also ran her own commercial art gallery, 'The Little Gallery', operating in Kensington, London in the mid-1960s, as a consequence she was buying and selling art on a regular basis. It has been suggested that a number of works from the Garman Ryan collection were originally 'Little Gallery' stock. [1]
A number of artists represented with the collection also had personal connections with Kathleen Garman and Sally Ryan. Jacob Epstein was Kathleen's late husband, and artists Augustus John, Gaudier-Brzeska and Amedeo Modigliani were all friends. Family links are also evident within the collection; there are a number of works by Theodore Garman, the son of Kathleen Garman and Jacob Epstein, and Portrait of Kitty , a portrait of Epstein's daughter Kitty by her first husband Lucian Freud. [2]
The collection was donated to the people of Walsall in 1973 and opened to the public in July 1974. It was originally exhibited in what was the first floor reference room of Walsall Library. The collection was moved to its new purpose-built home over two floors of The New Art Gallery Walsall, and opened to the public in this new setting in 2000.
The Garman Ryan collection is exhibited thematically, as was the intention of Kathleen Garman. The themes are; "Children", "Work and Leisure", "Flowers and Still Life", "Religion", "Illustration and symbolism", "Figure studies", "Animals and Birds", "Trees", "Portraits" and "Landscapes".
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was an Italian painter and sculptor of the École de Paris who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern style characterized by a surreal elongation of faces, necks, and figures — works that were not received well during his lifetime, but later became much sought-after. Modigliani spent his youth in Italy, where he studied the art of antiquity and the Renaissance. In 1906, he moved to Paris, where he came into contact with such artists as Pablo Picasso and Constantin Brâncuși. By 1912, Modigliani was exhibiting highly stylized sculptures with Cubists of the Section d'Or group at the Salon d'Automne.
Lucian Michael Freud was a British painter and draughtsman, specialising in figurative art, and is known as one of the foremost 20th-century English portraitists. He was born in Berlin, the son of Jewish architect Ernst L. Freud and the grandson of Sigmund Freud. Freud got his first name "Lucian" from his mother in memory of the ancient writer Lucian of Samosata. His family moved to England in 1933, when he was 10 years old, to escape the rise of Nazism. He became a British naturalized citizen in 1939. From 1942 to 1943 he attended Goldsmiths' College, London. He served at sea with the British Merchant Navy during the Second World War.
Sir Jacob Epstein was an American-British sculptor who helped pioneer modern sculpture. He was born in the United States, and moved to Europe in 1902, becoming a British subject in 1910.
Roland Joffé is an English director and producer of film and television, known for the Academy Award-nominated films The Killing Fields and The Mission. He began his career in television, his early credits including episodes of Coronation Street and an adaptation of The Stars Look Down for Granada. He gained a reputation for hard-hitting political stories with the series Bill Brand and factual dramas for Play for Today.
The New Art Gallery Walsall is a modern and contemporary art gallery in the town of Walsall, in the West Midlands, England. It was built with £21 million of public funding, including £15.75 million from the UK National Lottery and additional money from the European Regional Development Fund and City Challenge.
The Courtauld Gallery is an art museum in Somerset House, on the Strand in central London. It houses the collection of the Samuel Courtauld Trust and operates as an integral part of the Courtauld Institute of Art.
The Garman sisters were members of the bohemian Bloomsbury set in London between the wars. The complex lives of Mary, Kathleen and Lorna included affairs with the writer Vita Sackville-West, the composer Ferruccio Busoni, the painter Bernard Meninsky, the sculptor Jacob Epstein, the poet Laurie Lee and the painter Lucian Freud
Kathleen Esther Garman, Lady Epstein was the third of the seven Garman sisters, who were high-profile members of artistic circles in mid-20th century London, renowned for their beauty and scandalous behaviour. She was the model and longtime mistress of British/American sculptor Jacob Epstein, and eventually his second wife. They met in 1921 and immediately began a relationship that lasted until Epstein's death and produced three of Epstein's five children. Their daughter, Kitty Garman, was the first wife of Lucian Freud; their son was the artist Theodore Garman.
Painting the Century: 101 Portrait Masterpieces 1900–2000 was an international exhibition held at the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2000–2001 that exhibited a painting representing each year of the 20th century. A book of the same name was published by the National Portrait Gallery by Robin Gibson with an introduction by Professor Norbert Lynton that illustrates all works exhibited.
Sarah "Sally" Tack Ryan was an American artist and sculptor best known for portrait style pieces and her association with the Garman Ryan Collection.
Sorrow is a drawing by Vincent van Gogh, produced in 1882.
Oscar Wilde's tomb is located in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, France. It took nine to ten months to complete by the sculptor Jacob Epstein, with an accompanying plinth by Charles Holden and an inscription carved by Joseph Cribb. As of the 50th anniversary of Wilde's death, the tomb also contains the ashes of Robert Ross, Wilde's lover and literary executor.
Portrait of Kitty is a painting by Lucian Freud of Kitty Garman, his wife and the eldest daughter of the sculptor Jacob Epstein and Kathleen Garman. Completed between 1948 and 1949, this oil on board measures 35 by 24 centimetres.
Rock Drill and the associated Torso in Metal from Rock Drill are Jacob Epstein's most radical sculptures.
Theodore Garman, known as Theo, was an English painter of the mid-20th century.
The Epstein Archive is one of the largest collections of archives documenting the personal and professional life of the renowned artist and sculptor, Jacob Epstein. It is housed at The New Art Gallery Walsall in England.
Andrew Tift is a British realist portraitist.
St Michael's Victory over the Devil is a 1958 bronze sculpture by Jacob Epstein, displayed on the south end of the east wall outside of the new Coventry Cathedral, above the steps leading up from Priory Street to the cathedral's entrance and beside the stained glass of John Piper's bowed baptistry window. The cathedral is dedicated to St Michael.
Kathleen Eleonora "Kitty" Garman, later Kitty Epstein and Kitty Godley, was a British artist and muse. She was a model for her father Jacob Epstein, her first husband Lucian Freud, and Andrew Tift. In 2004 she had her own show at The New Art Gallery Walsall.