Rarely seen Manx artworks go on show in national gallery

The gallery features works by Hugo Dachinger, who was interned on the island during World War Two

The latest hanging of the national art gallery at the Manx Museum has seen several pieces put on display for the first time after conservation works.

Curator Katie King said about 40% of the 133 artworks had not been on display for at least 20 years or had never before been shown.

In many cases their absence from public view has been for practical reasons.

While the collection contains 6,000 pieces, not all can go on display - at least not without specialist work.

Ms King said: "They aren't 6,000 artworks in a frame that you can just pop on the wall, it's not that simple unfortunately.

"Our art is a fine art collection but it's mixed in with naïve art and also folk art.

"We've got lots of sketch books, single sheets of paper, that have been created not by particularly well known or influential artists, but amateur artists or just ordinary people who have created a piece of art.

"Our art collection is a wealth of social history stories as well, the two are so entwined."

A 17th Century portrait of the seventh Earl of Derby's wife Countess Charlotte

The gallery, which showcases work inspired by the Isle of Man or by Manx artists, has been developed over the past 100 years and sits at the heart of the Manx Museum in Douglas.

Ms King said the recent revamp represented a deliberate attempt to show people items that had not been seen before, many previously kept out of view because of their condition.

While a number of oil paintings were sent for specialist work in the UK thanks to funding from the Friends of Manx National Heritage, much of the conservation on other works was carried out in-house at the museum by conservators Christopher Weeks and Emma Le Cornu.

Emma Le Cornu and Christopher Weeks worked on several of the pieces

Mr Weeks said the team at the museum had spent the last year reviewing the artworks "just trying to work out whether they're in a fit state for display or not".

While previously conserved pieces were in good condition, the "terrible condition" of some of the frames meant reuniting them took "quite a lot of time" in some cases, Mr Weeks said.

"I've been filling in missing bits of moulding, regilding bits and pieces, strengthening the frames, doing all sorts of work," he said.

And for those without frames at all, the time consuming process of mounting and framing them using conservation grade materials fell to Ms Le Cornu.

But some of the works were more difficult to deal with than others, in particular the internment art from World War Two, which was created on newspaper.

The gallery has been developed over the past 100 years

Ms Le Cornu said: "Those were very, very brittle, and whilst they are in good condition considering it's on newspaper, newspaper is inherently acidic."

The addition of a dark room, which lights up for 90 seconds when someone enters, has enabled those "extremely sensitive paintings" to be shown in the main gallery for the first time, Ms King said.

But the gallery itself is not the only place that items from the art collection can be seen, about 70% of the artworks can be viewed online at the iMuseum.

"We know that people want to see the art, and we know that it's not easy for us to physically show it all of the time, so that's one of the things we do to make it discoverable," Ms King said.

The national art gallery at the Manx Museum is open daily between 09:30 and 16:30 GMT.

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