Curate your own collection using My Paintings!
Make the most of the 125,000 paintings on the site with the new My Paintings collection tool. Use My Paintings to bookmark, curate and comment on your favourite paintings.
Once you’ve registered for a BBC iD you can search the Your Paintings site for an image you like, and click the ‘Add to my collection’ link. Have a go - building your own personal collection is great fun and it’s hugely satisfying to see all your favourite images on one page. It's really easy, and when I visit my account I’m very pleasantly reminded of forgotten gems including the Veronica Burleigh below.
Naturally you can share your collection with friends via Twitter and Facebook.
And don't forget to follow us on Twitter @Your_Paintings and tell us what you think!
Katie Carder is the Marketing and PR Assistant at the PCF.
The 200,000 target is becoming ever-nearer. Your Paintings has now reached all corners of the UK, as collections from six new regions join the site: Central Scotland; Fife, Perth and Kinross, and Angus; the National Library of Wales; the Channel Islands; North and East London; and National Museums Northern Ireland.
The National Library of Wales has an eclectic collection of 2,000 paintings with works by Kyffin Williams and Turner, and this portrait of inspiring Welsh sportsman Joe Calzaghe.
Moving further north to Scotland, there are now 15,000 paintings from over 60 collections available for the public to enjoy, with additions from The Stirling Smith Art Gallery & Museum and University of St Andrews to Fife Council and The Black Watch Castle & Museum. Celebrated artists include John Opie, Samuel John Peploe and Pieter Brueghel the Younger.
After successfully overcoming the logistical challenges of photographing its painting collection, the Channel Islands have joined the site. Elizabeth Castle in Jersey was reached by amphibious vehicle, whilst collections such as Mignot Memorial Hospital in Alderney were accessed using light aircraft! Edward John Poynter’s rich portrait of Lillie Langtry is one example that offers an insight into the history and artistic legacy of the islands.
National Museums Northern Ireland features world-class Irish, British and international art. Included in the 1,600 works is a fantastic selection of paintings by John Lavery and Francis Bacon, along with Edward McGuire’s portrait of Seamus Heaney.
Finally, the PCF is getting closer to cataloguing Greater London’s vast art collection with the recent additions of North and East London. The boroughs of Barnet, Tottenham, Enfield, Hackney, Redbridge, Harringey and Islington are all included with works from painters as diverse as Courbet, De Chirico, Sickert and William Holman Hunt.
Please do follow us on Twitter @Your_Paintings and tell us what you think!
Frederick Daniel Hardy (1827–1911) was one of a group of painters who lived in the village of Cranbrook in Kent, which later became known as the Cranbrook Colony. Unusually, he exhibited at the Royal Academy almost continuously for over six decades.
With its scenes of domestic life, rural Kent provided authenticity and inspiration along with affordable models. Cranbrook, in common with other artistic colonies, was connected by rail to London which allowed artists to travel to the capital to sell their work.
Hardy’s paintings appealed to wealthy manufacturers in the Midlands and Northern England who enjoyed his idealised depictions of a rustic, pre-industrialised past.
Hardy’s The Dismayed Artist (1866) describes the sort of problems encountered by artists who depicted rural life.
Two men, said to be Hardy and his brother, have just arrived from London; the luggage labels on the easel and suitcase indicate that they have travelled by train to nearby Staplehurst.
Hardy’s look of surprise hints at the gulf between outsiders and locals. The artist was intending to continue his painting of the old-style hearth but, in his absence, the family have started coating its antique features with lime-wash.
However, Hardy depicts the countrywoman sympathetically, providing an image of diligence that would have appealed to his industrialist patrons.
The sales correspondent from The Times was not so sympathetic. He entitled it ‘The Distressed Artist on beholding the havoc made by his domestics in his studio’ - an interpretation that would have dismayed Hardy much more than the lime-wash.
You can read the full article on the Public Catalogue Foundation's website
Mary Rose Rivett-Carnac is a Copyright Officer at the Public Catalogue Foundation.
