Private exhibition of life in art

Jane Sellars’ childhood home in Tadcaster was a cornucopia of antique furniture sporting a vast, eclectic collection of old pottery, most of it cracked, chipped and worthless, but beautiful all the same.

Some of the oriental plates sporting San Andreas-sized faults, the not-quite-perfect Staffordshire figures and pretty Welsh gaudy ware are now dotted around Jane’s house near Boston Spa and are a reminder of her mother.

“My parents were unusual in that in the Sixties they loved all the unfashionable things that people were throwing out. My dad liked old furniture and my mum loved buying pottery from junk shops. They always had cracks or chips, but they were cheap and satisfied her desire for beautiful things.”

“My grandfather loved salerooms and he often bought furniture for us that we didn’t really want. We’d see a van coming up the drive and think ‘Oh no. What has he bought and where are we going to put it?’”

Jane has obviously inherited the acquisitive gene because she’s got her own collections including some 1930s Carlton Ware, lots of paintings and hundreds of art books.

“I used to spend a lot of time hanging round antique shops, but I’ve had to be ruthless because this house is smaller than previous ones. But I still have too much stuff. Even now I go to other people’s houses and they seem empty by comparison.”

She bought the house in 2006, attracted by its tucked away position and the amount of natural light inside.

“I always buy and sell at the wrong time. I came off the property ladder when prices were rising and bought when they were at their highest,” says Jane, whose last home came with a job on the Harewood estate.

She is now art curator of the Mercer Art Gallery in Harrogate and is helping oversee its refurbishment, while organising the re-opening exhibition next month that looks set to be one of its most popular.

The subject is John Atkinson Grimshaw, the self-taught Victorian painter, who is best known for his moonlit scenes. Jane has spent the last three years immersed in his life and work and has begged and pleaded with private collectors to lend her pictures for the show.

She has also edited a book on the Leeds-born policeman’s son and father of 16 children, with essays by art experts and authors, including herself.

“We have two paintings in the Mercer and people came just to see them. I thought if they come to see two, they’d love a whole exhibition.

“He is so popular and there hasn’t been an exhibition of his work since 1979. He is mysterious, eccentric and unconventional,” says Jane, who is also toying with the idea of an exhibition on women artists, whose cause she championed when she worked at the Walker Art Gallery in the 1980s.

Reminders of her time in Liverpool feature heavily in her home. The Walker was her first gallery job in a career she pursued from the age of 11.

“I knew I wanted to work in museums and galleries. I loved them. My parents were teachers and were keen on taking us to them. I always felt happy and at home there,” she says.

The painting of the red sofa in her sitting room is by Kate Whiteford, a good friend she met while at the Walker and she bought a picture by Gillian Ayres, whose work is part of the Walker collection.

The enormous painting on the stairs was a birthday present from an artist in residence, Ian McKeever, and the city is in framed photographs by Edward Chambre Hardman in her spare bedroom.

She loved city living but now prefers village life, which she first got a taste for when she moved to work as the director of the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth. She retains her links, has written books on the Brontes and is still a trustee of the Brontë Society.

Her three-bedroom home is in a peaceful part of her village and is where she both relaxes and works.

She has turned one bedroom into a study where she writes, and, like all the rooms on the first floor, it is painted in blue.

They’re all in different shades of blue, with the darkest shade in her bedroom, which features an eclectic mix of furniture, including a Victorian chest of drawers she inherited from her father and a Romany table that is covered with a shawl she bought in Turkmenistan.

Her favourite room is her kitchen and she likes to sit next to the Rayburn with a view of her pots and plates against a backdrop of yellow and purple walls.

“The house didn’t need a lot of work, but I’ve painted everywhere. I can’t bear magnolia.

“I’m a great believer in colour schemes.”

• The Atkinson Grimshaw exhibition at Mercer Art Gallery, April 16- September 4.