Museum visit conjurs memories that just can’t be matched - Julian Norton
We’d been planning a trip to Barnard Castle for some time. Not to test our eyesight, of course, but rather to visit the Bowes Museum. I’d passed signs to the museum on countless occasions. In my early days working as an assistant in Thirsk, in summer I would visit the Lake District on my afternoon off work. I could whizz along the A66, ride my bike up and down some big hills, and get back in time for a couple of pints in the Blacksmith’s Arms before closing time. It was the perfect animal-free hiatus in an otherwise hectic veterinary week. But in those days, there was never time to visit the art gallery. On a dreary winter’s Saturday recently, it seemed the perfect opportunity. From the outside, it’s a behemoth of a building, rearing up and impressively imposing its presence over this part of Teesdale.
I could whizz along the A66, ride my bike up and down some big hills, and get back in time for a couple of pints in the Blacksmith’s Arms before closing time. It was the perfect animal-free hiatus in an otherwise hectic veterinary week. But in those days, there was never time to visit the art gallery. On a dreary winter’s Saturday recently, it seemed the perfect opportunity. From the outside, it’s a behemoth of a building, rearing up and impressively imposing its presence over this part of Teesdale.
It was purpose built by John Bowes and his wife Joséphine at the end of the 19th Century to house their huge collection of artwork, Napoleonic relics and ceramics, and has an imposing situation on the north side of the river Tees. Famously, it houses an animatronic silver swan which sits in a glass cabinet and preens itself on occasions as well as catching metallic fish. It was impressive to watch and once upon a time must have been the height of technology. I could imagine hordes of Victorian admirers gasping in awe at the spectacle.
When we arrived, I was delighted to discover that there was an exhibition of work by LS Lowry, one of my favourite artists. I was captivated by his paintings as a small boy. In morning assemblies at my primary school in Castleford, our wonderful headmistress, Miss Brook, would have us singing along to a song about Lowry and his match-stalk characters, as she cheerfully strummed her guitar, our own matchstick legs neatly crossed on the hard, parquet floor. It must have been after 1976 (the year he died)- so I would have been about five- because one of the lines in the song referred to Lowry painting his match-stalk men and match-stalk cats and dogs outside “those pearly gates” [as opposed to outside the factory gates, which were referenced in many of his paintings]. It’s amazing how some memories persist.
In the paintings hung in the gallery, there were mainly match-stalk men and women and not so many match-stalk cats nor dogs, carrying on their business in the grim, smoke-filled scenes of Salford. But they could have been images from anywhere in the Industrial North of the country one hundred or so years ago. The story goes, that LS Lowry missed a train one day and passed a few hours by studying the mills and chimneys of his home town, Pendlebury, in Lancashire. He became obsessed by the scenes and the stories of the people in the streets on their way to the factories (or sometimes not). The rest, as they say, is history.
It was impossible not to be in awe by the skilful art and I spent ages gazing into each one. One of the best was a huge scene, relatively optimistic in content by his standards, portraying a scene of a Mayday fair. There was a colourful tent and the occasional red balloon held by match-stalk children with clogs on their feet. But still, even on a public holiday, smoke plumed from the chimneys in the distance. I quickly googled the name of the painting. It had recently been sold for just short of four million pounds. But there was so much more to see at the museum, so I had to say goodbye to this wonderful exhibition and head up to the next floor where a treasure trove of antiquities demanded our attention.