Jane Sellars - Why no-nonsense manners help give Yorkshire a unique identity

Jane Sellars has held senior curatorships at many of Yorkshire’s top galleries and museums including the Brontë Parsonage Museum, Harewood House and the Mercer Art Gallery. In 2018, Jane was awarded the MBE.
Jane Sellars shares her favourite things about Yorkshire.Jane Sellars shares her favourite things about Yorkshire.
Jane Sellars shares her favourite things about Yorkshire.

What’s your earliest Yorkshire memory?

My earliest memories are of the home in Tadcaster where I grew up with my parents and two sisters. My grandfather built the house in the 1930s, a detached house that looked big on the outside but was small on the inside, which led to lots of squabbles about who got which bedroom and so on. The garden was big though, and I remember playing there on the lawn with the smell of hops wafting over from the breweries.

What’s your favourite part of the county – and why?

Jervaulx Abbey  in the Yorkshire DalesJervaulx Abbey  in the Yorkshire Dales
Jervaulx Abbey in the Yorkshire Dales

It must be the dramatic Yorkshire coast which continues to be an inspiration to many artists. I especially love Robin Hood’s Bay, where as children we stayed in a caravan with our grandparents at the top of the Bay Bank. It’s a place that never really changes and for me still evokes that holiday feeling of excitement.

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What’s your idea of a perfect day or weekend in Yorkshire?

A perfect weekend for me would be spent travelling around Yorkshire visiting my favourite artists in their studios, which would include the painter John Creighton on the North Yorkshire Moors, the portraitist Tom Wood at his splendid studio in Batley, Diane Howse at Harewood and Bridget Tempest in the hills near Skipton.

If you had to name your Yorkshire ‘hidden gem’, what or where would it be?

It would be Jervaulx Abbey, near Masham in Wensleydale, the only privately owned ruined abbey in Yorkshire where you can wander around the ruins that have trees growing through them and are swathed in wildflowers. It is a place of mystery and great natural beauty, unspoilt by neatly cropped grass and interpretation panels.

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Do you have a favourite walk and view?

The walk through the woods at Bolton Abbey is one of my favourite Yorkshire places, a view which both Turner and Girtin painted. Then crossing the river at Barden Bridge and coming back along the other bank with a sensational view of the roaring Strid.

Who is your favourite Yorkshire author, artist or performer?

There are many, but I would single out the novelist Kate Atkinson, who was born in York. I’ve just read her latest book, Big Sky, which is set in Yorkshire coastal towns. Kate creates complex characters and her writing is both dark and funny at the same time.

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Who is the Yorkshire man or woman you most admire, and why?

I most admire the painter Katharine Holmes. Both Katharine’s grandmother and mother were artists and she still lives in the beautiful cottage in Malham where they lived and worked before her. Her subject is the landscape; fluid ink sketches, rich, tonal watercolours and huge dazzling canvases that capture the very essence of Yorkshire’s skies and weather.

Has Yorkshire influenced your work?

Yorkshire has had a huge influence on my work as an art curator and writer. In my time as director of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, I wrote about the Brontës’ own drawings and paintings and when I came to Harrogate I set out to show as many Yorkshire artists as I could, both historic and contemporary, which inspired the exhibition and book Art and Yorkshire: From Turner to Hockney.

If you could choose somewhere, or some object, from or in Yorkshire to own for a day, what would it be? It is a tiny painting by the great Victorian and Ripon-born artist William Powell Frith, of his wife Isabelle reading, which he painted at the time of the couple’s marriage in 1845. It is such a tender painting and is an engaging contrast to Frith’s world-famous panoramas The Derby Day and The Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881.

Do you have a favourite restaurant or pub?

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My current favourite restaurant is Mango in Wetherby. It serves the most delicious Indian vegetarian food, it’s bright and cheerful and the owners are lovely.

What do you think gives Yorkshire its unique identity?

For me it’s the diversity of the landscape and the no nonsense manners of the people. I read Bill Bryson’s book Notes from a Small Island and howled with laughter. He used to wave in a friendly manner at passing drivers on the slow Dales roads to be met with blank looks. One day, many years on, a glum looking farmer raised his thumb from the steering wheel in a minute gesture of response. At last he was acknowledged.

Do you think that Yorkshire has changed for better or for worse in the time that you’ve known it?

I have known Yorkshire all my life and there are lots of things that have got better with time, such as the restoration of some of our most important historic buildings which tell the story of our industrial heritage. I am thinking here especially of Halifax and the Piece Hall. Also, there are new buildings that contribute much to Yorkshire life, such as the Hepworth art gallery in Wakefield, dedicated to the great Yorkshire sculptor Barbara Hepworth.

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If you had to change one thing in, or about Yorkshire, what would that be?

I would introduce free admission to all of Yorkshire’s museums, galleries and historic houses, then everybody could fully share in our culture!

If a stranger to Yorkshire only had time to visit one place, it would be?

I would say go to Saltaire. It has everything – impressive historic buildings, a permanent display of paintings by our greatest living Yorkshire artist, David Hockney, great bookshops, lovely food and a marvellous church built by Sir Titus Salt.

William Powell Frith: The People’s Painter curated by Jane Sellars and Richard Green is on show at the Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate, until September 29. www.harrogate.gov.uk/frith