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#generateAllCGroupTrees
Within Tate's collection there are a number of groups of works which have been acquired by gift or bequest. These range from the vast Turner Bequest to small highly focused collections. Here are a list of some of the most important groups within the collection. Choose a collection to see the full list of works contained within it.
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ARTIST ROOMS
ARTIST ROOMS is a collection of international contemporary art which has been created through one of the largest and most imaginative gifts of art ever made to museums in Britain. The gift was made by Anthony d'Offay in 2008, with the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF), The Art Fund and the Scottish and British Governments. ARTIST ROOMS is jointly owned and managed by National Galleries of Scotland and Tate on behalf of the nation.
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C Frank Stoop
Frank Stoop formed an important collection of modern paintings during the 1920s. As a longstanding supporter of Tate aspirations through the Contemporary Art Society, he generously made a gift and bequest of his whole collection in 1933. This included works by Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Amedeo Modigliani that formed the core of the collection of international art and remain key Tate works.
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Chantrey Bequest
The sculptor Sir Francis Chantrey (1781 - 1841) bequeathed a fortune, and asked that the income on the money be used to buy paintings and sculpture made in Britain with a view to encouraging the establishment of a 'public national collection of British fine art'. The fund is administered by the Royal Academy, and the first work was bought for the collection in 1877, after the death of Lady Chantrey. After the founding of the Tate Gallery in 1897 the Bequest was allocated to support Tate acquisitions. Until the 1920s this was the main purchase grant for the Tate Gallery.
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Contemporary Art Society
The Contemporary Art Society was founded in 1910 to promote modern art, and enhance its representation in public museums and galleries. Since that date it has presented over five thousand works to its member museums throughout Britain. The Contemporary Art Society purchases contemporary art by inviting individuals, from critics to private collectors, to identify works which will significantly benefit museum permanent collections. Funds for purchases are raised through museum and individual subscriptions, grants, and generous gifts from individuals.
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Curwen Studio
Together with the Rose and Chris Prater Gift, the Curwen Studio Gift was a founding gift of Tate's modern print collection in the mid-1970s, totalling some 650 lithographs by such artists as Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Graham Sutherland and John Piper. Curwen Press was first established in 1863, dedicated to printing illustrated books. In the late 1950s Curwen Studio was set up in order to allow for the production of artists' original prints. It specialised in the technique of lithography under the expert guidance of Stanley Jones. Curwen Studio continues to operate today.
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E.J. Power
J Power (1899 - 1993) was a champion of modern and contemporary art and one of Tate's most generous and consistent supporters. A Tate Trustee from 1968 -1975, he donated works by British and foreign artists, always aiming to increase the Gallery's representation of new art. In 1980 Tate acquired a group of works from him that included important paintings by Barnett Newman and Dubuffet. His gift comprises 23 works in all, including an important small early work by Joseph Beuys, presented through the Friends of the Tate in 1974. After Power's death six further works from his estate were allocated to Tate by the Department of National Heritage in lieu of tax. Power played an important role in the British art scene for many years, through his collecting and his friendships with artists.
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Gustav and Elly Kahnweiler
Gustav (1895-1989) and Elly (1901-1991) Kahnweiler were among the most significant collectors in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. Their collection was strongly influenced by the taste and activities of Gustav's older brother, the Paris-based dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (1884-1979). A key figure in twentieth-century art, he represented the foremost Cubist artists, notably Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris and Fernand Leger.
The Kahnweilers left their collection to Tate with the understanding that minor works could be sold to purchase a more significant work. In 2003 Tate was able to acquire Braque's The Billiard Table 1945, a fitting tribute to the Kahnweilers and their love of the Cubist movement.
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Henry Tate Collection
Sir Henry Tate (1819-1899) started his business career in 1832 as an apprentice grocer in Chorley, Lancashire. By the 1870s he was a leading sugar refiner with much of his fortune derived from holding the patent rights to making sugar cubes. By the 1880s he had started buying paintings by living British artists and he first offered these as a gift to the nation in 1889. By 1892 Sir Henry Tate had finalised this offer together with the further offer to build at his own expense a gallery for British art. This was opened on Millbank in 1897 and soon became known as the Tate Gallery. The original sixty-five works presented by Sir Henry Tate included what have become two of the most popular works in the Gallery - J E Millais's Ophelia and J W Waterhouse's The Lady of Shalott. Other artists represented in the gift include Lady Butler, Stanhope Forbes, Sir Edwin Landseer and Sir William Quiller Orchardson.
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Heritage Lottery Fund
Following the establishment of the National Lottery in December 1992, the Heritage Lottery Fund was formed to distribute funds to cultural causes. Tate has been successful in making a number of applications that have helped to secure important works for the nation. These range across all areas of Tate collecting, from the Oppé collection of watercolours to Jacob Epstein's sculpture and Francis Bacon's drawings.
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Janet Wolfson de Botton
In 1996 Janet Wolfson de Botton presented 60 contemporary works to Tate and these were exhibited at Tate in 1998. The gift includes paintings, drawings, sculptures and photography by thirty artists. With this gift, Tate was able to strengthen its representation of such artists as Carl Andre, Richard Artschwager, Gilbert & George, Richard Long and Cindy Sherman. Artists entering the Collection for the first time included Roni Horn, Gary Hume, Reinhardt Mucha and Nancy Spero. Other important works include an early Electric Chair by Andy Warhol and Elephant 1984 by Bill Woodrow. Janet de Botton has been closely involved with Tate for a number of years and was appointed a Trustee in 1992. She is known as an advocate and collector of contemporary art and her gift was made as a gesture of support for the creation of Tate Modern and Tate Britain.
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McAlpine
In 1970 Alistair McAlpine (later Lord McAlpine of West Green) generously presented to Tate 60 recent sculptures from his private collection. This major gift comprises works by David Annesley, Michael Bolus, Phillip King, Tim Scott, William Tucker, William Turnbull and Isaac Witkin. The acquisition of these works significantly strengthened Tate's holdings of 1960s abstract sculpture, whose main characteristics include the use of bright colour and unconventional materials such as steel, fibreglass, aluminium, perspex and glass. Lord McAlpine has separately presented works by Sir Sidney Nolan and other artists.
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Mrs A.F. Kessler
Anne Kessler began to collect in the 1930s, inspired by the example of her uncle C Frank Stoop. She acquired works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani and Raoul Dufy, whom she commissioned to paint her family portrait. With great generosity, Mrs Kessler followed her uncle's example in 1983 by leaving her collection to Tate, where they remain key works.
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National Art Collections Fund
The 'Art Fund' was launched in 1903 and it has since become Britain's leading charity for the purchase of works of art for the nation's collections. More than four hundred works have been acquired by Tate with assistance from the Art Fund. The first of these was J. M. Whistler's Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Old Battersea Bridge, acquired in 1905 and more recent acquisitions assisted by the Art Fund are Piet Mondrian's Sun, Church in Zeeland, David Smith's Wagon II and Rebecca Horn's Concert for Anarchy.
National Art Collections Fund website |
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National Heritage Memorial Fund
The National Heritage Memorial Fund was established in 1980 in memory of those who have given their lives for the nation. Its purpose is to protect the most important aspects of the national heritage and in 1992 it became the distributor of the Heritage Lottery Fund. Tate has been successful in making a number of applications to the NHMF that have resulted in substantial contributions towards securing pre-eminent works for the nation. Though predominantly British works, these range across all areas of Tate collecting, from John Constable's The Opening of Waterloo Bridge to Pablo Picasso's Weeping Woman.
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Oppé Collection
Paul Oppé (1878-1957) started collecting English watercolours in 1904. At the time of his death his collection had expanded to include drawings, oil sketches and prints by many major and lesser known British artists. Consisting of more than three thousand works covering the period from the seventeenth century to the early twentieth, it was one of the most significant collections of British art in private hands and it formed the basis of much of Oppé's pioneering scholarship into the subject. The Collection was acquired by Tate in 1996 with the assistance of the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund. The National Art Collections Fund also contributed to the acquisition by purchasing two works for Tate. The greatest strength of the Collection lies in the eighteenth century and it includes watercolours by Alexander and John Robert Cozens, John Downman and Francis Towne and oils by Thomas Jones. From the nineteenth century there are works by John Constable, J S Cotman, George Richmond, J M W Turner and J W Inchbold.
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Patrons of British Art
The Patrons of British Art were formed in 1986 to support Tate's role as the national collection of British art. Membership subscriptions are used to acquire British art from the sixteenth century to the present. Among works presented by the Patrons of British Art since 1986 are paintings by William Blake, Spencer Gore, Sir Thomas Lawrence and C R W Nevinson, and sculptures by Thomas Woolner and Paule Vézelay.
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Patrons of New Art
Established in 1982, the Patrons of New Art support Tate's collection of contemporary art through a wide range of acquisitions of work by artists of international repute. Many of the works they have presented make use of new media and technologies. Among the artists whose work the Patrons have acquired are Absalon, Doris Salcedo, Bill Viola, Jeff Wall, and Rachel Whiteread. The Patrons' Special Purchase Fund acquires work by younger artists, many of whom were previously unrepresented in Tate's collection.
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Robert Vernon
Robert Vernon started collecting modern British art in the mid-1820s. In 1847 he took the first practical step towards the creation of a national gallery of British art when he presented 166 paintings and sculptures from his large collection to the National Gallery. It included paintings by Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable and J M W Turner and sculptures by E H Baily and John Gibson. After the opening in 1897 of the Tate as the National Gallery of British Art, all the works in Vernon's gift were gradually transferred from the National Gallery. Out of the original gift one painting by a foreign artist was retained by the National Gallery and some portraits were later transferred to the National Portrait Gallery. Four paintings from the Vernon gift were destroyed in the 1928 Thames flood and one was destroyed during the Second World War.
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Rose and Chris Prater
The Prater Gift, the majority of which was presented in 1975, was one of the founding gifts of Tate's modern print collection, alongside the Curwen Studio Gift. In the late 1950s Rose and Chris Prater established Kelpra Studio, a print workshop dedicated to the comparatively modern technique of screenprinting. Kelpra Studio was pivotal in the development of the medium throughout the 1960s and 1970s, introducing many artists, British and foreign, to the artistic possibilities of screenprinting. The Praters generously gave Tate a copy of every print that they produced. Among the artists who worked at Kelpra Studio were Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi, Patrick Caulfield and Peter Blake.
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Tate American Fund
The Tate American Fund was established in 1988 with an anonymous gift of $6 million. The income from this endowment allows the American Fund to purchase works of art by artists working in the Americas which are lent, and some given, to Tate. Recent acquisitions by the Fund have included works by Louise Bourgeois, Philip Guston, Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, Ernesto Neto and Adriana Varejao. The American Fund also facilitates gifts and bequests of works of art by artists of any nationality, and cash donations, from United States taxpayers. The Tate American Fund established a Development office in New York in September 1999. Its purpose is to increase support for and awareness of Tate and to encourage American participation in the expansion of its collections, programmes and buildings.
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Tate Members
The Tate Members was founded in 1958 to raise money for the purchase of works of art across the range of the Tate collection, as well as to create wider support for Tate and to promote its aims to the general public. The first of the nearly four hundred works presented by the Tate Members was Henry Moore's sculpture King and Queen, acquired in 1959. Henri Matisse's The Snail was acquired through the Friends in 1962 and they have also assisted with other notable purchases, among them John Constable's The Opening of Waterloo Bridge, Gawen Hamilton's, The Du Cane and Boehm Family Group, Joseph Wright of Derby's Vesuvius in Eruption, Stanley Spencer's Zacharias and Elizabeth, Pablo Picasso's Weeping Woman and Andreas Gursky's Parliament.
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Works allocated by HM government in lieu of tax
Post-war changes in the law concerning inheritance tax have allowed collectors to offset the amount owed in death duties in the form of art works. These paintings and sculptures are effectively transferred to Treasury and are then allocated by Government to appropriate museums and galleries. During the last twenty years the Tate collection has benefited greatly from this procedure. In 1984 it was allocated the twenty paintings by J M W Turner, which had been acquired directly from the artist by his patron the third Earl of Egremont. More recent acquisitions have included J E Millais' Mariana and work by important twentieth century artists, including Constantin Brancusi, Francis Picabia and Barbara Hepworth.
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