Details
- Object type
painting; portrait
- Title
Fra H Newbery
- Artist/Maker
- Date
1913
- Materials
oil on canvas
- Dimensions
framed: 1847 x 1200 mm;unframed: 1321 mm x 1022 mm
- Description
-
Painting titled 'Fra H Newbery', by Maurice Greiffenhagen, 1913, oil on canvas.
Francis H Newbery was the influential headmaster, later director, of the Glasgow School of Art from 1885 until his retirement in 1917. Newbery was the ringmaster who helped put Glasgow on the international artistic map. Dr Tom Honeyman, Glasgow Museums’ director from 1939-1954, was keen to acquire this portrait painted by Maurice Greiffenhagen, and Newbery was only too delighted to offer it as a bequest.
It shows Newbery standing alongside Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s recently completed art school. Behind and to the right of Newbery is the looming silhouette of the northeast corner of the Glasgow School of Art. The School had been completed four years earlier, the entire project overseen by Newbery. The Glasgow School of Art is considered Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s design “Masterwork”. Here the white-painted wood and gridded casement windows of the north-facing studios provide a structure offset by the sculpted architectural sandstone features, the protrusions and curves of the blond sandstone walls, and the boundary wall.
Writing in his book Art and Audacity, 1971, Honeyman said of Newbery: “The name Fra, like the tight frock coat and the Whistlerian straight-brimmed top hat, may have been a mild affectation. His energy, his devotion to the School and his enthusiasm were persistent and fruitful. There might never have been the monument of Modern Architecture but for Fra Newbery.”
- Credit Line/Donor
Gifted by Fra H Newbery, 1940
- ID Number
2154
- Location
In storage
- Related People
Fra H Newbery sitter