About the project

The Art Online project puts important designated collections at the Laing Art Gallery and Shipley Art Gallery online for the first time. The project provides a database of 5,700 records. There are 1,000 oil paintings and 4,000 watercolours from the Laing, and 700 items from the Shipley craft collection. This resource is fully searchable.

Laing Art Gallery - The Fine Art Collections

The fine art collections are of national importance. They range in date from the 15th century to the present day.

The British oil paintings collection is particularly strong in 19th century and early 20th century works. It includes paintings by Joshua Reynolds, J.M.W. Turner and the Pre-Raphaelite artists William Holman Hunt and Edward Burne-Jones. There are also paintings by Stanley Spencer, L.S. Lowry and the locally born artist John Martin. There are also some very fine Dutch, Flemish and Italian paintings.

The collection of watercolours is very important. It traces the development of watercolour painting in Britain from the 18th to the 20th century. There is a good representation of 19th century local art in this collection.

Shipley Art Gallery - The Contemporary Craft Collections

This is one of the country's most attractive and comprehensive collections of contemporary craft. This collection has been built up over the past 27 years by Tyne and Wear Museums. It is a wide-ranging collection, which encompasses all media. It emphasises quality of craftsmanship and the use of innovative techniques and materials. The collection is displayed in a variety of ways, by media, period or design approach.

The importance of the collection has attracted donations and long term loans including the famous Eagle Collection, a private collection of Studio Ceramics. This is one of the finest personal collections of post-war ceramics in the UK.

Thanks

The collections are made up of gifts and bequests, purchases, commissions and loans. Significant gifts to the collections have been made by the Contemporary Art Society and the National Art Collections Fund. Grants for purchases have been provided by The Museums and Galleries Commission/Victoria & Albert Museum Purchase Grant Fund, The National Art Collections Fund, The Pilgrim Trust and Northern Arts. The Friends of the Laing Art Gallery and the Friends of the Shipley Art Gallery have also helped to make purchases possible.

Art Online is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Images and captions

Art Online was funded to put simple records of collection items online. Some records also contain images and captions. Where this occurs it is as a result of the item's inclusion in Tyne & Wear Museums' IMAGINE web project. IMAGINE has 15,000 images of objects from Art, History, Archaeology and Natural Sciences. It is funded by the New Opportunities Fund.