The Anderson Art Nouveau Collection at the Sainsbury Centre

Monday, 06 November 2006 08:08

Norwich, UK - The Anderson Collection of Art Nouveau, which was given to the University of East Anglia (UEA) in 1978 to be housed in the newly opened Sainsbury Centre, comprises jewellery, furniture, glassware and metalwork featuring the fluid organic lines and whiplash curves that characterized European styles in the last years of the nineteenth century.  On exhibition 30 January 2007 and runs until 17 June 2007.  An exhibition offering the opportunity to view the University of East Anglia’s remarkable collection of Art Nouveau.

“The human instinct for collecting things is inborn. The infant starts collecting stones and from this it is only a toddle through bus tickets to pressed flowers and from then onwards by way of postage stamps and toby jugs, to the last stages of first editions, classical gold coins and paintings by Vermeer.”- Sir Colin Anderson.

Sir Colin Anderson, grandson of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first woman to qualify as a medical doctor, was part of a Suffolk based family who owned the Orient Shipping Line (later P&O).  He became the design director of the Orient Line in the 1930s and was responsible for the fit-out of the famous liner HMS Orion, launched in 1935, which was widely praised for the innovation and modernity of its interior design.  Sir Colin Anderson chaired the Trustees of the Tate Gallery from the 1960 to 1967 where he became friends with Sir Robert Sainsbury.

Sir Colin and Lady Anderson were amongst the first British collectors to be seriously interested in Art Nouveau.  From 1960, for just over a decade, they hunted for objects in galleries, auctions, junk shops and bric-a-brac stalls.  They bought according to style rather than value, making a collection which is remarkably representative of the whole sphere of Art Nouveau and which is considered to be one of the most exquisite privately assembled collections in the country.

Visitors to the exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre can expect to see pieces by the leading exponents of Art Nouveau such as the American Louis Comfort Tiffany and the Frenchmen Emile Gallé and René Lalique, as well as the English based Minton and Royal Doulton.  The much-loved Anderson Collection of Art Nouveau is exhibited every three years at the Sainsbury Centre.

Although the Art Nouveau style was based around botanical and natural motifs, it was essentially urban, adorning homes, buildings, streets and cities from Paris to Brussels, Glasgow to Prague.  The Royal Arcade and the Jarrolds store building in Norwich are fine examples of the Art Nouveau style.  At the turn of the century artists wanted to make new art for a new age, breaking with what they saw as the cluttered fussiness of nineteenth century ornamentation to create a style that responded to the enormous social and economic change of the time.  Art Nouveau challenged the old entrenched hierarchies of the art, shifting the focus from painting and sculpture to decorative arts.  It also used previously thought of as low value materials such as horn and aluminum alongside silver, rubies and diamonds.

Marked by an exploration of new production techniques and as a focus on clarity of line, aspects of new style were in many ways developed in twentieth century modernism.  “Around 1900 a magnificent gesture – Art Nouveau. We shed the tatters of an old culture.” – architect Le Corbusier, founder of the international style and leading figure in the modernist movement.

Visit the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at: www.scva.ac.uk