Home is where the art is

Classical Greece – and in particular its epicenter Athens – was where art of a momentous nature truly blossomed.

So why, in the wintery month of February 1991, were art chiefs in Athens on the blower to humble Swindon, an average kind of town in a region called Wiltshire, seeking a very big favour?

What on earth could those respected guardians of an artistic heritage that harks back more than 2,500 years and encompasses The Parthenon along with timeless, iconic works such as Venus de Milo want from our gritty former railway town?

Bizarre as it may seem, the cheeky beggars were after our art!

That’s right, they were on the scrounge for works from our quirky, unassuming pocket battleship of a museum-cum-art gallery that resides at Apsley House in Bath Road – you know, the one whose entrance is flanked with a pair of Greek Doric columns.

The Athenian authorities were staging a major exhibition of 20th century British art and were informed by those in the know to cast their eyes upon unpretentious Swindon. Borough arts and leisure officer John Fisher said at the time: “It’s quite an honour to be asked to provide the core of this exhibition.”

Swindon’s nationally acknowledged collection, it appeared, was now becoming internationally acknowledged.

Several months later a consignment of 21 works was shipped from Old Town to Athens where they formed the centrepiece of an eight-week exhibition at the Goulandris Museum of Cycladic Art, a highly respected institution normally dedicated to the study and promotion of ancient cultures.

A Swindon Catalogue was produced and the event was opened, amidst much hoo-ha and, I think we can safely assume, the fizz and clink of champagne flutes, by the British Ambassador in Athens. It was, everyone agreed, quite a hit.

Robert Dickinson, principal curator of Swindon Museum and Art Gallery said: “For many visitors (to the exhibition) it was their first experience of modern art and it really opened their eyes.”

Unlike the Elgin Marbles – which went in the other direction a couple of centuries earlier – we eventually got our works back.

There is an irony to be savoured in this little episode – the very birthplace of civilisation seeking works of an artistic nature from a relatively newish town (not even a city) that has thrived on industry and elbow grease but which is oft slammed for a perceived lack of culture.

I am reminded of this yarn due to a recent flurry of letters to the Editor in the Adver regarding the accommodation of the Swindon Collection that boasts around 300 works of which only a few can be exhibited at one time due to cramped premises that it shares with the museum.

Plans are afoot – as they have been for at least 20 years, probably longer – for a purpose built museum and art gallery in an area of the town centre, near the Wyvern Theatre, sometimes referred to as the Cultural Quarter.

The council has now pledged £5 million towards a grant aided £19 million scheme. Council leader David Renard declared: “We have a large, distinctive collection of 20th Century art that many recognise as one of the best in the country and more people should see it.”

RJ Taylor of Highworth responded via the Adver letters page with a giant “humbug,” insisting that the £5 million should instead be spent on “essential services or facilities”.

Other missives have followed. But while all this goes on isn’t it worth reflecting on how undemonstrative little Swindon, as if by magic, acquired what has been extolled as the country’s finest collection of British modern art outside of London?

Have councillors been cavalierly blowing great wads of tax-payers cash on original works by Henry Moore and LS Lowry instead of building schools and ensuring the trash is collected? Actually, no.

You could say that it all began in a farmhouse, about eight miles south east of Swindon during World War Two. Having made a killing as a stockbroker, Londoner Jimmy Bomford was keen to spend the rest of his years away from the insanity of the Stock Exchange and headed for the country.

Having snapped up a 2,000-acre farm near the village of Aldbourne he settled down with his cattle, his crops and indulged in his passion for modern art. All manner of impressive and cannily acquired works found their way to Jimmy’s farmhouse via a network of rural, muddy lanes off the A4.

Around this time – the early 1940s – Jimmy hired Johnny, a likeable, chatty, endearingly singular fellow as his farm manager. Johnny loved his job, and even discovered that he had quite a knack for imitating the noises of the farmyard animals.

Jimmy and Johnny got on splendidly, becoming great chums who whiled away many an evening discussing their mutual enthusiasm for art and music.

Johnny later told how he often had his dinner in a farmhouse surrounded by great art from Cubism to Impressionism. The farm was rammed with the stuff. Once, he was delighted to relate, he found a Picasso in the pigsty.

All well and good but Jimmy felt his pieces should be appreciated and enjoyed by the public at large and not just by his guests, family, friends and farm manager. So he donated many of these fine paintings – his British pieces – to the People of Swindon.

Including works by home-grown greats such as Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland, LS Lowry, Paul Nash and others, they formed the nucleus of what later became The Swindon Collection of Modern British Art.

Via further donations over the decades from a variety of funds, bodies and bequests the collection grew and grew, securing innumerable pieces by celebrated contemporary British artists.

In March 1991, when chairman of the Arts Council Lord Profumo inspected the collection and proclaimed Swindon a “major centre of 20th century art” Johnny was pleased to tag along too.

By then, of course, Johnny Morris OBE had become one of TV’s best known faces, having presented hundreds of episodes of Animal Magic during which he expertly mimicked the assorted grunts and squawks of the residents of Bristol Zoo.

At Swindon Museum and Art Gallery he was happy to talk at length, in those familiar warm tones, about his old pal and employer while gazing, perhaps misty-eyed, at the wonderful paintings he knew so well, half-a-century earlier, when they adorned the walls of Jimmy Bomford’s farmhouse.

• Anyone wishing to see the disparate, slim-pickings of Swindon’s early modern art collection would in 1943 have to have made their way to some unused rooms in the town hall and a corridor in McIlroys department store.

  It wasn’t until Jimmy Bomford donated 21 works by 20th century British artists that it became, in effect, a collection.First exhibited at the Arts Centre in 1946, it was later housed at a former dance hall, also in Devizes Road.To overcome the lack of adequate premises the collection was on a couple of occasions dispatched on tour in cities and towns around the country.In 1964, however, the “L” shaped extension to the Bath Road museum was built as a gallery to exhibit the works where – due to the collection’s size – they tend to be shown in rotation.

   The Swindon Museum and Art Gallery is open Wednesday to Saturday from 11am-3pm. Admission is free. Tel. 01793 466556. E-mail: nwestern@swindon.gov.uk.