Charles Rutherston's "Gift to Manchester":
The Evolution of a Modern Art Collector, 1890—1926

INTRODUCTION

In 1925 the Bradford businessman Charles Rutherston (1866—1927) agreed to donate almost 500 paintings, drawings and sculptures, most of his modern art collection, to Manchester Art Gallery (MAG) on the condition that the artworks would be loaned to art schools and galleries throughout Lancashire and Yorkshire to enrich the lives of ordinary people and educate a new generation of aspiring artists.[1] Rutherston’s collecting began in the 1890s when he was introduced to the artistic circles of his younger brother, the artist William Rothenstein, in Paris and London. He went on to build a collection including works by some of the most well-known modern English artists of the early twentieth century. There is little published literature about Rutherston and his collection and he did not leave behind diaries or memoirs. This article therefore examines Rutherston’s evolution as a collector of modern art by drawing on fragmented primary source material including MAG’s records and archives, correspondence between Rutherston and brother William in the Houghton Library, Harvard, William’s autobiography Men and Memories, contemporary press coverage and Rutherston’s own words taken from his speech in July 1926 on the formal handover of his gift.

The article also uses secondary sources as a theoretical basis for interpreting Rutherston’s collecting, including Susan M. Pearce and Russell W. Belk who provide the following complementary definitions:

Rutherston’s earliest acquisition in the Manchester gift was The Moulin Rouge (Fig. 1, 1890) by Charles Conder, an English-born painter who emigrated to Australia as a teenager before returning to Europe in 1890 to work in Paris. There he met William Rothenstein, who had gone to Paris the previous year to study art.[13] William introduced his older brother to Conder in October 1890 when Rutherston visited him and Conder gave The Moulin Rouge to Rutherston to commemorate their first meeting.[14]

Rutherston went on to acquire Conder’s work throughout the 1890s including several painted fans for which Conder became well known. In December 1893 Conder wrote to Rutherston from Paris about one such acquisition, probably referring to Rutherston’s purchase of The Rose Fan (Fig. 2, 1893):

This letter is typical of correspondence from Conder to Rutherston between 1893 and 1899 held in MAG’s archive, the general tone of which is friendly and informal and gives the sense of two friends who met up regularly if infrequently and of Conder’s appreciation of Rutherston’s patronage.

The loose, impressionistic style of The Moulin Rouge and the subject matter of late nineteenth-century Paris nightlife shows the direct influence of French Impressionism on Conder’s work. However, Conder was also influenced by the romantic art of an older generation of artists such as Watteau, epitomised by a highly decorative style of painting and often depicting scenes of fashionable society at leisure, exemplified by The Masqueraders (Fig. 3, 1899). This was purchased by Rutherston in 1899 from the Carfax Gallery in London, which had been set up that year by brothers William and John Fothergill.[16] Conder’s work possibly “appealed” to Rutherston because it combined the late-Victorian taste for the aesthetic with the modern influence of French Impressionism and the depiction of a Paris nightlife which Rutherston had experienced with Conder.

William Rothenstein’s long standing involvement with the NEAC resulted in this group becoming the focus of Rutherston’s collecting in the early part of the twentieth century, although during this period he was still acquiring modern art in relatively modest quantities—just over 100 works in the gift were acquired between 1900 and 1913 of which more than forty were by his two brothers. One of the artists Rutherston patronised at this time was Augustus John, whose relationship with the Rothenstein family began around 1898 towards the end of John’s time at the Slade where he became friends with Rutherston’s youngest brother, Albert, who introduced John to brother William.[24] William recalled how he:

This observation suggests that Rutherston’s first purchases of John’s work in the gift in 1900, a set of six drawings, might have been encouraged by William.

William certainly claimed the credit for Rutherston’s acquisition of Merikli (Fig. 4, 1902) from the NEAC’s November 1902 exhibition, saying:

During the First World War, artists who before the War had different artistic philosophies coalesced around a common desire to represent the horrors of war, including pre-war avant-garde artists such as Nevinson and Lewis. Even after the War, many of these artists retained a strong representational element in their work, never returning to their pre-war level of abstraction. This provided the context within which Rutherston’s collecting expanded beyond his brother’s immediate circle to include the work of modern English artists as it continued to be assimilated into English culture. Rutherston’s first purchase of a work in the gift by one of these artists was in October 1916, Nevinson’s Motor Lorries (Fig. 6, 1909—1916), acquired from a one-man show at the Leicester Galleries, in which the representation of men as machines and the unnaturalistic forms using strong lines and angles still referenced Nevinson’s pre-war Cubist-influenced work. 

The Times was positive about Nevinson’s representation of the War, saying that he represented men as machines “with plausibility … his cubism is justified by what he has to say.”[40] Rutherston went on to purchase another painting and nine prints by Nevinson in the gift, all images of the War, from a March 1918 exhibition also at the Leicester Galleries. In a letter to his brother written from France where he was serving as a war artist, William said “I am interested to hear you have purchased a Nevinson. I gather from what you write the show is very good.”[41] This letter is typical of references to Rutherston’s collecting in the correspondence between the two brothers during this later period, which indicates that Rutherston no longer sought his brother’s advice or approval of his purchases. 

Rutherston’s first two acquisitions of Lewis’s work in the gift were also examples of his war art, acquired from Lewis’s Guns exhibition at the Goupil Gallery in 1919. The Observer described Lewis’s work as “among the most significant interpretations of war experience … Lieut. Wyndham Lewis is out for essential truth.”[42] In the three years 1920 to 1922 Rutherston went on to acquire a further twenty-two works by Lewis in the gift, twenty-one drawings and a single oil painting, Portrait of the Artist as the Painter Raphael (Fig. 7, 1921). 

This self-portrait exemplifies the realism of Lewis’s post-war work although the strong geometric lines and blocks of bold colour still reference Lewis’s more abstract pre-war style. Rutherston acquired this painting along with seven drawings from Lewis’s Tyros and Portraits exhibition held at the Leicester Galleries in 1921. Konody described Tyros and Portraits as a “remarkable exhibition which cannot fail to establish Mr. Lewis as one of the dominant figures in contemporary British art," exemplifying the positive reception which may have resulted in Rutherston now wanting to collect Lewis’s work.[43] Rutherston went on to acquire several works in the gift directly from Lewis in 1921 and 1922 when he became a regular visitor to Lewis’s studio as Lewis recalled in his autobiography.[44]

Paul Nash is a particularly important artist to consider in relation to this phase of Rutherston’s collecting as, unlike Nevinson and Lewis, Rutherston began acquiring Nash’s work before the War on his brother William’s recommendation, his first acquisition being in November 1913, A Landscape at Wood Lane (Fig. 8, 1913). 

This somewhat romantic and impressionistic landscape is characteristic of Nash’s early work, exemplifying what Konody referred to in a 1916 review as “the usual naïve charm” of Nash’s landscapes.[45] This was probably meant as a criticism at the time, but the conservatism of Nash’s early work perhaps explains why William recommended him to his brother. Rutherston and Nash seem to have quickly established a good relationship as in 1914 Nash and his wife stayed with Rutherston at his home in Bradford, a visit Nash described in a letter to his friend the poet Gordon Bottomley:

Nash’s depictions of the War marked a change both in his style and in the critical reception of his work.  For example, a Times review of Nash’s war art exhibited at the Leicester Galleries in 1918 said “he has found a way of his own of expressing [the War’s] effect on him … he has been struck by the strange, unaccountable beauty of the meaningless shapes of things so tortured and battered.”[47] These qualities are evident in the strong lines and stark realism of Chaos Decoratif (Fig. 9, 1917), one of four of Nash’s works in the gift acquired by Rutherston during the War. 

Rutherston went on to acquire a further nine of Nash’s works in the gift after the War, reflecting a willingness to continue to patronise Nash as his style evolved. Nash acknowledged Rutherston’s long-standing patronage in a letter written to Rutherston’s widow, Essil, early in 1928 shortly after Rutherston’s death, saying:

A 1919 letter from Rutherston to his brother William gives an important insight into Rutherston’s acquisition of Sickert’s work. Perhaps alluding to the fact that Sickert was not taking advantage of his popularity by inflating his prices, Rutherston said:

Rachel Queen and Princess Betty project Rutherston’s strong identification with “family” whilst Reading the Book of Esther acknowledges Rutherston’s German-Jewish heritage and the “community” he chose to identify with, at least whilst his parents were still alive and likely to have been regular visitors to his home. 

The second photograph (Fig. 14, c.1912) is of an adjacent room, perhaps a more personal, private space, which shows Rutherston standing by the fireplace with John’s Merekli (Fig. 5) displayed behind him. 

Although Rutherston had acquired Merikli when John was a struggling young artist, by the time the photograph was taken around ten years later John had become critically acclaimed in England. This photograph suggests that even before 1914 Rutherston wanted to be identified with modern art as it began to achieve the status of high culture in England, the class associations of which are emphasised by Rutherston’s own dress and pose. This is an early indication of the “group” identity Rutherston was to develop further through his modern art collection in the second half of his collecting career. This was also the identity Rutherston chose to project to visitors from his artistic network, with evidence such as Paul Nash’s account of his 1914 visit indicating that Rutherston was keen for these visitors to see artworks displayed throughout the house and not just those carefully chosen for the formal reception room. It is also worth noting that both photographs include objects from Rutherston’s wider art collection, specifically his Chinese antiques which at the time the photographs were taken formed an important part of Rutherston’s collecting.[57] Here Rutherston was collecting art which was not part of English culture but perhaps enabled Rutherston to demonstrate he was a real connoisseur in this unfamiliar field.

Rutherston’s decision to give most of his modern art collection away and the conditions he placed on its subsequent use could also be interpreted in terms of identity. In his 1926 speech Rutherston said:

Pearce describes how museums sit at the top of the system through which society bestows cultural value to objects and collections:

Having his modern art collection accepted by MAG was the ultimate validation of the cultural value of the collection and therefore of Rutherston himself, validation which was reinforced by the congratulatory messages sent to MAG by key figures from the London art world following the formal transfer of the gift in July 1926. Charles Aitken described Rutherston as a “man of taste, foresight and generosity” whose gift “has extended to thousands of people a source of enjoyment and education”; D. S. McColl (artist, art critic and formerly Director of the Tate Gallery and the Wallace Collection) said “this addition to what you [Manchester] have already will bring you incontestably into the first place among English provincial galleries for the range as well as the quality of your display of modern art”; and Lord Henry Bentinck (Chairman of the Contemporary Art Society) said that as a result of Rutherston’s gift “Manchester will in future possess a collection of works admired, valued, nay more—coveted by all lovers of modern art.”[60] 

Through building a modern art collection Rutherston may have aspired to identify with an English cultural elite but, by stipulating that the collection should form the basis of a loan scheme to be used for educational purposes, Rutherston was also expressing a belief that modern art could deliver social benefits beyond those accruing to this elite group. He wanted to democratise modern art and by doing so be seen as a twentieth-century philanthropist, a “trustee to the public.” Rutherston’s gift to Manchester was in many respects a forerunner of later state-sponsored schemes which shared similar aims, for example the British Institute for Adult Education’s Art for the People initiative which began in 1935, almost a decade after Rutherston’s gift.[61] Rutherston should therefore be regarded as a pioneer, not only as one of the first collectors of modern English art from his background but also for implementing his vision for making his collection useful to society.