Antique and Interiors
Sale on 9th December 2015
starting at 10am.
Viewing Saturday 5th December
10am-1pm, Tuesday 8th December 2pm-6pm and morning of Sale from 9am.
Boldon Auction Galleries are delighted to present for Auction a diverse collection of prints,
paintings and photographs previously included in the Bede Gallery, Jarrow
collection.
A well-kept secret in Jarrow, the Bede Gallery ran for over 28
years, closing its doors in 1996 for the final time. A former Air Raid shelter, the Bede Gallery ran
by the enigmatic Vince Rea was a hive of artistic activity including
exhibitions and art work from the likes of Picasso, Hundertwasser, Henri
Matisse, Sir Sidney Nolan, Hockney, Degas and Don McKinley to name but a few.
Vince Rea built up relationships with artists over a long period of
time and they in turn trusted him for his understanding of their art and where
possible his willingness to accommodate their needs.
“Bede Shows were sometime audacious. Occasionally they took your breath away”,
David Whetstone writing in the Journal, November 1996.
Vince commented before The Last Art show in 1996 “There have never
been two artists alike in nearly 30 years but I have enjoyed working with them
all. They were all one-offs”.
Vince and Willa Rea not only mounted exhibitions of Contemporary
Art at The Bede Gallery, they also devoted a lot of painstaking research into
projects based on Jarrow’s history; collecting photographs and printed ephemera
culminating in the publication of ‘Jarrow 1860-1960 From Old Photographs’ by
Vince Rea.
A Maquette of ‘The Spirit of Jarrow ’, 2001, by Graham Ibbeson (1951-
) along with a working sketch is one of the many lots to be sold. The finished piece is a bronze sculpture
erected in Jarrow’s town centre to commemorate the 1936 March. 200 local men marched the 300 miles to London
in March 1936 to highlight to Parliament and people in the South their
plight. At this time unemployment was at
70%, the ship yards and engineering works were closing and they were living in
“a filthy, dirty, falling down, consumptive area”.
Despite considerable public sympathy the crusade made little impact
even with the support of a fiery local Jarrow MP, Ellen Wilkinson who led the
crusade for work. We are selling a
portrait of Ellen Wilkinson which was included in “Jarrow Impressions of a
Town” at the Bede Gallery, as was the unfired model of ‘The Spirit of Jarrow’.
Graham Ibbeson has worked as a professional sculptor since 1978 and
carried out many public commissions in this time. As well as ‘The Spirit of Jarrow’, Laurel and
Hardy (Ulveston, Cumbria, 2004) and Eric Morecambe (Lancashire, 1999).
On a macabre note but nonetheless an important item of local
history to come under the hammer is a life size model of the last man to be
hanged and gibbeted in England.
Miner
William Jobling, 30, was executed over 180 years ago and his body was tarred
and encased in a metal cage, which was displayed on a gibbet at Jarrow Slake in
South Tyneside for six weeks. William
Jobling was convicted at Durham Assizes of killing 71-year-old local magistrate
Nicholas Fairles at the height of the 1832 miners’ strike in the Durham and
Northumberland coalfields.
William Jobling was with Ralph
Armstrong, who a dying Fairles identified as his killer. Ralph Armstrong
escaped and was never found.
Vince Rea staged an exhibition on the
Jobling case in 1972, which featured a reconstruction of the miner’s gibbeted
body.
After the execution, Jobling was taken
from the scaffold, his clothes were removed and his body covered in pitch. He
was then riveted into an iron cage, made of flat iron bars two and a half
inches wide. In a wagon, drawn by two horses, his body was taken to Jarrow
Slake escorted by a troop of Hussars and two companies of infantry. The gibbet
was erected near the spot where the murder was committed.
William Jobling’s body then mysteriously
disappeared, one theory being that fellow pitmen took it down, held a burial
service, and lowered the remains into a nearby disused pit shaft. “William
Jobling was the victim of tragic circumstances at a time when efforts were
being made to stamp out the unions,” said Vince.
