The Mercer Art Gallery, formerly the Mercer Gallery and locally known as The Mercer, is an art gallery in
Harrogate
Harrogate ( ) is a spa town and civil parish in the North Yorkshire District, district and North Yorkshire, county of North Yorkshire, England. Historic counties of England, Historically in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the town is a tourist de ...
, North Yorkshire, England. It was established in Lower Harrogate's Old Town Hall building in 1991. Owned by
North Yorkshire Council
North Yorkshire Council, known between 1974 and 2023 as North Yorkshire County Council, is the local authority for the non-metropolitan county of North Yorkshire, England. Since 2023 the council has been a unitary authority, being a county coun ...
, it has a collection of over 2,000 items, mainly 19th- to 21st-century artworks, including pieces by local artists. It hosts a rolling series of exhibitions of its own and borrowed artworks, keeping most of its own collection in storage for much of the time, or loaned out to exhibitions at other galleries, and to local establishments.
In 2022, local historian
Malcolm Neesam
Malcolm George Neesam (28 June 1946 – 28 June 2022) was an English historian and writer specialising in the history of Harrogate, North Yorkshire. He was also a librarian and archivist. His major works were the first two parts of a projected ...
bequeathed the Walker Neesam Archive to the gallery. The Mercer also continues to acquire and exhibit items of contemporary and local art. One of its recent acquisitions is a set of drawings by
Eva Leigh
Eva Leigh is an American author of erotica and historical fiction, historical romantic fiction. Her novels have a theme of women's empowerment.
Her novel ''My Fake Rake'' was reviewed favorably by NPR for upending the literary trope of women ge ...
, which it exhibited in 2024.
Gallery
This gallery was originally known as the Harrogate Fine Art Collection, whose gallery was opened by
Henry Lascelles, 6th Earl of Harewood
Henry George Charles Lascelles, 6th Earl of Harewood (9 September 1882 – 24 May 1947), known by the courtesy title of Viscount Lascelles until 1929, was a British soldier and peer. He was the husband of Mary, Princess Royal, and thus a son-in ...
in 1930 above the present public library in Victoria Avenue,
Harrogate
Harrogate ( ) is a spa town and civil parish in the North Yorkshire District, district and North Yorkshire, county of North Yorkshire, England. Historic counties of England, Historically in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the town is a tourist de ...
, North Yorkshire.
In 1984 the Harrogate Fine Art Collection was stored in the basement of the
Royal Baths
Royal may refer to:
People
* Royal (name), a list of people with either the surname or given name
* A member of a royal family or royalty
Places United States
* Royal, Arkansas, an unincorporated community
* Royal, Illinois, a village
* Royal, ...
, but the cellar flooded, destroying some works.
In 1989 the Old Town Hall in Harrogate, which had been used as the council's rates office, became available, but it was in poor condition with a hole in the ceiling of the main hall. The previously grand hall had "false walls and ceilings concealing the once exquisite plaster decoration". A
silver service
''Silver Service'' was a brand applied by Amtrak to its long-distance trains running along the United States East Coast between New York City and Miami, Florida. It comprised two trains – the and . Since November 2024, the ''Silver Star'' ...
banquet was given in the dilapidated hall, to launch the fund for the new gallery. A public appeal was made; it raised £110,000.
Ultimately the basement was converted into a storage area for the gallery's collection, and the ground floor was refurbished.
The Mercer Gallery (now the Mercer Art Gallery and known locally as The Mercer) was established in the Old Town Hall building in Swan Road, Lower Harrogate,
and opened by
George Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood
George Henry Hubert Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood (7 February 1923 – 11 July 2011), styled The Honourable George Lascelles before 1929 and Viscount Lascelles between 1929 and 1947, was a British classical music administrator and author, and ...
on 30 April 1991.
The gallery was named after the watercolourist Sidney Agnew Mercer after his sons Terence and Gavin Mercer donated £50,000 towards it.
The establishment of the gallery cost £360,000 in total.
In order to continue to support the gallery financially alongside Harrogate Borough Council, The Friends of the Mercer Gallery was formed in 1992.
For nearly thirty years the Friends group was led by Judith Thomas. After she stepped down in 2020, May Catt of Harrogate Borough Council said, "Without the Friends with Judith at the helm, the Mercer would not have been able to establish itself as the excellent arts venue that it is today".
The gallery has
ramped access at a side door, a hearing
induction loop
An induction or inductive loop is an electromagnetic communication or detection system which uses a moving magnet or an alternating current to induce an electric current in a nearby wire. Induction loops are used for transmission and reception of ...
, and a toilet with space for wheelchairs.
It offers "an extensive education programme for children and adults".
Exhibitions
When the Mercer Art Gallery first opened, it was using at least some of its space for permanent exhibition. For example, in May 1991, some paintings by the
Knaresborough
Knaresborough ( ) is a market and spa town and civil parish on the River Nidd in North Yorkshire, England. It is east of Harrogate and was in the Borough of Harrogate until April 2023.
History
The Knaresborough Hoard, the largest hoard of ...
artist Joseph Baker Fountain were on permanent exhibition. Today, the gallery's collection of
fine art
In European academic traditions, fine art (or, fine arts) is made primarily for aesthetics or creative expression, distinguishing it from popular art, decorative art or applied art, which also either serve some practical function (such as ...
is too large for the whole to be displayed permanently, so most of it is shown in a rolling series of themed exhibitions, alongside exhibitions of works temporarily loaned from other sources.
The
Contemporary Art Society
The Contemporary Art Society (CAS) is an independent charity that champions the collecting of outstanding contemporary art and craft for UK museum collections. Since its founding in 1910 the organisation has donated over 10,000 works to museum ...
says, "A diverse exhibition programme that weaves together historic and contemporary art in exciting and thought provoking ways runs throughout the year".
In 2009 the gallery initiated the Open People's Prize of £100 to be presented at the Harrogate Open Exhibitions. In September 2010 the gallery held one of the Open Exhibitions. It displayed 187 works by local artists.
From October 2012 until January 2013 the gallery again held the Harrogate Open Exhibition, featuring 206 works including ceramics, jewellery, sculpture, prints and paintings. The prize fund had by this year risen to £1,000, the top prize being £200.
In 2014, the Mercer showed its ''Facing the Future'' exhibition, which featured 18th- to early 20th-century sculpture and paintings from its own collection. It included many of its works by
William John Seward Webber
William John Seward Webber (January 1842 – c. 17 March 1919) was an English sculptor who created civic statuary, and bust (sculpture), busts of national heroes and local worthies, in marble. He sculpted the statue of Queen Victoria for the Go ...
, and examples of works by Florence Fitzgerald, daughter of
John Anster Fitzgerald, Pietro Castoldi,
Giovanni Maria Benzoni
Giovanni Maria Benzoni (28 August 1809 – 28 April 1873) was an Italian neoclassical sculptor. He was trained in Rome, where he later set up his own workshop.
Benzoni designed some of his sculptures with a production line in mind using ot ...
, Anthony Welsh,
Thomas Holroyd
Thomas Holroyd (1821 – 10 March 1904) was an English portrait painting, portrait and Landscape painting, landscape painter working in Harrogate, North Riding of Yorkshire, England. Before his marriage he undertook painting tours to the United ...
,
Bernard Walter Evans
Bernard Walter Evans (26 December 1843 – 26 February 1922) was a British Landscape painting, landscape painter and Watercolor painting, watercolourist in the Romanticism, Romantic style, working mainly in Birmingham, Wales, London, Cannes an ...
,
Adrien Carpentiers and
Frances Darlington.
In January 2018, The Mercer launched its ''Picturing Women'' exhibition, at the centennial anniversary of the enfranchisement of women as voters. It featured female artists and their works from the gallery's collection, including ''Touchstone'' by
Eileen Cooper
Eileen Cooper (born 10 June 1953) is a British artist, known primarily as a painter and printmaker.
Early life
Cooper was born in Glossop, Derbyshire and attended Ashton-under-Lyne College of Further Education. She went on to study at Goldsm ...
(1983), works by
Sonia Lawson and
Sarah Pickstone
Sarah Pickstone (born 1965) is an English artist. She has won the 2012 John Moores Painting Prize and was awarded the 1991 ''Rome Scholarship in Painting'' to study at the British School at Rome.
Early life
Pickstone was born in Manchester in ...
, ''Artist as a Model'' (1982) by
Rose Garrard, and photography by
Julia Margaret Cameron
Julia Margaret Cameron (; 11 June 1815 – 26 January 1879) was an English photographer who is considered one of the most important portraitists of the 19th century. She is known for her Soft focus, soft-focus close-ups of famous Victorian era, ...
. The exhibition closed in June 2018.
Between February and June 2019 the gallery held its ''Linescapes'' exhibition, featuring the printmaker Ian Mitchell's digitally-created prints of the Yorkshire landscape, which had been pared back to "minimalist lines and shapes". From June 2019 the gallery opened its ''William Powell Frith: The People's Painter'' exhibition, in honour of the bicentenary of his birth.
In February 2020 the gallery opened its exhibition, ''Turner: Northern Exposure''. On display were some of
J. M. W. Turner
Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 177519 December 1851), known in his time as William Turner, was an English Romantic painter, printmaker and watercolourist. He is known for his expressive colouring, imaginative landscapes and turbu ...
s paintings of Yorkshire, and two of his sketchbooks, all relating to his tour of the area in 1797. Paintings of Yorkshire by contemporary artists Anna Lilleengen,
Katherine Holmes, Debbie Loane, Emerson Mayes and
Ed Kluz were hung alongside those by Turner. Also hung beside the Turners were works by
John Atkinson Grimshaw
John Atkinson Grimshaw (6 September 1836 – 13 October 1893) was an English Victorian-era artist best known for his nocturnal scenes of urban landscapes.Alexander Robertson, ''Atkinson Grimshaw'', London, Phaidon Press, 1996 H. J. Dyos and ...
.
In 2020 and 2021, the gallery organised online exhibitions calling for submissions for ''React2: Art Created Through Covid-19'' and ''React2, Our Planet, Our Home''. The first was a response to the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
, which had made real-life exhibitions difficult. The second went live in October 2021, and was about climate change.
Between May and September 2022, The Mercer showed ''Celebration: British Abstract Painting'', which featured numerous artists, including
Gary Wragg, Douglas Abercrombie,
Francis Davison,
Patrick Heron
Patrick Heron (30 January 1920 – 20 March 1999) was a British abstract and figurative artist, critic, writer, and polemicist, who lived in Zennor, Cornwall.
Heron was recognised as one of the leading painters of his generation. Influenced ...
,
Albert Irvin
Albert Henry Thomas Irvin (21 August 1922 – 26 March 2015) was an English expressionist abstract artist.
Life and career
Irvin was born in Bermondsey, London on 21 August 1922. He was evacuated from there during World War II, to study at t ...
,
Mali Morris,
Gillian Ayres
Gillian Ayres (3 February 1930 – 11 April 2018) was an English painter. She is best known for abstract painting and printmaking using vibrant colours, which earned her a Turner Prize nomination.
Early life and education
Gillian Ayres was bo ...
, John Edwards,
John Hoyland
John Hoyland RA (12 October 1934 – 31 July 2011) was a London-based British artist. He was one of the country's leading abstract painters.
Early life
John Hoyland was born on 12 October 1934, in Sheffield, Yorkshire, to a working-class fami ...
, Patrick Jones, John McLean and Fred Pollock. Reviewer Graham Chalmers said: "''Celebration'' is a simply stunning collection of nearly 60 paintings by 12 different British Abstract artists - several on a heroic scale". In September 2022, The Mercer launched ''Open Exhibition'', a biennial show, featuring for the first time all-Yorkshire artists besides the previously prioritised Harrogate artists. The exhibition featured ceramics, sculpture, paintings and drawings, including works by the musician
Candie Payne
Candice "Candie" Payne (born 19 December 1981) is an English singer and songwriter. She released her debut album, '' I Wish I Could Have Loved You More'', on Deltasonic in May 2007. She is the sister of singer/songwriter Howie Payne, former f ...
. The exhibition closed in January 2023.
Between April and July 2023 the gallery presented ''Artist Rooms'', a touring exhibition featuring the Yorkshire-born artist
Martin Creed
Martin Creed (born 21 October 1968) is a British artist, composer and performer. He won the Turner Prize in 2001 for exhibitions during the preceding year, with the jury praising his audacity for exhibiting a single installation, ''Work No. 22 ...
, who filled the main gallery of the Mercer with over a thousand balls of different sizes. Between 2023 and 2024, Kate Bentley had a solo exhibition of paintings at The Mercer.
Between March and August 2024, The Mercer curated a display showing ''Harrogate's Historian. A first look at the Walker Neesam Archive''. This revealed examples from the archive of local historian
Malcolm Neesam
Malcolm George Neesam (28 June 1946 – 28 June 2022) was an English historian and writer specialising in the history of Harrogate, North Yorkshire. He was also a librarian and archivist. His major works were the first two parts of a projected ...
, who died in 2022 and bequeathed his collection to The Mercer. Between May and September 2024, the gallery featured artist
David Remfry
David Remfry (born 1942 in Worthing, England) is a British painter and curator. He served as the Eranda Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy Schools from 2016 to 2018 and as a competition judge for the Royal Academy of Arts Charles Wolla ...
s pencil and watercolour portraits of people and dogs in its ''We Think the World of You'' exhibition. At the same time it was showing the drawings and
silhouette
A silhouette (, ) is the image of a person, animal, object or scene represented as a solid shape of a single colour, usually black, with its edges matching the outline of the subject. The interior of a silhouette is featureless, and the silhouett ...
s of a newly rediscovered early-20th-century female artist, in its ''
Eva Leigh Walker'' exhibition. In 2024 The Mercer advertised that it was to show the New Light Prize exhibition 2023–2024, between October 2024 and January 2025. This is a touring biennial prize exhibition, established in 2010 to celebrate and promote the visual arts in the
North of England
Northern England, or the North of England, refers to the northern part of England and mainly corresponds to the historic counties of Cheshire, Cumberland, Durham, Lancashire, Northumberland, Westmorland and Yorkshire. Officially, it is a gr ...
.
Collection
By the time the Mercer Art Gallery opened in Swan Road in 1991, its collection already numbered at least 1,000 works,
and had been accumulated over some time. For example, in 1904 the
Holroyd bequest gave Harrogate Corporation the works of
Thomas Holroyd
Thomas Holroyd (1821 – 10 March 1904) was an English portrait painting, portrait and Landscape painting, landscape painter working in Harrogate, North Riding of Yorkshire, England. Before his marriage he undertook painting tours to the United ...
, plus Holroyd's art collection including sculptures by
W. J. S. Webber. Some of Webber's busts remain in the collection, along with a few of Holroyd's paintings, but Holroyd's heavily-carved, wooden photographic props and Webber's heroic marble sculpture ''Warrior with Wounded Youth'' are missing, the latter last seen in Harrogate Library before 1930.
The ''Warrior'' sculpture was last recorded with Sloan's auctioneers in 1998, and then for sale again in Miami. However the 1,000 items inherited by The Mercer still include the Kent Collection of Antiquities, which Harrogate Council received as a donation in 1968.
The full name of The Mercer's holdings is the "Harrogate District Fine Art Collection", although it is named "Harrogate District Art Collections" over the door.
The gallery now owns around two thousand works. They are mainly British 19th- to 21st-century art, and in recent years more photography and later works have been added.
The Contemporary Art Society has funded a number of works in The Mercer's collection, including a set of ''Paintings of Literary Women'' by Sarah Pickstone.
The gallery loans out some artworks to local establishments, such as the
Royal Hall, the
Royal Baths
Royal may refer to:
People
* Royal (name), a list of people with either the surname or given name
* A member of a royal family or royalty
Places United States
* Royal, Arkansas, an unincorporated community
* Royal, Illinois, a village
* Royal, ...
, and
The Harrogate Club. In 2011 The Mercer lent two Atkinson Grimshaw paintings to the
Guildhall Art Gallery
The Guildhall Art Gallery houses the art collection of the City of London, England. The museum is located in the Moorgate area of the City of London. It is a stone building in a semi-Gothic style intended to be sympathetic to the historic Guil ...
in London. In 2022 the gallery lent some items for ''The Art of Colour'', a free, non-commercial exhibition held by
Tennants
Tennants is an auction house based at Leyburn in North Yorkshire, England. It claims to be the largest family-owned fine art auctioneers in the United Kingdom. The firm holds some 80 auctions a year and attracts buyers and sellers from around ...
auctioneers in
Leyburn
Leyburn is a market town and civil parish in North Yorkshire, England, sitting above the northern bank of the River Ure in Wensleydale. Historic counties of England, Historically in the North Riding of Yorkshire, the name was derived from 'Ley' ...
.

The present collection includes works by:
John Adams-Acton, Herbert Washington Addison, Nathaniel Hughes John Baird,
Benjamin Barker,
Thomas Barker,
William Roxby Beverly, R.W. Brown,
Vlaho Bukovac
Vlaho Bukovac (; ; 4 July 1855 – 23 April 1922) was a Croatian painting, painter and academic. His life and work were eclecticism, eclectic, for the artist pursued his career in a variety of locales and his style changed greatly over the course ...
,
Augustus Wall Callcott
Sir Augustus Wall Callcott (20 February 177925 November 1844) was an English landscape painter.
Life and work
Callcott was born at Kensington Gravel Pits, a village on the western edge of London, in the area now known as Notting Hill Gate ...
,
Joseph Clark,
Edward John Cobbett
Edward John Cobbett (1815–1899) was an English watercolour and oil painter.
Background
Cobbett was born in Marylebone, London, in 1815. He was a member of the Savage Club in his younger days, "when Bohemianism and exclusiveness were the p ...
,
Thomas Sidney Cooper
Thomas Sidney Cooper (26 September 18037 February 1902) was an English landscape painter from Canterbury, noted for his images of cattle and farm animals.
Early life
Thomas Sidney Cooper was born in St Peter's Street in Canterbury, Ken ...
,
Reinier Craeyvanger
Reinier Craeyvanger (29 February 1812 in Utrecht – 10 January 1880 in Amsterdam), was a 19th-century Dutch painter and etcher who was also a gifted musician.
Biography
He was born in Utrecht as the younger brother of Gijsbertus and the son of ...
,
Augustus Leopold Egg
Augustus Leopold Egg RA (2 May 1816 – 26 March 1863) was a British Victorian artist, and member of The Clique best known for his modern triptych '' Past and Present'' (1858), which depicts the breakup of a middle-class Victorian family.
Biog ...
,
Bernard Walter Evans
Bernard Walter Evans (26 December 1843 – 26 February 1922) was a British Landscape painting, landscape painter and Watercolor painting, watercolourist in the Romanticism, Romantic style, working mainly in Birmingham, Wales, London, Cannes an ...
, Emily Eyres,
William Powell Frith
William Powell Frith (9 January 1819 – 2 November 1909) was an English painter specialising in genre subjects and panoramic narrative works of life in the Victorian era. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1853, presenting ''The Slee ...
, P. Garrett,
Louis Ginnett,
John Atkinson Grimshaw
John Atkinson Grimshaw (6 September 1836 – 13 October 1893) was an English Victorian-era artist best known for his nocturnal scenes of urban landscapes.Alexander Robertson, ''Atkinson Grimshaw'', London, Phaidon Press, 1996 H. J. Dyos and ...
,
John Frederick Herring
John Frederick Herring Sr. (12 September 1795 – 23 September 1865), also known as John Frederick Herring I, was a painter, sign maker and coachman in Victorian England.[Thomas Holroyd
Thomas Holroyd (1821 – 10 March 1904) was an English portrait painting, portrait and Landscape painting, landscape painter working in Harrogate, North Riding of Yorkshire, England. Before his marriage he undertook painting tours to the United ...]
,
Edward Atkinson Hornel
Edward Atkinson Hornel (17 July 1864 – 30 June 1933) was a Scottish painter of landscapes, flowers, and foliage, with children. He was a cousin of James Hornell. His contemporaries in the Glasgow Boys called him Ned Hornel.
Biography
Hornel w ...
, Willis Richard Edwin Hudson, Robert Kirkland Jamieson, Wilfred Jenkins,
Hermann Kern
Hermann Armin von Kern (14 March 1838 – 18 January 1912) was an academic painter, one of the most popular Austrian genre painters of his time and a court painter at the court of Franz Josef I in Vienna.
Biography
He was born of a noble von Kern ...
,
John Buxton Knight
John William Buxton Knight RBA (1843 – 2 January 1908), English landscape painter, was born in Sevenoaks, Kent.
He started as a schoolmaster, but painting was his hobby, and he subsequently devoted himself to it. In 1861 he had his first pi ...
, Edward Ladell,
John Lavery
Sir John Lavery (20 March 1856 – 10 January 1941) was an Irish painter best known for his portraits and wartime depictions.
Life and career
John Lavery was born in inner North Belfast, on 20 March 1856 and baptised at St Patrick's Church ...
, H. Lewis,. James Thomas Linnell,
Arthur Lowe
Arthur Lowe (22 September 1915 – 15 April 1982) was an English actor. His acting career spanned 37 years, including starring roles in numerous theatre and television productions. He played Captain Mainwaring in the British sitcom ''Dad ...
,
Lowes Dalbiac Luard
Lowes Dalbiac Luard (27 August 1872 – 1944) was a British painter.
Early life
Luard was born in Kolkata, Calcutta, the son of Col. Charles Henry Luard of the Royal Engineers and grandson of Lt.-Col. John Luard. Educated in England, and ...
,
Ernest Stephen Lumsden,
Bernard Meninsky
Bernard Meninsky (25 July 1891 – 12 February 1950) was a British painter of figures and landscapes in oils, watercolour and gouache, a draughtsman and a teacher..
Biography Early life and education
Meninsky was born in Konotop, modern-day Ukr ...
,
Henry Moore
Henry Spencer Moore (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English artist. He is best known for his semi-abstract art, abstract monumental Bronze sculpture, bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. Moore ...
,
Paul Nash,
Patrick Nasmyth, John Nesbitt,
Albert Julius Olsson
Albert Julius Olsson (1 February 1864 – 7 September 1942) was a British Marine art, maritime artist and keen yachtsman. Olsson cruised with his yacht most summers, and The Studio (magazine), The Studio commented: 'He knows the way from t ...
,
Henry Perlee Parker
Henry Perlee Parker (1785–1873) was an artist who specialised in portrait and genre paintings. He made his mark in Newcastle upon Tyne in the 1820s through patronage by wealthy landowners and through paintings of large-scale events of civic p ...
,
Emily Murray Paterson,
John Pearson,
William Bruce Ellis Ranken
William Bruce Ellis Ranken (11 April 1881 – 31 March 1941) was a British artist and Edwardian aesthete.
Early life and education
He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, to Robert Ranken, Robert Burt Ranken, a wealthy and successful lawyer, an ...
, John Nicholas Rhodes, Pieter Rijs, Robert Ernest Roe, Felix Schlesinger,
Wilhelm Heinrich Schlesinger, Marck Senior, William Shackleton,
Walter Sickert
Walter Richard Sickert (31 May 1860 – 22 January 1942) was a German-born British painter and printmaker who was a member of the Camden Town Group of Post-Impressionist artists in early 20th-century London. He was an important influence on d ...
, Joseph Silcock,
Frank Spenlove-Spenlove, George Blackie Sticks
Joseph Thors,
Charles Towne, Franz Richard Unterberger,
Hendrik Verschuring,
Edward Wadsworth
Edward Alexander Wadsworth (19 October 1889 – 21 June 1949) was an English artist initially associated with the Vorticism movement. In the First World War he was part of a team involved in the transfer of dazzle camouflage designs to ships fo ...
,
George Frederic Watts
George Frederic Watts (23 February 1817 – 1 July 1904) was a British painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolism (arts), Symbolist movement. Watts became famous in his lifetime for his allegorical works, such as ''Hope (Watts), Hop ...
,
William John Seward Webber
William John Seward Webber (January 1842 – c. 17 March 1919) was an English sculptor who created civic statuary, and bust (sculpture), busts of national heroes and local worthies, in marble. He sculpted the statue of Queen Victoria for the Go ...
, William Tatton Winter,
Christopher Wood, and
Philips Wouwerman
Philips Wouwerman (also Wouwermans) (24 May 1619 (baptized) – 19 May 1668) was a Dutch painter of hunting, landscape and battle scenes. He became prolific during the Dutch Golden Age and joined the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke.
Life and work
P ...
.
Gallery building
History
The building was originally designed as the Promenade Rooms.
According to historian
Malcolm Neesam
Malcolm George Neesam (28 June 1946 – 28 June 2022) was an English historian and writer specialising in the history of Harrogate, North Yorkshire. He was also a librarian and archivist. His major works were the first two parts of a projected ...
, "it was paid for by a group of doctors who realised that if patients extended their visits at Harrogate to enjoy the entertainments provided, the medical profession would surely benefit".
Since its days as the Promenade Rooms, the building has been known variously as the Victoria Reading Rooms and library (from 1839).
the Assembly Rooms, the Old Town Hall, the Old Town Hall Theatre (1882–1990), and the Mercer Gallery (from 1991).
At one point it was the housing benefits office.
The Harrogate Amateur Minstrels set up a theatre in the Old Town Hall in 1882.
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish author, poet, and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential playwright ...
and
Lily Langtree appeared there. The theatre continued until 1900, when the
Grand Opera House superseded it in High Harrogate.
Between 1900 and 1991, the building was subject to various uses by Harrogate Council, for example the spa's Mechano-Therapeutic Department, and later the office of the borough treasurer.
From 1991, the building has been inhabited by the Mercer Art Gallery. In 2011, during the gallery's 20th anniversary, the building underwent refurbishment and redecoration.
It now has two main spaces for exhibitions: the main gallery in the old hall, and the north gallery, which is actually in the north-west wing.
Because the land slopes downwards from the west front of the building to the eastern back end of the hall, there is storage space under the hall and under the adjoining old house. In 1991 the hall's basement space was offered by Harrogate Council for use as a restaurant, but that tenancy no longer exists.
Structure
This is a
Grade II listed building
In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, H ...
.
The building has a "handsome
Italian Renaissance
The Italian Renaissance ( ) was a period in History of Italy, Italian history between the 14th and 16th centuries. The period is known for the initial development of the broader Renaissance culture that spread across Western Europe and marked t ...
stone frontage",
a symmetrical arrangement of five
bays
A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a ''gulf'', ''sea'', ''sound'', or ''bight''. A ''cove'' is a small, ci ...
with round-arched windows and a projecting entrance bay in the centre. The entrance is a
Corinthian portico
A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cu ...
, with a
tympanum above, carrying the
borough
A borough is an administrative division in various English language, English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely.
History
...
arms
Arms or ARMS may refer to:
*Arm or arms, the upper limbs of the body
Arm, Arms, or ARMS may also refer to:
People
* Ida A. T. Arms (1856–1931), American missionary-educator, temperance leader
Coat of arms or weapons
*Armaments or weapons
**Fi ...
, and the doorway has a fanlight within its arch.
This western façade on Swan Road was added, along with a general rebuild, between 1874 and 1876 by architect Arthur Hiscoe.
The entrance is "flanked by attached columns and a handsome
entablature
An entablature (; nativization of Italian , from "in" and "table") is the superstructure of moldings and bands which lies horizontally above columns, resting on their capitals. Entablatures are major elements of classical architecture, and ...
enriched with symbols of the locality".
It has a slated,
hipped roof
A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downward to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope, with variants including tented roofs and others. Thus, a hipped roof has no gables or other vertical sides ...
and a
parapet
A parapet is a barrier that is an upward extension of a wall at the edge of a roof, terrace, balcony, walkway or other structure. The word comes ultimately from the Italian ''parapetto'' (''parare'' 'to cover/defend' and ''petto'' 'chest/brea ...
with
balustrades
A baluster () is an upright support, often a vertical moulded shaft, square, or lathe-turned form found in stairways, parapets, and other architectural features. In furniture construction it is known as a spindle. Common materials used in its c ...
. Two high
pavilions
In architecture, ''pavilion'' has several meanings;
* It may be a subsidiary building that is either positioned separately or as an attachment to a main building. Often it is associated with pleasure. In palaces and traditional mansions of Asia ...
, "with steep
ashlar
Ashlar () is a cut and dressed rock (geology), stone, worked using a chisel to achieve a specific form, typically rectangular in shape. The term can also refer to a structure built from such stones.
Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, a ...
fishtail slate roofs of French type with ornamental cast iron crestings",
were designed by Hiscoe. The pavilions have "Corinthian
pilaster
In architecture, a pilaster is both a load-bearing section of thickened wall or column integrated into a wall, and a purely decorative element in classical architecture which gives the appearance of a supporting column and articulates an ext ...
s carrying continuous entablature".
Incorporated with the back of the building, and forming a south-east wing attached to the back of the main hall, is an old, three-storey house. It dates from the early 19th-century, and is constructed of squared, coursed
gritstone
Gritstone or grit is a hard, coarse-grained, siliceous sandstone. This term is especially applied to such sandstones that are quarried for building material. British gritstone was used for millstones to mill flour, to grind wood into pulp for ...
rubble, with three
sash window
A sash window or hung sash window is made of one or more movable panels, or "sashes". The individual sashes are traditionally paned windows, but can now contain an individual sheet (or sheets, in the case of double glazing) of glass.
History
...
s and a door.
Hiscoe's interior refurbishment included an internal hall with
coffer
A coffer (or coffering) in architecture is a series of sunken panels in the shape of a square, rectangle, or octagon in a ceiling, soffit or vault.
A series of these sunken panels was often used as decoration for a ceiling or a vault, al ...
ed ceiling, and two new rooms either side of the front door.
English Heritage
English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, a battlefield, medieval castles, Roman forts, historic industrial sites, Lis ...
now describes the hall as a "5-bay assembly room with coved cornice and arched windows"; the coffered ceiling is now gone.
See also
*
Listed buildings in Harrogate (Low Harrogate Ward)
Low Harrogate is a Ward (electoral subdivision), ward in the town of Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England. It contains 56 Listed building#England and Wales, listed buildings that are recorded in the National Heritage List for England. Of these, f ...
Notes
References
External links
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Museums in North Yorkshire
Art museums and galleries in North Yorkshire
Grade II listed buildings in North Yorkshire
Grade II listed museum buildings
Art museums and galleries established in 1991
1991 establishments in England
Arts in England
Buildings and structures in Harrogate