Biography
Royal Albert Memorial Museum's art collection comprises of over 8,000 works in an eclectic mix of paintings, watercolours, drawings, prints and sculpture, representing important British artists and celebrating the Museum’s location in Exeter, in the South West.
The painting collection of some 500 works ranges from the 16th to 20th centuries and includes portraiture, landscapes, genre and modern by local and national artists. With works by Thomas Gainsborough, Thomas Patch, Francis Hayman, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Benjamin Robert Haydon, Stanhope Forbes, Terry Frost and Duncan Grant, amongst others.
There are superb examples from the Victorian period in RAMM’s collection which includes works by William Powell Frith, Frank Holl and Edward J Poynter. The paintings are primarily British and range from ‘sentimental’ paintings by Kate Greenaway and John Wainwright; to a post Pre-Raphaelite painting by Poynter; to landscape and portraiture by Danby and Frith, whose The Fair Toxophilites depicts the artist’s children and is one of RAMM’s most well-known Victorian paintings.
RAMM also has a strong collection of early-to-mid 20th century paintings, prints and drawings, with paintings by members of the Camden Town Group such as Walter Sickert, Harold Gilman and Lucien Pissarro. Members of the St Ives School are represented together with individual paintings by John Nash, William Roberts, John Minton, Duncan Grant, William Walcot, Edward Burra and David Bomberg.
Contemporary works also populate the collection with outstanding works by Gillian Ayres, Steffen Dam, Nicky Hirst, Maria Lalic, Michelle McKinney, Ryan Mosley and Brian Rice. RAMM, Exeter was awarded the Art Fund Museum of the Year (2012).
