Sporting Art Talk : The Abe Bailey Bequest


 
Thursday January 13th 11:00am Sponsored by Rountree Tryon Galleries
The Abe Bailey Bequest: a gift of British sporting art for South Africa

In the 1930s, British-South African businessman Sir Abe Bailey bequeathed his collection of British sporting art and other 18thcentury  and 19th century  paintings to South Africa. The collection arrived in the country in 1946 and massively boosted the holdings of the South African National Gallery. From the outset, however, these works of art aroused as much criticism as praise. This talk examines the background to the bequest, looks at some of the works within it, and considers why – from the 1940s up to the present – it has continued to provoke controversy.
 
Anna Tietze was born and educated in Britain. After graduating from the universities of Oxford and Essex, she moved to South Africa. She is a senior lecturer in art history at the University of Cape Town, where she has taught for many years. With a research interest in art collecting, she has published and curated exhibitions at the South African National Gallery on the institution’s pre-war gift collections. Among these have been two major exhibitions of the Abe Bailey collection. Accompanying the second (2008) Bailey exhibition, and funded by the Bailey Trust, Anna published the complete catalogue of the Bailey bequest.    
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Anna Tietze: Curator Abe Bailey Collection