Research

You are welcome to make an appointment to view artworks or artefacts from our collections for personal or academic research. Please contact curators@warwickdc.gov.uk.

Explore some recent research by the collections and engagement team:

• Makers as educators, curators and collectors: The Jahn family and their impact on decorative art collections in the West Midlands (2026)
  This article explores how Louis Jahn (1839–1911) and his sons Albert (1865–1947) and Francis (1871–1967) played foundational roles in the civic museums of Hanley, Wolverhampton and Leamington Spa respectively. With a background in the pottery industry, the Jahns became influential collectors and curators of ceramics and decorative art.
   
• British Local History and the Black Atlantic (2024)
  This book of essays was published to accompany the exhibition ‘‘Built with malice aforethought’: Leamington Spa and the Black Atlantic’. It explores the complex webs of connections that link places all over Britain to the Atlantic world as a result of enslavement and empire.
   
• Dutch Painting at Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum (2023)
  This article introduces LSAG&M’s collection of Dutch paintings (44 oil paintings and one watercolour). These include some of the oldest paintings in the fine art collection, including important works by leading artists 17th-century painters Godfried Schalcken and Abraham Bloemaert.
   
• Godfried Schalcken’s Self Portrait by Candlelight (2023)
  Godfried Schalcken was already famous in his homeland of the Dutch Republic when he sailed for England in 1692. Celebrated for his small, intricately detailed nocturnal scenes, Schalcken hoped to grow his following across the Channel in the court of King William and Queen Mary and vie for the position of official portrait painter to the Crown. This self-portrait acted as his visual CV.
   
• What Does Art of the ‘Last Pre-Raphaelites’ Look Like? (2022)
  The exhibition 'Modern Pre-Raphaelite Visionaries: British Art, 1880–1930' at LSAG&M offered the chance to look afresh at paintings by forgotten artists. Working with images from the Victorian era dealing with poetic, literary, fairy tale or religious subject matters, this exhibition brought together artists who came to be seen as out of their time, late or belated, the 'Last Pre-Raphaelites' or 'Last Romantics'.
   
• Female Artists and Flowers (2022)
  Bunches of tulips lying on a table, a bowl of delicate violets, a green glass vase bursting with colourful, loosely painted peonies. These are the subjects of just some of the paintings by local female artists in the collection at LSAG&M which were included in the exhibition 'Outgrowing: Flowers and female artists, 1700 to Now'. This article discusses the artists and their stories.
   
• On Exhibit: Modern Mercia, A Lockdown Exhibition (2021)
  LSAG&M’s exhibition ‘Modern Mercia’ explored modern art and design produced in Coventry and Warwickshire after the Second World War. In this article, curators Jane Simpkiss (LSAG&M) and Louise Campbell (University of Warwick) introduce the key themes of the show and reflect on their experience of curation in lockdown.
   
• Picturing the Doctor in Art: A Diagnosis (2021)
  How doctors are portrayed in visual culture can tell us a great deal about how medical institutions, practitioners and the public perceive the art of medicine and the role they want it to play in our society.
   
• On Exhibit: Marc Quinn and Alexa Wright (2020)
  In 1999, LSAG&M re-opened its doors to the public in its new location: the spa town’s historic Royal Pump Rooms. Since 2000, the Art Gallery has developed a specialist collection called ‘Medicate’, which links to the history of the Pump Rooms as a former medical treatment centre, and expands the collections of contemporary art and medical equipment. This article focuses on four works from this collection that explore the aesthetics of disability, from antiquity to the modern age.
   
• Searching for Pure Form: Terry Frost, Madrigal (1949) (2018)
  This article explores the place of Terry Frost’s painting Madrigal in his career, and its relation to abstract painting elsewhere in post-war Britain and beyond.
   
• Thomas Baker: a landscapist revealed through his diaries (2018)
  In 2018 Robert Mulraine, with the assistance of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, published an online catalogue raisonné of the work of Thomas Baker of Leamington. This article examines Baker's extraordinarily detailed diaries.