Introduction

 

 

The Victor Batte-Lay Trust Collection at the Minories, in Colchester, in Essex, was originally set up by Clarence Victor Lay, a local dignitary. Clarence Victor Lay was born in Holy Trinity Parish in Colchester in 1865 and was educated at Colchester Royal Grammar School. He was an avid collector of furniture and paintings who made his reputation in the brewing industry in the King’s Lynn area. He changed his name to Batte-Lay by deed poll in 1922 and, on his retirement, went back to Colchester. After his death, his widow, Margaret Eleanore Batte-Lay looked after his collection for twenty years. In January 1955, before she died, she directed her Trustees to purchase and endow a building in Colchester as a memorial to her husband “for the benefit and advantage of the inhabitants of Colchester and in particular those who shall take an interest in the artistic and antiquarian features of the town.” A venue was therefore acquired and The Minories, then owned by Dr Bensusan-Butt, a second generation woman doctor and sister-in-law of Lucien Pissarro, was purchased in 1956. The Minories was opened to the public as an Art Gallery on the 30th May 1958 by the then Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, later knighted as Sir Trenchard Cox (see his portrait in the collection) and Mr R.A. Butler, Home Secretary.

 

The original bequest which focused on British art and artists from the 17th century onwards included still lives, regency portraits, 18th century prints and drawings, 19th century samplers and oil paintings. It then expanded through a number of modern acquisitions and loans over the years and, despite a period of financial difficulties in the 1990s which meant that a small number of works had to be sold, the collection now brings together a wide and interesting range of material.

 

Today, the Victor Batte-Lay Collection includes works by internationally celebrated artists with local relevance such as John Constable with three drawings, John and Paul Nash with a large number of lithographs and Camille Pissarro with a series of pencil caricature sketches drawn for his mother. Roderic Barrett whose work is at the V&A, Maggi Hambling RA with a painting from The Max Wall series and Humphrey Spender with a watercolour entitled Gross National Product are also represented. The Collection also includes a painting by Charles Ginner and a painting by William Ratcliff from the Camden Town Group both illustrating their vision of modernity in the early 20th century. Leon Underwood who counted Henry Moore as one of his students is there too, not to mention Gino Severini with a book of prints and watercolours entitled Fleurs et Masques.

There is also a significant representation of important 18th and 19th century painters such as John Sell Cotman with an 1838 series of sketches and studies entitled Liber Studiorum comparable to that of Constable and Turner and there are two mezzotints by Richard Houston after John Cotes’s portraits of the celebrated Countess of Coventry and Duchess of Hamilton.

 

Altogether the Victor Batte-Lay Collection holds a varied collection which unfortunately is not on permanent display. In 2006 the oil paintings in the collection were recorded by the Public Catalogue Foundation at the instigation of the National Gallery and these were included in their Essex Catalogue. It is only now thanks to the generosity of a private donor and Essex Heritage Trust that it has been possible to photograph and produce an online catalogue, thus partly remedying to the lack of access to publicly owned collections as deplored by the Public Catalogue Foundation in a report to the House of Commons' Culture, Media and Sport Committee in 2006.

 

I wish to thank the following people for their efforts, by which the whole project was also made possible: Doug Atfield, the professional photographer for producing such beautiful pictures, Students from the Art History and Theory Department at the University of Essex for their research on artists and their work, Tom Hodgson, Community History Manager and Ciara Canning Assistant Curator of Community History from Colchester and Ipswich Museum Service for giving me access to the collection and supervising the photography, Charlotte Hodgson for contributing to the research on the catalogue, Janet Spence for her help with producing valuable sources of information on the catalogue, and of course Sophie Baker for producing such a complex and visually attractive internet site. Finally I would like to thank Mrs Suki Cohen, a Victor Batte-Lay Trustee and Chairman of the Friends of the Minories and Canon John Woods, Chairman of the Victor Batte-Lay Trust, without whose support this project would not have come to fruition.

 

Evelyne Bell

July 2008