As we mark a month since our exhibition From Impressionism to Industrialism: Valette, Lowry & Beyond came to an end, we wanted to give a final farewell to the work at its centre: The Irwell, 1913 by Pierre Adolphe Valette.
While the excitement surrounding The Irwell becoming available on the market - a real coup, given that other paintings of this style and stature are held in the Manchester Art Gallery collection - was covered by the Manchester Evening New and Granada TV. A further pleasure for the gallery was the access to an artwork that connected with, and stimulated conversations around, the contemporary Northern Artists we represent, as well as, of course, the painting as a marker of the industrial influence Valette had on his student Lowry.
The Irwell stands as a defining landmark within Valette's oeuvre, belonging to the Manchester paintings that placed his art historically. It also embodies all the distinctive qualities that defined his vision of the industrial city: a fascination with atmospheric smog, a refined late-Impressionist technique, commercial waterways, and the warm, echoing glow of city lights flickering amidst the urban haze.
The painting allowed us to trace a history of interpreting the northern landscape, beginning with the waterways of Edwardian Manchester seen through a French Impressionist lens and running right through to today: en plein air paintings of The Peveril of the Peak and Deansgate by the Northern Boys, Helen Clapcott's idée fixe with Stockport Viaduct and its disappearing mills, and Ian Mood’s abstracted take on the Demolition of Royal Doulton - to name but a few.
With The Irwell coming from Valette's most celebrated period, the works on the adjacent walls in From Impressionism to Industrialism allowed Valette’s career as an artist to be captured in its entirety. On the wall opposite, collectable urban scenes and British and French landscapes hung. While to the left of The Irwell, Valette's Self Portrait was framed by works portraying his wife Gabrielle (Gabrielle and Fishbowl), his second wife Andrée (Andrée aved Beret), and his son Tita. The presence of portraiture brought a particularly captivating psychological thread: the essence of Valette’s sitters resonated with Lowry's more impersonal yet universal figures in A Study in Edinburgh and At the Seaside, and elsewhere in the exhibition they found a contemporary echo in Ghislaine Howard's Embracing Manchester series.
To celebrate the connections The Irwell so generously opened up, we close with a series of gallery picks moving between Valette and the contemporary artists we represent - merging past and present. The pairings are deliberately loose but it is precisely in that looseness that something rewarding emerges - patterns and parallels between works temporarily disparate yet bound by a regional sensibility:
High Flying Birds by Michael Ashcroft and Building and Canal, Dusk (Edinburgh) by Adoplhe Valette
Industrial landscapes a century apart: both depicting new waves of the commercial sector shaped by the changing requirements of modern life!
In High Flying Birds, the canyon-like corridor of high-rise glass buildings shows Manchester's proliferation of towering offices and flats, but the tone is neither judgemental of change nor sentimental about the past. The painting - its road signs and street lamps beginning to glow - cares about capturing the feeling of the present, of what it is like to look at crisp, glossy modern buildings in the late afternoon. Equally, Building and Canal, Dusk (Edinburgh) by Adolphe Valette captures the Leamington Lift Bridge. Built in 1906, it is the only surviving hydraulic and electrically operated lift bridge on the Union Canal, which now stands as a historical reminder of the early 20th century ingenuity of technology accommodating the shipping industry without disrupting vital overland transport and road networks. Like Michael Ashcroft’s artwork, Building and Canal, Dusk (Edinburgh) is one of resonance with the changing environment around him at the time, through the haziness of painting and the warm glow of light from the building, there is the prevailing feeling of empathy.
Lost Light by Linda Scwab and Stokesay Castle,Shropshire by Adoplhe Valette
In Lost Light, the figures retain an adamant gaze - as if posing for a photograph whose negative has been left too long in the sun. The consistent use of colour blurs where the shrubbery and the women begin and end - submerged in the environment, they are only differentiated by their figurative lines and white attire. This is in line with Linda Schawab’s methodology: to dissolve archival and iPhone images with one another, creating a nostalgic, out-of-time feel. Stokesay Castle, Shropshire works differently but arrives at a similar tenderness. Stokesay Castle, Shropshire depicts not only, as the title suggests, one of the finest surviving fortified manor houses in England, but captures a family scene from a time gone by. The eye is drawn to the family in the foreground - particularly the child playing with their dog - as they appear joyous and expectant on their approach to the battlement. Like Lost Light, their attire is the point of discernment from the countryside scene. Both artworks lean towards explorations of relationships: the huddles of family, perhaps fictitious amalgamations, but not any the less real for it.
Looking down the canal near King's Ransom by Matthew Thompson and Lake District by Adoplhe Valette
In Looking Down the Canal near King's Ransom, the engineered channel cuts through the urban environment. The canal is infrastructure, but it doesn't feel like it: through Thompson's restless mark-making, the water allies itself with the sky. Meanwhile, the water in Valette's Lake District is purely natural: a broad, pewter expanse held between moorland and cloud, viewed from above with a stillness that feels unhurried. The comparison works to question our relation to nature - whether the waterway is carved by hand or carved by glaciers, both artists find in it the same thing a source of inspiration. Thompson brings a local, contemporary eye to the well-trodden canal path while Valette, by contrast, offers a rare record of a French Impressionist's encounter with the English landscape. Despite their differing visual languages, Matthew Thompson’s contemporary canal scene, Looking down the canal near King's Ransom and Adolphe Valette’s Lake District are connected through a combination of commitment to literal detail but an overall favour of movement and mood.
