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Artist Q&A: Ealish Wilson textiles artist

6 May 2021

Ealish Wilson is a York-based textiles artist whose work is created with traditional skills such as smocking and pleating and complemented by the tools of modern technology like digital printing. Here she is in conversation with Judith Glover, former Secretary of the...

Portrait of Charlotte Fitzroy

5 Apr 2021

Artwork of the Month for April 2021 is one of the highlights of the Gallery collection, the portrait, by Sir Peter Lely, of Charlotte Fitzroy, the illegitimate daughter of King Charles II. The child is shown accompanied by an unidentified page boy. The painting was...

Stafford Pottery Plaque

3 Mar 2021

Artwork of the Month for March 2021 is an earthenware plaque which is on display in the Wall of Pots at York Art Gallery. Sammi Scott, a PHD student at the University of York, explores how this unassuming tile relates to a complex history of copies, forgeries,...

Artist Q&A: Angus Vasili, printmaker

2 Mar 2021

Angus Vasili is a York-based artist and printmaker whose work combines the abstractions of printmaking with the monumental forms of modern architecture.  Here he describes his artistic practice to Judith Glover, a former Secretary of the Friends.   Click...

Wentworth Woodhouse Centaurs

15 Feb 2021

Peter Brown, formerly Director of Fairfax House, York, writes about two beautiful sculptures in the Gallery’s collection, the Wentworth Woodhouse Centaurs. Almost certainly the work of Bartolomeo Cavaceppi, they were acquired by the Marquis of Rockingham in 1761...

Gulliver and the Houyhnhnms

6 Jan 2021

This month’s chosen artwork is ‘Gulliver reprimanded and silenced by his master when describing the horrors of war’ by Sawrey Gilpin (1733-1807) The Friends’ Secretary Benjamin Hilliam, describes how the artist’s interest in animal welfare and...

Q&A: Alison Taylor seascape photographer

6 Jan 2021

Alison Taylor is a seascape photographer and Associate of the Royal Photographic Society, whose work creates dramatic images of the Yorkshire coast. Here she is in conversation with Judith Glover, a former secretary of the Friends.   Click...

Kimono by Philip Wilson Steer

7 Dec 2020

This month’s chosen artwork is The Kimono (1894) by Philip Wilson Steer. Helena Cox, who is Curator at Beverley Art Gallery and currently completing a Doctorate at the University of York, discusses this small masterpiece, setting it in the context of Japonism,...

Portrait of a young man, 1556

5 Nov 2020

November’s Artwork of the Month has been chosen by Jeanne Nuechterlein, Reader in History of Art at the University of York, and member of the FYAG committee. This intriguing portrait of a young man, painted in 1556, featured in the exhibition  ‘Making a...

Portrait of Henry Baines, Botanist of York

8 Oct 2020

The portrait of Henry Baines, the botanist and creator of York’s Museum Gardens, was painted in 1874 by the Yorkshire artist Thomas Banks (1828-1896). Its recent conservation has been fully funded by the Friends of York Art Gallery. Peter Hogarth, a member of...