Collection of a lifetime: Sir William Burrell's dazzling legacy

It was in October 1983 that the Burrell Collection building was opened by the late Queen, a permanent home finally having been found for Sir William’s dazzling collection of art and antiques, which he had donated to the city as far back as 1944. 

The launch of the gallery in such a striking, purpose-built venue played a key role in the rejuvenation of Glasgow - a spectacular process that also included the 1988 Garden Festival and its year as European City of Culture in 1990 - after decades of industrial decline.

In October 2016 the Collection closed  for a wide-ranging refurbishment and redisplay under the Burrell Renaissance Project and reopened to acclaim on March 29, 2022.

Review: Degas at the Burrell 'is art world blockbuster in the making'

Today the “reimagined” building houses no fewer than 9,000 objects from the Burrell Collection. 
The highlights are many: a substantial array of Chinese art, paintings by such prominent French artists as Degas, Manet and Cezanne, medieval treasures including stained glass, arms and armour, and around 200 tapestries that are said to be amongst the finest anywhere in the world.

More than one million visitors have filed through the doors since the re-opening, and the Burrell even won the prestigious Art Fund Museum of the Year 2023 title, the world’s largest museum prize.

The Degas exhibition, which runs until September 30, has won praise from critics (in the words of The Herald’s Barry Didcock, it’s “an art-world blockbuster in the making”). It assembles some 50 of Degas’s works, including, for the very first time, all 23 of Sir William’s confirmed purchases of paintings by the renowned Impressionist artist.

William Burrell was born in Glasgow in 1861 and he joined his father and brother in the family ship-owning business as a shipping merchant. 

Glasgow's Burrell Collection named Art Fund Museum of the Year

He went on, through astute investments, to make his fortune, which allowed him to amass such a stunning collection of art and antiques. He was knighted in 1927 for services to art.

He is reckoned to have seen his first Degas painting, Le Maitre de ballet, in 1888, at an International Exhibition staged by Glasgow and which was opened by Queen Victoria. At that time Burrell was the Austro-Hungarian Consul. A few years later he purchased his very first Degas, a pastel entitled La Premiere Danseuse (The Encore).

In the words of an essay by Dr Martin Bellamy and Vivien Hamilton of  Glasgow Life Museums, in Discovering Degas, the heavily illustrated book that accompanies the new exhibition, Burrell amassed the largest number of Degas works of any collector in Britain.

“His collection included stunning paintings, pastels and drawings that were representative of Degas’s oeuvre, including horse-racing, portraiture, the ballet and the private world of women at their toilette,” write Bellamy and Hamilton.

“Burrell’s collection is important, not just because of its size and artistic significance, but because it played an important role in bringing Degas to the British public. Burrell did not keep his collection hidden at home purely for his own private admiration but lent works to galleries across the country so that he could share his passion for this extraordinary artist”.

All of Burrell’s Degas works were included in the gift he made of his collection to Glasgow in 1944. “No greater windfall ever came to Glasgow,” the Glasgow Herald observed in March 1958, in its obituary of Sir William, who had died, aged 97. “It placed the city in an unrivalled position as an art-owning community and evoked the warmest sense of gratitude in every citizen.”

Australia Fair: Degas masterpieces from Burrell Collection make first international trip - to Melbourne

One of the restrictions involved in the gift was that the collection had to be 16 miles (later amended to 13) from the centre of Glasgow, and this may have complicated the search for a suitable site.
While the search spanned the decades, items from the collection were secretly held in various locations across Glasgow, including the Camphill Museum in Queen’s Park, Aikenhead House in King’s Park, and the former tram depot at Coplawhill, which now houses Tramway.

In 1951 it was announced that Dougalston estate, near Milngavie, had been gifted to the Corporation by the late widow of the Glasgow shipbuilder Arthur Connell as a possible home for the collection. Sir William declined, however, upon learning that the National Coal Board had started to sink bores in the area, with the idea of beginning coal-mining there.

Hugh Fraser’s Mugdock Castle estate, near Milngavie  Sir William’s initial preference  came under consideration at one point.

Then in December 1963 the Maxwell MacDonald family offered Pollok House and the estate at Pollok to the nation via the National Trust. On a grey day later that month representatives of the Trust and the Corporation’s Special Committee on the Burrell Art Collection visited the estate and decided that it would be ideal as a home for Burrell’s artworks.

But the proposal soon became bogged down over the burden that the National Trust would, without external financial assistance, face in future care and maintenance of the property.

Burrell Collection: 10 must-see objects

In May 1966 Glasgow Springburn MP Richard Buchanan, who had previously been chair of that Corporation committee, voiced his frustration in the House of Commons. Urging the government and the Corporation to speedily resolve the issue, Mr Buchanan declared: “I hope that all obstacles to the housing of this fabulous collection may be removed and that it may yet be seen in its entirety in the gorgeous setting of Pollok, before this generation passes into oblivion.”

Thirty-nine long years after the Burrell collection was given to Glasgow, it finally found a home in Pollok. Four successive directors of Glasgow Museums and Art Galleries - Dr Tom Honeyman, Dr Stuart Henderson, Trevor Walden and the then incumbent, Alasdair Auld - all dealt with what Mr Auld termed the “difficulties, excitements and frustrations” of the project.

Burrell died, aged 97, in March 1958, at his home at Hutton Castle, in the Borders, and The Glasgow Herald’s coverage of his death has a revealing line about his motivations and his sense of public duty.

In November 1899 he had become a member of Glasgow Corporation. As a convener of a health sub-committee he “did good service in helping to clear away some of the worst slums at that time in Glasgow”, noted the Herald obituary.

Andrew Hood, Lord Provost at the time of Burrell’s death, said that, years earlier, he had visited Burrell to discuss arrangements for housing the collection.

“He recalled to me the fact that he had been what was regarded as a wealthy shipowner in the city of Glasgow in his younger days, and he had become so much impressed by the necessity of doing something about Glasgow’s very serious housing problem that he decided to sell all his ships.” This was done so that he could join the Corporation and help tackle the slums issue.

“After seven years as a member of the Corporation,” Mr Hood went on, “he became so disappointed over his inability to realise his ambition that, in his words, he ‘bought back his ships and became a millionaire shipowner again’.”
 
* Tickets for the Degas exhibition can be booked at burrellcollection.com/discovering-degas-collecting-in-the-time-of-william-burrell/