The history of the Jerwood Collection reflects, in part, the wider story of Jerwood itself and, as with most private collections, many works have a personal significance. When a Georgian townhouse in London’s Fitzroy Square became the base for Jerwood’s offices, the empty walls of the four-storey house, adjacent to Duncan Grant’s studio, were an open invitation to form an art collection, with 20th century British art as the main thrust of what has now become the Jerwood Collection.
In the first years of collecting Alan Grieve was guided by the Jerwood Advisory Board and the late Sir Peter Wakefield (Director, National Art Collections Fund, now the Art Fund) who suggested some early key purchases including, Sir Frank Brangwyn’s From my Window at Ditchling. Bought in 1993, it is a quiet contemplative work, depicting the view from the artist’s Sussex home, ‘The Jointure’.
A year later, the Jerwood Painting Prize was launched to ‘foster the enjoyment and understanding of painting and to draw attention to the outstanding work being done by painters in Britain’. The major prize of £30,000 set the award as the most valuable British art prize at the time, and from 1994-2003 it was awarded annually in recognition of an artist’s recent body of work.
Photo: Sir Frank Brangwyn RA RWS (1867-1956), From my Window at Ditchling, circa 1925 © The Estate of Frank Brangwyn/Bridgeman Images