Harrow School Old Speech Room Gallery and Museum

Harrow School Old Speech Room Gallery and Museum

Harrow School
5 High Street
Harrow on the Hill
Middlesex
Harrow
London
HA1 3HP

Tel: 020 8872 8000
E-Mail: communications-mgr@harrowschool.org.uk

Web: Harrow School Old Speech Room Gallery and Museum

About Harrow School Old Speech Room Gallery and Museum

Old Speech Room Gallery and Museum

The Old Speech Room was built in 1819-21 as a chamber in which to encourage public speaking. It was converted into a gallery by Alan Irvine in 1976 as a repository for the School's distinguished collection of antiquities and fine art. The Gallery runs the Old Speech Room Gallery Arts Society, through which boys help to research, design and curate exhibitions.

The Collections

The collections comprise Egyptian, Greek and Etruscan antiquities, English watercolours, Modern British paintings, Japanese prints, photographs, sculpture, manuscripts, rare Bibles, printed books, coins, stamps and natural history. There is also a set of Stuart Devlin’s parcel gilt Easter eggs. Designed in the tradition of Fabergé, each egg contains a surprise when opened, such as a jester, a fish in seaweed or a mouse in a wedge of cheese.

Sir Winston Churchill’s A Distant View of Venice, 1929 is one of the highlights of the collection. It is an excellent example of his robust and energetic style. Churchill is above all a colourist. He captured the essence of the Venetian colour in the city, the clouds and their reflections in the water. The bravura brushwork gives texture to the surface of the canvas, from the impasto in the sky to the long, fluid strokes in the water. His enthusiasm was inexhaustible. In his essay Painting as a Pastime, he wrote: "When I get to heaven I mean to spend a considerable portion of my first million years in painting, and so get to the bottom of the subject."

Not all of the collections can be displayed at the same time but the following items are usually on show: Greek and Egyptian antiquities, paintings by Romney, Sir Winston Churchill, David Jones and Dan Llywelyn Hall, portrait busts of Old Harrovians such as Byron and Sheridan as well as a recently acquired Chinese Imperial table screen.