Haworth Art Gallery – Accrington

Experience beautiful artistry and craftsmanship, enjoy garden walks with stunning views and relax in the friendly atmosphere of an outstanding Arts & Crafts home.

The Haworth Art Gallery houses a beautiful collection of 18th and 19th century paintings including, My Ladye’s Palfrey by J. F. Herring, animal paintings by Thomas Sydney Cooper, The Laundress by Edouard Frère and Faith by Frederic Leighton.

On permanent exhibition is Claude-Joseph Vernet’s Storm off the French Coast,  a painting which displays great naturalism and even romanticism in the violent storm, turbulent sea and threatening sky.

The gallery’s watercolours include a range of landscape, architecture and still life by Copley Fielding, David Cox, Samuel Prout and W. H. Hunt. They are unfortunately not on permanent display for conservation reasons.

Myles Birket Foster’s The Old Chair Mender and Pedlar hanging baskets near Whitley is notable for its ambitious and elaborate compostion portraying idylic English village life.

The gallery hosts temporary exhibitions and there is an annual open exhibition which attracts artists from across the country.

Tiffany glassware is one of the great expressions of the Arts & Crafts Movement with wonderful art nouveau styled vases, glass mosaics, lamps and stained glass windows. To create these, Louis Comfort Tiffany created new ways of working and glass combinations not seen before. In 1892, he patented Favrile glass, which, according to Tiffany…

… is distinguished by brilliant or deeply toned colors, usually iridescent like the wings of certain American butterflies, the necks of pigeons and peacocks, the wing covers of various beetles.

His declared aim was the pursuit of beauty, something which he and his fellow artists undoubtedly achieved. The marvellous collection at the Haworth, the largest in Europe, contains some of his most beautiful works.

The Haworth’s unique stables and motor house are made to the same Arts & Crafts quality as the house and garden and are a joy to behold.

They now provide for a lively community of artist’s studios, where exhibitions, workshops, events and sale of work take place.

Architect, Walter Brierley, and landscape gardener, Simeon Marshall, designed Howarth Park to embrace the sweeping views of the Pennine hills. Their Arts & Crafts design followed the ideal set by Francis Bacon…

• ‘a green at the entrance’ to the house
• ‘the main garden in the midst’ on the slopes overlooked by the terrace and,
• ‘a heath in the going forth’, the wild grass slopes to the north.

The grassed areas are enclosed by belts of trees and rhododendrons while a  circular pond in a dramatic old quarry holds the composition together (needs restoration).

The south lawn has a beautiful circular rose garden while a similar motif was used for a circular bed at the northern exit.

The planting was designed by Simeon Marshall of internationally acclaimed James Backhouses & Sons Nursery, York. An important landscape designer, he also created gardens at Thornbridge Hall, Bakewell, Derbyshire where, as at the Haworth, he created a ‘thousand shades of green’ in the landscape.