North West Hidden Paintings

I love this place. This is Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery. I

used to spend hours in here as a kid. Hundreds of beautiful pictures.

But these are just the tip of the iceberg. The vast majority of

public art is hidden from view. It's estimated that eighty per cent

of the national collection is either in storage or in places it

just can't be seen. Today, I'm going to find out why that is and,

at the same time, unearth some fantastic paintings that haven't

This is art on the move, works coming out of storage to take their

bow in a revamp of a popular The room, which is dedicated to

British art, is just days away from For curator Laura MacCulloch, these

are nervous times. A lot of preparation has gone into the new

look, and it needs to be right. Yeah, that looks good. I'm getting

a sneak preview not only of the gallery but also of some paintings

which have been hidden for a long, So, Laura, this is a permanent

gallery. I remember this. You do? But it looks very different,

Yeah. Yeah! About every ten years, we try and redo a permanent gallery.

They get tired. We've moved pictures around. There's holes or

shadows where one's been and another one's gone in. So we've

completely gutted the gallery, took all the paintings out, stripped all

the walls, painted. What about the pieces themselves? Some of them I

remember, but some of them I don't. Yeah, some haven't seen the light

of day for years. So it's really exciting, because as we've

refurbished, we've suddenly wanted to get things out that we haven't

been able to have out before. And there's more paintings on all the

sides. We've got the war artists section. This painting here hasn't

ever been on permanent display, as far as I know. It's by Stephen Bone,

who was an official war artist. He was mainly with the Navy. It's

called The Four-Inch Guns. This is the guns on the boat. It's one of

the tiniest pictures going into the gallery, but I love it. Why is that

name familiar, Bone? His father was the first ever official war artist.

Muirhead Bone was the first official war artist in the First

World War. Bone and son. Wow! special. Artists around the globe

have always painted war scenes, but in Britain in the Second World War,

around thirty were given full-time commissions, while hundreds of

others were paid for work they submitted. Between them all, they

captured the action on the front line and also showed how Britain

I like this. What's this one? Tell me about this one. This is Albert

Richards, the Liverpool artist, who was the youngest official war

artist and, sadly, died in action aged only 25. A local boy. A really

poignant story. And in some ways, he's one of our hidden artists,

because we haven't had his works on permanent display before. So this

is great. It's really good to be able to tell the story of the

Liverpool boy, Liverpool hero - as it turns out. Why has this been

hidden? Why have you been hiding this? There's just not been enough

space to have it up. So I'm really pleased to be able to have that up

now, because I think it will really bring people in. Do people know

about Albert Richards? Not really, no. So this is why it's so exciting,

because he would have been really good, he would have been a

household name, had he lived. I'm pretty certain he would have been

as big as, say, Lucian Freud. Are there any more Albert Richards?

We've got his self-portrait in the gallery, over here. So this is him!

This is him. This is a weird, weird picture, and it's very surreal. But

he did actually see surrealist works in the Walker's when he was a

student at Wallasey Arts School, and you can definitely see the

influence in all these strange things that are going on round the

corner. This is him. This is what he looked like. With glasses on,

though, and I don't think he did wear glasses. I think those are for

effect. So what date will this be? How old is this? 1939. He's twenty

in this picture. He's twenty? Wow. And they're all waiting for

war. So this strange atmosphere in the picture - actually, an

unsettling atmosphere - you can understand it. Well, hence the

parachutist - because that was the concern, the worry, that it's going

to come from the sky - and the clenched-fist salute. This was the

salute of the International Brigade in Spain. This is the anti-fascist

salute. And he's lived through all that. So you can see how life and

death, which is what this painting conjures up, is very much in his

Richards' paintings have got me hooked, and I want to see more,

which means a trip to the Walker storeroom. In all my visits, I've

never been in here. This is the art you don't see, hidden away, waiting

for its moment in the spotlight. this is the art gallery's smaller

picture store, and there's just hundreds of hidden gems down here.

Concealed on one of the racks is another Albert Richards painting,

one which hasn't made it into the This work is Holland, Cold Holland,

and this is when Albert is an official war artist. This is June

'44. And actually, it's interesting, because it's not a military piece.

It's the civilians that he's focusing on here. And it's called

Holland, Cold Holland because that winter was incredibly cold. These

are the people of Holland, who are absolutely destitute, have been

brought to their knees by the war with Germany, and what they're

doing is illegally picking up coal. But I love the sense of perspective.

A strange perspective. Really strange, that idea of the surreal.

And yes, he's recording what's going on, but he's also making an

aesthetic picture of it. And so that idea of being a war artist -

you could take a photograph to record things, but actually, the

Government were interested in having that aesthetic, more

emotional response to war. Well, what a shame there's not enough

The Walker Art Gallery has a collection of around 12,000 works

of art, and we can probably only physically display at any one time

around twenty per cent of that Also, watercolours and drawings

can't be exposed to light continuously without affecting

their condition. So we have to make decisions about what we can show at

any one time, both caring for the work of art but also thinking about

the space that we have available in Sometimes, works just aren't in

good enough condition to go on display. All galleries carry out

conservation work to get items looking their best. At the

Liverpool Conservation Centre, another Albert Richards painting is

The painting itself is a Seacombe ferry in wartime, and the reason

why it's come into the studio is because we're cleaning the glass,

giving it a Hoover out and making Conservation is such an important

part of looking after the work. You know, without the different

treatments available, works can And I found another Richards

painting not a million miles from the Walker. This is the building

next door, Liverpool's World Museum. Not all hidden art is in storage.

Some of it's actually on view, just An Albert Richards on an office

wall. And here he is, right on the front line, Holland 1944. The

Allied advance. This is the flooded It's a wonderful story, the

Liverpool lad who painted the war. And it's a story that's come alive

for me thanks to a few hidden paintings. Albert was one of a

select band of artists in the thick of battle. But others were working

closer to home, their mission to illustrate how war shaped lives

wherever you are. While Albert Richards was away fighting for king

and country, painting everything he saw on the front line, war art of a

very different kind was being produced in Manchester, inspired by

the man who ran this place, the Manchester Art Gallery. Lawrence

Haward was the gallery's first ever director. He ran it from the start

of the First World War to the end of the Second, and in that time he

completely transformed it. One of the last things he did helped

This is the Manchester Gallery, which tells the story of this great

city. Pride of place goes to two oil paintings which described the

intense war effort that took place here during World War Two. It turns

out, though, that they're just a small part of Lawrence Haward's

grand plan. NEWSREEL: Despite the worst time

Manchester has experienced since the outbreak of war, the people's

chins are up. Manchester came under relentless attack during the war

because it was such a crucial centre of industrial activity.

Firms changed production to help with the war effort. Workers,

mainly women, churned out armaments and engines, tanks and aeroplanes.

Haward knew that history was being Lawrence Haward rounded up some

sixteen artists from Manchester, and his great idea was that he

would go round the various factories and research laboratories

that were engaged in the war effort and say, "Here's an artist I've

found. I would like you to commission this artist to record

what you're doing for the war effort. And then, when they've made

the work for you, you can donate it back to the gallery." And that's

exactly what happened. That's pretty canny! He was a very canny

man. This fabulous painting of the Metropolitan-Vickers works in

Trafford Park has been on regular display. The artist is Charles

Cundall. He was born in Stretford, so he was a local lad, and he was

trained at Manchester School of Art. He was particularly adept at crowd

scenes, so he was an obvious choice for Lawrence Haward when he was

The second oil painting is by another local artist, Harold

Workman. He came from Oldham, but his painting is of making

camouflage cloth at Simpson & Godlee, who were actually known at

the time for their calico printing. But like many of those factories at

the time, they had to be turned over to the war effort. Is this all

that's left? Where are the rest? Mostly in our stores. Some of them

have not been out since they were all shown as a group at the end of

the war. Another store, another treasure trove of hidden art. And

more oil paintings from Haward's Well, here it is! And here is one

of the other paintings by Charles This picture here, Paul, is of the

Avro Lancaster bombers being made in the AV Roe works at Woodford.

The Lancaster, of course, has become an absolute classic of all

time. It's iconic. This is a great painting recording that moment.

Without the Lancaster bombers, we probably wouldn't have won the war.

It's an extraordinary scene. when was this picture last

exhibited? I think the last time this was actually out was in the

show that Lawrence Haward did in Oh, look at this. Isn't this an

extraordinary scene here? This is a loading gantry for Pluto, which was

the pipeline under the ocean. This was an amazingly inventive scheme

to take fuel all the way under the Channel to the troops fighting in

Normandy. And Glovers was a Trafford firm. It's a tribute to

Lawrence Haward's vision in actually getting these artists to

go out to these places. They wouldn't normally have gone down to

Trafford Park. So, what do we know of Keith Henderson? He was quite a

popular painter in the 1930s. Not very well known now. He was a great

friend of the director, Lawrence Haward, as you can tell from all

the correspondence in the file. But unfortunately, there's no

correspondence about this As well as the oils, Haward's

collection also included sketches, Perhaps the most stunning is this

drawing of the Dunlop barrage balloon factory by Sir Muirhead

Bone, Britain's first ever official war artist and father of Stephen

Bone, whose work we'd seen in the Our next stop was the gallery's

weird and wonderful out-of-town store. There's still one oil

painting from Haward's collection Here's the other missing and

forgotten war work, and this is by AS Finlayson at the Ford motor

works. So this is when Ford's went over from making car parts to

making aero engines. Yeah, turned over to the war effort. I love the

little details, like the little lights here, like little library

lights, the little glow. So it could be a night scene. Yeah. He

must have had very good access in the factory to actually study all

of these pieces. Yeah, he's right in amongst it, look. Yeah, yeah.

And what about Finlayson himself? What do we know of him? We know

almost nothing at all about Finlayson. There's nothing in the

artist files, there's no correspondence. We've only got one

letter, written in 1976, to the Ford Motor Company, saying, "Do you

know anything about AS Finlayson? Because we don't." And there's no

reply. Well, this ain't bad for a storage room. How many pictures are

in here? Looking around, I think there's about two hundred paintings

This place is a real eclectic Aladdin's cave - all kinds of eras,

all kinds of styles side by side. And look what I've found. Our old

All of these hidden paintings intrigue me. On the surface, they

illustrate one of the biggest stories of the twentieth century.

But underneath, they all hold their own secrets, the lives of the

Some of the Manchester painters remain, sadly, forgotten figures,

and all we're left with is their brilliant depictions of the war

But something draws me to the work of Albert Richards. What was his

story? How did he get to be Britain's youngest war artist? And

was he really a hero? Time for a At Birkenhead's Williamson Art

Gallery, they claim Richards as their own. It turns out that Albert

was born in Liverpool but spent At the age of fifteen, he went to

Wallasey Art School, because that was his major talent. So he stayed

at Wallasey Art School until shortly before the beginning of the

war, when he got a scholarship to the Royal College of Art and went

to London. Within three months, Albert was called up. He joined the

Royal Engineers and began painting his experience of war. Some of that

art has found its way back to Birkenhead. We've got a couple of

oil paintings, a large collection of student work that was done

mostly at Wallasey School of Art and a small group of watercolours,

including a couple of wartime ones. The art school in Wallasey and what

was then Wallasey Technical School each received a large watercolour

by Albert Richards as a token of We've got an oil painting called

The Process Of Time, which is one of the surrealist oil paintings

that he did shortly before he went This painting, of a searchlight

battery on the River Mersey, is on loan from the Imperial War Museum.

Albert painted it while he was home on leave in 1942. Because he died

so young, his reputation was never as remarkable as it ought to have

been, really, for a person of his talents. But I do think that he is

acknowledged by local people as a major figure, and a major figure of

TV REPORTER: This is the work of an unknown student who achieved

national recognition as a war artist but in all that time

remained a soldier as well. There's only ever been one national

exhibition of Albert Richards' work, and that was held at the Imperial

War Museum back in 1978. Fortunately, the BBC produced a

brief report. The remarkable thing is that in a very brief space of

time, Richards managed to assimilate so many influences and

made them his own. The man speaking is Allen Freer, probably our only

Albert Richards expert. Now in his eighties, he lives in Manchester.

He's the proud owner of several watercolours as well as Richards'

personal scrapbook, containing rare photographs. It has to be said,

Albert doesn't bear much resemblance to his surreal self-

Allen bought the album and the paintings from Albert's mother,

Hannah, shortly before she died. She knew that he was a boy, or a

man, with exceptional talents. I think it was Graham Sutherland who

said he was the discovery of the war. Well, he had the true instinct

of the artist. He was a good colourist. His use of colour was

very striking. It was full-bodied. So that arrested you. You felt that

he was clinched into his subject matter. Allen explained that Albert

- or Bertie, as his mother preferred to call him - had

switched from the Engineers to the Paratroops in 1943 before becoming

Britain's youngest official war artist the following year. It has

to be remembered that Albert Richards was primarily a soldier.

And that's how he saw himself, a soldier who could paint. He was

also a soldier who became a hero when he parachuted into France in

June 1944. He took full responsibility when he went over to

France on D-Day. I mean, he saw the fighting at first hand. When his

commanding officers were killed, he was the man in charge. But his

courage and love of painting ultimately led to his death.

told his mates that he wanted to paint the greatest picture of the

war, which was a night scene of the retreating German forces. So he

went out, and he just lost his way and drove his jeep into a minefield.

It was blown up instantly and him I head back to the Walker, which

keeps a file on every artist and every artwork. Some, including

Albert's, are housed in the wonderful old county sessions court,

and they confirm his remarkable A life in three folders. Here he is,

Albert Richards. Must be 21, 22. And these letters that he was

sending to the war artists' committee are so revealing. He's

obviously desperate to become a war artist. He says, "This set of

paintings I know are not brilliant and, I feel, are not a true

statement of myself or my feelings." Then he goes on to say,

"The only subject I see around me is boredom. I do hope that one day

I shall get a chance to become a war artist. Maybe this summer I'll

send proof of my capabilities. Yours faithfully, A Richards." And

it's also obvious that he was a bit of a hero. This is by a Daily Mail

reporter. It says, "Back to paint his war. Artist-paratroop leapt on

guns. Albert Richards, spearhead paratrooper on D-Day, has taken up

his brushes again and is portraying in paint the night battle on which

our invasion depended, and which his gun helped to win." That's the

And lastly, this is the saddest of all. "Parachute War Artist is

Killed. Captain Albert Richards, of Wallasey, Cheshire, official war

artist with the 2nd Army, has been killed in action in Western Europe.

And so it's time to reveal some of our hidden paintings to the people

who own them, the Great British public. We invite Maisie Dwyer and

Joan Hibberd to the Manchester Art Gallery stores to see for the first

time the painting of the Ford factory where they used to work.

Absolutely unbelievable! It just looked like that. It was all grey,

wasn't it? All those machines were all grey. I like that painting,

because I like the way the colour of those machines and the light

just coming over it like that... That, to me, is exactly what it

looked like when you walked in. But I can't just remember seeing

anything like that at the factory. You know? Not all these men. I mean,

they were very scarce! They were all away fighting. The men that

were there were all over forty, which seemed very old to us at

eighteen, nineteen. Those were the men that were in charge - foremen,

setters, those kind of people. # ..the oil that oils the ring that

makes the thingumabob that's going to win the war! # It would be

interesting to see those other paintings, because we probably all

knew someone that worked in those other factories. AS Finlayson's

painting has already been moved back to the city centre in

readiness to go on long-overdue display. One of the things we try

to do is tell new stories about our works of art, take art that hasn't

been seen for many years, perhaps, that perhaps the previous

generation has neglected. And that's what we're going to do with

Lawrence Haward's collection of paintings of the war effort in

Back in Liverpool, the revamped gallery re-opens to the public, who

are delighted that hidden paintings are now there to be enjoyed.

think the more paintings that are on view, the better, really. I mean,

the idea that all this stuff is stashed away in warehouses and

vaults and so on is quite depressing. You can understand the

need to conserve them and perhaps protect them, particularly

watercolours. But it's also important to share what is part of

our heritage. I'm really quite excited to get an opportunity to

see something coming out of storage, seen for the first time. If it

belongs to the nation, it should be seen by the nation, really. I love

the Albert Richards, who died when he was 26 in the war. It's

It would be great, wouldn't it, if the work of Albert Richards as well

as the artists that painted the Manchester war effort was always

hanging somewhere, for us all to see it? After all, we own it. As

we've seen, this hidden art's full of surprises, so it's good that our

galleries are working hard to let us in on their secrets. Exhibitions

are constantly changing, because there's so much to show. Good art