Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Hidden Paintings

All across the north, in civic buildings and in art galleries,

there are thousands and thousands of paintings that belong to us all.

While some are on show, many are usually hidden, in store rooms and

in attics, paintings beyond the view of the people that actually

This is the National Railway Museum in York, and everything here has a

story to tell: a story about rail transport and its impact on British

society As you'd expect, it's an enormous collection. Wherever you

turn, you bump into history. Twenty acres of steam and nostalgia.

Locomotives from all over the world. Carriages and Rolling Stock. It's

simply Railway Heaven. And, tucked away behind closed doors, the

National Railway Museum hosts another world-class collection. An

enormous visual archive. Over a thousand original paintings that

tell the story of the railways. Over 11,000 travel posters from the

years between the wars, the golden age of the train. All preserved and

all beautifully catalogued. Usually hidden from general view. Until now.

They come from a variety of sources. Quite a lot of them, you can trace

their origins back to the Railway Companies. They go well back into

the nineteenth century. For example, some of the portraits that came

from Boardrooms were produced, commissioned by the Railways.

Images of their Directors andSenior Officials. And when those Railways

became defunct they passed through to British Railways. And then they

were eventually donated to this Museum collection. Others we've

acquired at auction, through private sale. Quite a lot of people

bequeath us works but we get significant works that help tell

the story of how Railways came about, how artists interpreted them,

and how, also, Railways marketed themselves, because a big chunk of

the collection is actually not images of Railways at all. There

are a lot of scenic views of locations because we've got a lot

of original artworks for the travel posters. And Railway Companies were

extremely prolific in producing travel posters, and there was a

heyday period from, really, from just after the end of the First

World War through to the 1950s. Oh, wow. Okay, very bright and

jolly here. What are we looking at? This is Valley Gardens in Harrogate

in a poster produced for the London and North Eastern Railway by an

artist called Septimus Scott. So this is encouraging people to

come from London, up to Harrogate. Yes. And take in the sights. So

we've got this lovely Old Gent in the deckchair on the Green.

that's actually the artist himself. That's a self-portrait of Septimus

Scott. Oh, is it? Yes. Okay. And then this rather jaunty young

couple who have had a game of tennis. Well, this is Harrogate

saying, well, we're a genteel Spa town where you can come and take

the waters, but you can also have a good time if you're younger. Go for

a game of tennis. Sit down and have a Gin and Tonic in the gardens, or

whatever. You see there's a young girl in the background there, so

it's not all just, sort of, deckchairs and listening to bands

and taking in the waters. There's more to it than that.

The paintings were made into posters and displayed at railway

stations across the country. They offer a fascinating glimpse of how

much things have changed around us, and how much they've stayed the

same. The paintings were on the cutting edge of an exciting new

approach to advertising. Something fresh and bold, colourful and

sophisticated. The 1920s and the 1930s were really the beginnings, I

think, of the kind of consumer society we're very familiar with

today with lots of marketing and lots of advertising going on. And

the Railways, before the First World War, they had pretty much a

monopoly of travel over any distance. Within the inter-war

period, when there is competition from other modes of transport, when

there's more money around, more disposable income, advertising and

marketing right across the board is becoming more and more

sophisticated. # I get blue when I hear the news

of the Choo Choo. # I want you to go, too, with me on

the Choo Choo. # The day's here, so get near, hear

what I have to say. # Get your stuff and pack up cause

we're going away. In commissioning well-known artists

to design these posters, they were pushing marketing into a new era

and developing a kind of very visual kind of marketing that we're

very familiar with today. The poster is a very, very good way of

saying to people: Hey, look at the exciting places you can go to by

train. Look at the comfort you can travel in if you go by train. Look

at the speed of the train, by comparison with the car.' So, it

was about competition. It was about Wow. What are we looking at here

then, Ed? Well, believe it or not, this is Scarborough. No! It is, yes.

It's San Tropez, surely! No, it's Scarborough by a Russian artist

called Konstantin Gorbatov. He was an emigre artist. He'd started off

by painting scenes of Old Russia and then he left Russia after the

Revolution and came to Europe in 1922. And he'd actually spent quite

a lot of time, also, practising in Italy and he lived in Capri for a

while and, certainly, it's got a flavour of Southern Europe about it.

Hmmm. And this lovely impressionist style, I mean, it's quite

incredible. Yes, and it's quite unique in many ways. You don't see,

certainly, representations of Scarborough like this in any of the

other Railway posters, but it's one of the few impressionist, or post-

impressionist, works that we've got in the collection here. But, yes,

believe it or not, it was actually produced for a Railway poster to

advertise Scarborough by the London North Eastern Railway. And did it

actually make it into poster production? Yes, it did, yes. There

was a poster version of this produced. Okay, so I wonder how

successful this was at enticing down to Scarborough. I think I

would have been tempted to go. # La mer. Qu'on voit danser.

It all seems such a romantic time. It's difficult not to get swept up

in the style of this bygone age. # La mer.

Des reflets changeants. # Sous la pluie.

The travel poster artists portrayed resorts of glamour and excitement.

Scarborough, here, and other Yorkshire resorts like Bridlington

were seen as the height of chic. Fashionable and sophisticated. And

paintings of them were a window on a different world.

# La mer bergere d'azur, Infinie. # Voyez, Pres des etangs.

# Ces grands roseaux mouilles. There's always been this romance of

steam, of course. What is it about steam engines? Well, you know,

somebody once said that the steam engine is the nearest thing man has

made to a living creature, and I think that romance has always

carried its way through, and the early Railway Companies realised

that pretty quickly. You see it in the posters of the time where it's

conjuring up an image that it's glamorous to travel by train. But

they were selling the resorts, they were selling where people were

going to because if they were going to go to these places - Scarborough,

Whitby, Bridlington, Robin Hood's Bay even - then they'd have to go

by train and that's what the Railways were after.

# Are you having any fun? # What're you getting out of

living? Crumbs, this'll take me back. I'm

on a day trip to the coast on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway.

These days you can take a steam train right the way from Pickering

to Whitby and relive all the excitement of a youngster with a

spanking new bucket and spade. # It's still okay.

# Have your little fun, son. # Have your little fun!$$NEWLINE

Tickets, please. I'll have to clip that, you know.

Thank you very much. It's official. Got the official hole in now.

and I rather like your uniform. It's quite natty, isn't it? Do you

think so? Yeah. (laughs). As well as the advertising

paintings and posters, the Railways would issue annual guides to the

coastal resorts. In the years before package holidays, they

offered the promise of fun in familiar places. Well, when I was a

kid growing up in Bradford, the whole family would often mount a

big expedition to the Yorkshire coast. Quite often we'd set off and

go to Sandsend but, of course, Whitby, Filey and Robin Hood's Bay

were always on the agenda. It's really what family holidays were

Since Railway Artist Charles Oppenheimer set up his easel on the

West Cliff, Whitby has changed hardly at all. It's the seaside as

we've always wanted it, and here nostalgia can wash over you like

Vernon Smith and his family take people on a daily trip to the past

onboard a steam bus and their They're marketing the same sort of

thing that the Railway Companies did all those years ago. A reality

that may never have actually existed and the novelty of travel

for its own sake - (klaxon) - values that can still find a buyer,

even today. There's something wholesome about it. There's

something that takes you back to an age when things weren't so fast and

things weren't all about money and possessions. Just fun. Hmmm. Maybe

it's something to do, perhaps, with the recession a bit, and we're

slowing down, maybe having more holidays at home and remembering

those kind of, you know, things that really mattered to our parents,

and us as young kids, I guess. yes. And I can tell you that there

are a lot more buckets and spades seen about Whitby now than there

have been for a long, long time. people having more holidays at

home? Sure. Hmmm, yes. Long may it continue. Yes!

It's a reminder of how special those holidays were to people

between the wars, a treat that few took for granted. Back then, a

holiday was seen as something really special and people took a

sense of style with them. They really set a standard. Forget the

flip-flops. You really had to posh- up and wear your Sunday best.

#Linda, I'm in love with you, Linda. # Linda, do you love me too?

A mink stole. A Collar and tie. A decent pair of spats. In

Bridlington, holidaymakers in the twenties knew how to dress for the

beach. # You know that we'll go riding in

the moonlight. The artist John Greenup really

managed to capture a thirties sense of style when he painted

Bridlington in its heyday. Here and there on the coast, you can still

catch a glimpse of those heady days. I'm meeting fashion historian Pam

Howorth in the stunning Suncourt of Scarborough's Spa. Pam loves the

kind of clothes the artists enjoyed painting. And, of course, it's

another chance to get the glad rags Pam, I feel so glamorous. Just look

at you as well, with your little dainty straw hat. It's wonderful,

isn't it? You start to hold yourself all differently. You do,

you're sitting more upright and lady-like. Oh, it's wonderful. I

can imagine, you know, coming to Scarborough on a steam train, it

must have been wonderful. Oh yes, yes. Ladies were very glamorous.

And the gentlemen as well, they would have had maybe three suits.

One of them would have been their Sunday best, which they would have

worn sitting on the beach. In the deck-chairs in their full suit with

a tie and everything. In the 1920s, a gentleman wouldn't have been seen

without a tie, but in the 1930s, people started to relax a little

bit more. And you started to see ladies wearing trousers: wide,

beachwear trousers, pantaloons and things. It was popular to wear long

fur coats over evening dresses or day dresses to travel to the coast.

Gosh. And, you know, people would have been sat on the beach wearing

a fur coat. Wow. Which you wouldn't see now, would you? No, not at all.

No. It became really fashionable to have a sun tan. You started to see

evening wear had low backs, so what happened was that the swimwear was

copying the low-backed evening wear, so you were starting to see low-

backed swimming costumes so that the ladies could get a tan on their

back, so when they were wearing their evening dresses it could

really show it off. The fashions were just so gorgeous, you know.

Ladies looked so lovely and it was Back then, holidays were precious

things. Time away with the family was a rare treat and a trip to the

coast was looked forward to, all year round. With the introduction

of paid holidays, happy days were here, for everyone. If you lived in

a place like Leeds or Sheffield or Bradford nothing could be in

greater contrast than coming to Scarborough, coming to the seaside,

coming to this open, bracing place that is so much obviously healthier

than where you've come from. # We're all alone, no chaperone can

get our number. And with fresh horizons came new

freedoms. # Let's misbehave! There's

something wild about you child that's so contagious.

When you go to the seaside for your holidays, the conventions of where

you live are, for the time being, suspended. You can do things that

you wouldn't dare to do at home. Because the neighbours would know.

You could misbehave. Back at the National Railway Museum,

there's a chance to see some of the posters up close. They're highly

sought after now and each poster can fetch well over �10,000 at

auction, sometimes more than the original paintings themselves. The

artists painted locations all over the country, and the NRM has a

massive collection of over 11,000. 11,000 of them, I mean, it's a

difficult number to get your head around. It's a lot. These artists

that were doing these posters, they were prolific, really, weren't

they? They were. I mean, the Railway Companies were putting out

vast amounts of publicity every year. Seasonal posters as well as,

they had things called prestige advertising, reminder advertising.

So they had lots of different types of advertising that they were doing,

which is why there's so much of it, really. And these posters, you know,

they were in print runs of thousands, I mean, they were

posters. Some of them. We forget now because, you know, they're

carefully archived like this, and they're beautiful works of art but

actually they were slapped up with some glue on a platform. They were,

but they were careful about where they put them. In the early days of

railway posters, it was very much kind of,Oh, they're slapping them

up everywhere,' and people hated it, and people were very critical of

ruining the town by putting these horrible designs up. And people

used to complain they couldn't see the station sign for the

advertising. So, yeah, they began to standardise it a bit more.

to see these. Oh, they're amazing! They almost take your breath away,

they're so colourful. They are really colourful. Wow. Certainly

catch your eye if you were passing on the platform, wouldn't they?

Gosh, they would! They're fantastic. So, this is for Scarborough. And

who is the artist here? This is by William Barribal, he was a

lithographer. So you were saying that this artist, in particular,

used his wife as a model, is that right? He did, yes, and you can see

that the women all look quite similar to one another. So that's

the reason. They do, they really do. Yes, he was obviously infatuated.

Good job he married her. I know, he had a ready model there, didn't he?

Yes, the women do look remarkably alike. I wonder who the boys were

there. This is another one by Barribal. Wow. Same as the one we

just looked at. Let's pull this out a little bit. This is Bridlington.

That is terrific. And again, you can see he's possibly used his wife

as the model so, again, they all look very similar to one another.

There she is again. But, yes, she's got her fashionable swimming

costume and her swimming cape on and her cap. Isn't she great? This

figurehead here, it's like a modern Kate Winslet on the boat. Bit of

Venus on Bridlington beach. it's great. I mean, those colours

are immediately arresting, so you can immediately see this kind of

advertising potential. This would be very striking, wouldn't it?

definitely. From a distance you would see this and get really

sucked up into it. And look, you can bring your dog and the dog can

go swimming with you. Look, this lovely little black labrador in the

waves. Yes, you can take a ride on a donkey as well. Oh, yes, the

donkey. Oh, gosh, he's a bit naughty with his ladies' costumes,

I have to say. He is, isn't he? kind of want to be part of that

party, I think. I think that's what they wanted you to think when you

Then there's probably the most famous travel poster of the lot.

The Jolly Fisherman of Skegness. It's been copied many times, but

John Hassall's original poster first carried that glorious

catchline: Skegness. It's so bracing!

And it still is. Wherever you go in Skegness, even today, it's hard to

get away from Jolly's portly portrait. Everyone knows who the

Jolly Fisherman is. It's an icon for Skegness. Well, it's seen

everywhere. Photographer John Byford adores the Jolly Fisherman.

I think at the time, when it was produced, it was in that sort of

Art Nouveau period. It was, you know, that very elitist type of art.

And the Jolly Fisherman, it was something new, it was fresh. And it

spoke to a different class of people. You know, the people who

were working in some of these towns, you know, they were smog-filled

cities. And this poster said Come to Skegness, it's so bracing, it's

fresh.' Bold colours, it was an invigorating poster in itself. And

it sold the resort, you know, it done a marvellous job. And we saw

that because, you know, because the trains started filling up. We had

six platforms here at Skegness and the trains were just rolling in

with people. Sadly, not any more. But there's a statue of Jolly on

the station platform, a reminder of Skeggie's glory days, and the

fisherman who made their fortune a In the 1960s, the Railways

presented the town with Hassal's original painting. Today it hangs

in pride of place in the Mayor's Parlour in Skegness Town Hall.

Pride. Pride that we've got the original Jolly Fisherman painting.

It's now 103 years old, so it's been an icon for Skegness, it

really has. And it will remain as our image for Skegness, I hope, in

hundreds of years to come. # I'll do my best to make you happy,

# To help you see the brighter side. But a lot of Lincolnshire locals

might be surprised to hear where the Jolly Fisherman could have

started life. Four years before the poster was

commissioned, Hassall produced a similar figure for a book called

Round the World ABC. And here we see the same figure being used,

under P for Penzance. So, his origins could be a Cornish

Scarborough has its own collection of hidden paintings, too, tucked

away in the attic of the Art Gallery and out of public view here

at the Town Hall. In Committee Rooms and in Civic Corridors you'll

find some beautiful pictures. This is one of my favourites: The

Scarborough Spa Promenade painted in 1871 by a Mr Thomas Barker. I

wonder if we're related? It's a wonderful snapshot of the great and

the good of Victorian Scarborough. In the foreground you have Prince

Edward, who later became Edward VII, and the Princess Alexandra, his

wife. And then you've got lots of local worthies who paid to be

painted into the picture. Did they really? That's extraordinary, then.

Absolutely, it was the brainchild of a local entrepreneur called

Oliver Sarony, and he was an artist and photographer, and he had a

large studio in Scarborough. And when the Prince of Wales visited

Lord Londesborough, he got the bright idea of doing this painting

and offering local worthies the chance of being painted in, for a

price. Prices were never stated, baldly. It's rumoured that to be

very close to the Prince and Princess, you had to pay a hundred

guineas, which was a massive sum at the time. Many of the locals were

not too keen to part with their money. So they had to fill in with

actresses and actors from the Londesborough Theatre. Is that

right? So that's well documented, then? Yes, yes. And some of them

are recognisable from other portraits.

Just round the corner in Committee Room Number Two, there's a

patriotic reminder, from the Great War, of one of the East Coast's

darkest days. On December 16th, 1914, two German

battlecruisers sailed into the harbour here in Scarborough. They

were 500 yards, literally, from the beach and just after 8 o'clock in

the morning, while the residents were having their breakfasts, some

still in bed, they opened fire. They rained down over 500 shells in

the space of an hour and then they sailed back out to sea. On that

morning, 17 people were killed, many hundreds were injured and the

town was completely devastated. Houses were wrecked, hotels were

shattered, the lighthouse was blown up and even the Castle was just

razed to rubble. The impact must have been terrible, fear ran

through the streets. People were running out of Scarborough. It was

a place of absolute terror. The East coast had been chosen because

it was an easy target. There were no battlements here, there were no

guns here whatsoever. There was a Castle but it was used as a

Coastguard station. So it was a very, very soft target. And the

Germans needed a victory. They'd been defeated in the Falklands and

they needed a victory for propaganda. We felt incredibly

threatened. The war had been taking place in France, now the war was

right on their doorstep. There was a national outcry and then the

artist Edith Kemp-Welch produced this patriotic oil painting which

became a very famous recruitment poster: Remember Scarborough -

It's hard to appreciate just how important this painting would

become to the war effort, and how many lives it would directly affect.

I think as a painting, it was very important because of the poster

that was produced. And that was distributed nationally, and

probably was responsible for massive recruitment that happened

in 1915. Leading, of course, tens of thousands of young men to their

deaths. It doesn't surprise me at all that that painting can have

such a dramatic effect. If you've seen it, you will see the look and

the whole feel of it is one of terror andd anguish that is just

portrayed in that way. It had an incredible impact on recruitment.

You see, the trouble was was that everybody was saying that the war

would be over by Christmas. Churchill and the Government needed

something to increase recruitment and about 100,000 people enlisted

when they saw the picture, Remember Later this summer, the NRM will

finally have its own Art Gallery where some of their pampered and

preserved collection can finally see the light of day. Well, we're

in the brand new Art Gallery at the National Railway Museum which is

just weeks away from completion now, so this is the very first glimpse

of it. They're planning a five star venue for world-class exhibitions.

We have a mixture of exhibitions, based on our own collection which

the public haven't been able to see before. But we have the facility

here to loan in works from all over the world. This Gallery is of

national standard, so we can show Turners, Van Goghs, anything rail-

related. We have a fantastic art collection but apart from periodic

exhibitions we've never really had the central focus here to display

it. And the new Art Gallery, I think, is the missing link. There

are some quite wonderful, beautiful works of art which we are looking

forward to revealing in all their glory. These Hidden Paintings

really are a slice of history. And the new Gallery finally offers an

exciting opportunity for all of us. It's a chance for you and me to

come face to face with the National Railway Museum's remarkable public