Blog

Our current exhibition, Unseen, shines a light on artwork that has either rarely or never been on display at Towner, but is also a demonstration of all of the different ways that pieces come to be a part of the Towner Collection. Gifts and bequests have always been a huge part of collecting, and allow the gallery to represent the interests of artists and collectors who make up the surrounding communities. One notable gift, on display for the first time in Unseen, was donated by Oscar Thompsett (1931-2020), an avid collector and a painter himself, with a long career in teaching.

Thompsett both kept and displayed his large collection in an unassuming bungalow outside Brighton, where he had also worked as an art teacher at schools including Queens Park. He was passionate about ensuring that arts education was available to all, also teaching adult classes at the University of Brighton (formerly Brighton College of Art) for many years.

Currently, doctoral researcher Claudia Treacher is writing a thesis on conscientious objector artists and she developed an interest in researching Thompsett's gift as he had been good friends with artists like Percy Horton, a conscientious objector during the First World War, and had also collected artwork by Elliott Seabrooke who had been a pacifist. Conscientious objectors were those who resisted conscription into the military. During the First World War many of them were imprisoned for their stance, including Percy Horton who was court-martialled and sentenced to hard labour in Edinburgh in 1916. Pacifists generally regarded warfare as wrong but sometimes contributed to the war effort in a non-violent way, such as Elliott Seabrooke who served with the British Red Cross and worked as an Official War Artist in Italy.

After becoming acquainted with Towner in 2017, when Percy Horton's work had been included in the exhibition Ravilious & Co, Thompsett kept in touch. He generously bequeathed his collection to Towner on his death along with a sum of money to support its administration.