An area of masterstrokes

The County Collection has been drawn from the county council’s Museums Service’s permanent collection and is on display at the The Oxfordshire Museum in Park Street, Woodstock.

Running until June 3 and completely free to enter, the collection of oil paintings shows how some areas of Oxfordshire changed dramatically during the 19th and 20th centuries, while others remained largely untouched.

Featuring landscapes, portraits and urban views, highlights of the exhibition include lesser-known works by 19th century Oxford-based artist William Turner, such as two views of Shipton, where he was brought up.

Cherry Gray, curator of The Oxfordshire Museum, said: “This really is a wonderful exhibition.

“We have about 50 paintings in the collection, from the early 19th century, right up until the last decade, by local painters and by painters who came to the county to paint, and it really does tell a story of the place and its people.”

She added: “Many people may recognise the painting of what was Botley Cinema. Our painting shows it at Christmas time, when it was hosting a party for evacuees and we join them just as the bunting is going up.

“And a lot of people will have heard of the infamous Old Mettle. Well this exhibition enables you to see him – and that wicked glint in his eye!”

She continued: “On a personal note, I have become particularly interested in the paintings by artist Cyril Frost. Particularly his portraits of local people.

“The Banker has a sceptical look about him – you can feel his eyes scrutinising you. But every picture in the exhibition tells a story and I think people visiting this exhibition will see a fascinating side of the county in which they live.”

Painting of the New Mill by the River Windrush by T Langford, c1830. Witney Mill, located between Crawley and Witney and used as part of the area’s then famous blanket industry, was damaged four times between 1783 and 1883.

Of the fire in 1883 our very own Witney Gazette reported “one of the most calamitous conflagrations that has ever taken place in the district…. the night sky was lit up for miles around with large numbers of people hurrying to see the grand but awful spectacle.” The Witney Fire Brigade was on the scene within six minutes but their hand pump cold not stem the appalling destruction, the fire having got such a firm grip that the building resembled a vast furnace.

Rebuilding operations took seven years. The former mill is now occupied by a variety of small businesses.

Old Mettle is a portrait by R Cheney of the 19th century match seller and mock political agitator William Castle, a remarkable character living in the Banbury area in the 1800s.

Perhaps most famous as the ‘fool’ of the King Sutton Morris Dancers, in 1820, Old Mettle was jokingly put up as a candidate in the borough elections – he greatly enjoyed dressing up and playing the part in parades and drinking the free beer. The elections, however, ended in riots with stones being thrown through the Mayor’s windows.

Depending on your age, you will know this Botley Road building as Cooper’s Marmalade Factory, Botley Cinema or its present incarnation of Halfords.

Painted at Christmas time in 1940 by LH Woollatt this picture shows the building hosting a Christmas party for wartime evacuees of which there were about 20,000 in the county.

An unusual exhibition piece, Our Founder, is a painting of a sheep’s head for a 1967 advertising campaign linked to the Witney blanket industry which appeared in The Sunday Times.

The painting was donated by Dorland Advertising Ltd to the Board of Charles Early and Marriott Ltd, where it hung for many years in their Burford Road offices in Witney.

During the swinging sixties, this might have been where some of the young people of Chipping Norton ‘hung out’. Margaret Bellwood’s 1967 painting of New Street shows Bignell’s Café, a building which was later demolished so that the road could be widened.

The County Collection is at The Oxfordshire Museum 10am to 5pm Tues-Sat, and 2-5pm Sundays