Unusual amongst British regional galleries, the Laing Art Gallery was gifted to the people of Newcastle without a collection of its own. Alexander Laing was not a connoisseur or collector, and when he wrote to the Newcastle Corporation in 1900 offering to provide the building, he was confident that by the liberality of the inhabitants it would soon be supplied with pictures and statuary for the encouragement and development of British Art.

Precisely as Laing had anticipated, the intervening 120 years have seen the Gallery, through a series of gifts, bequests and purchases, accumulate one of the finest regional collections of fine and decorative art in the country. Changing displays highlight various aspects of the collection, and it is invigorating to be working with Liss Llewellyn once again on an exhibition that draws upon some of its strongest elements of 19th and 20th Century British art.