- Quiet day at Cartwright Hall Art gallery, Bradford.
Surprises await in a gem of a gallery in the north west
Deciding where to visit for a day out can sometimes be as simple as googling somewhere close by that you don’t have to travel for hours to get to, and this is what led to one of the most surprising gallery visits ever at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in Bradford. Google reminds you that Bradford is the birth place of David Hockney, who I’m not a great fan of but my friend likes, so off we went with a couple of sandwiches and not too much expectation.
The gallery is situated in Lister Park, a surprise in itself. A beautiful, tranquil, space just a few minutes drive from the city centre. Small botanical gardens, a fossilized tree stump, a boating lake and plenty of ducks and geese make for a pleasant stroll to the gallery and its Mughal gardens.
Style of art on show
Cartwright hall has a wide selection of art on show. There are Victorian paintings, classical sculptures, modern artworks, Asian pieces nestled amongst the Italian Renaissance and items saved from the regions textile mills showing the history of Bradford’s industrial past. We just missed an exhibition of childhood puppets, the clangers, Bagpuss and others. There is plenty to see and some surprises on show. If you are used to the bigger, more famous galleries in big cities around the world you’ll enjoy the space and lack of phone wielding tourists queuing to take selfies in front of every piece of art.
A small selection of some of the exhibits on show at Cartwright Hall
Entry and information
Entry to Cartwright Hall is free. The gallery consists of two floors with large exhibition spaces. A dedicated prints room is on the ground floor alongside a room dedicated to famous Bradford residents of the past. Upstairs are works from around the world and the Galleries Hockney exhibition, which is sizeable and as well as more recent paintings, has many of his early works, quite different in style to the works he is more famous for. The gallery is small when compared to the more famous galleries, but we easily spent a couple of hours there without noticing the time passing. There was a party of school children during our visit (we went on a Thursday afternoon) and this seems quite common for the gallery; there are rather wonderful cartoons dotted about low down on the walls for the children to read about the gallery and the works there. There isn’t a cafe in the gallery, though you can buy hot drinks and bottled water. There is a refreshment room in the park, though this wasn’t open during our visit.
Art Admired 