Dave Pearson at the Bridgeman Art Library

One of the things that has taken us longer to achieve than originally planned has been to establish a link between the Dave Pearson Trust and the Bridgeman Art Library. Edward Lucie-Smith first put us in touch with the Bridgeman several years ago and since then we've rather struggled to get together the necessary high-quality images which we could submit to them. 

Now, at last, Ella and I have managed to send a selection to the Bridgeman and we're pleased to say that they have now created a page for Dave Pearson within their Art Library website. It means that copies of the selected painting scan be bought as prints from the Art Library to be used in publications, and proper copyright payments and credits will be awarded to our Trust. 

Below is a sample of a page from the Bridgeman. To look further go to https://www.bridgemanimages.com/en-GB/ and enter 'Dave Pearson' into their search engine. It includes tags to help organisations looking for a suitable image to narrow their search, and a lightbox facility to look at the artwork properly. 

Now we've managed to put a small number of Dave Pearson's images into the library, we hope to expand the number as high quality photographs become available. 

New Year stirrings

A New Year and things are beginning to stir. First we've agreed with the Bridgeman Art Library (see the previous blog entry) to register Dave's work with them so that there's easy access to anyone wishing to use his images, and also that we've joined the Artists Collecting Society which means a small percentage of any resale of Dave's work would go to the Trust.

So Margaret Mytton and I spent half a day photographing 50 or more of Dave's smaller paintings, pastels and etchings for the Art Library. They require very high quality images as these will be for reproduction purposes. Margaret now has to go through the 1000 shots she took and select the best and then make any final colour balance adjustments they might need before they join a selection of the Byzantium images at the Bridgeman. Once these are transferred over anyone searching for Dave Pearson on the Bridgeman site will be able to pay a small fee for use of the image. 

Margaret is also poised to complete her new Revelations website on-line. You can visit it and see its nearly complete form here.

The Bridgeman Art Library

More exciting activity to report on! Yesterday Margaret Mytton and I travelled to London to meet with Leonora Gummer of the Artists' Collecting Society (ACS) and Lucy Innes Williams of the Bridgeman Studio to discuss Dave's work being licensed by the Bridgeman Art Library. The original suggestions for the meeting came from our old friends Edward Lucie-Smith and Sergei Reviakin. 

The two organisations are separate but closely linked. The ACS is a not-for-profit organisation that deals with collecting artists re-sale rights for works resold over 1000 euros. This means a small percentage of the resale price of an artwork goes back to the artist, or their estate, if it is resold. This is an EU law, only available to artists in the UK since 2006. 

The Bridgeman Art Library is a commercial picture library that specialises is images of art and holds over a million images from collections throughout the world. It has offices in New York, Berlin and Paris, as well as London. It licenses the reproduction of artwork, and splits the income equally with the artists, or their estates.

So, for example,  Bridgeman holds the copyright for the work of Lucien Freud, Augustus John, John Nash, Sir Frank Brangwyn, Arthur Rackham, Carel Weight and Eric Gill. They also hold copyrights for the collections of the Ashmolean, Fitzwilliam, the Royal Collections and Manchester Museums and Galleries as well as the British Library. So this is clearly a good place for Dave Pearson's work to be made available.

We had a number of questions for Lucy - would it affect our ability to use the images locally without cost? No. Would people be able to download images and avoid payment? No, every image is water-marked until a fee has been paid. What use could the images be put to? Lucy showed us examples of artists' images used on book-covers, magazines, advertising; she assured us that the DPT could have a final say on usage, when and how it is used, and she reassured us that it is a condition of use that all images are credited. 

We went away feeling very positive about ACS and the Bridgeman the Art Library. The atmosphere in their offices was very friendly and open, as were the people we met. It seems like another opportunity to get Dave's work seen and more widely known. Over the next few days I'll be looking at the small print, and almost certainly signing the forms that will bring Dave's work to a new platform.

Things gear up..

Just as the autumn weather arrives and reminds us that we'll need to start hunkering down for the winter, the Dave Pearson Trust has suddenly sprung to life having had a relatively quiet summer.

After the visit to the studio last week by friends from Belgium, and wrapping up their purchases to protect them on the journey home, I've been sending images to Greg McGee from According to McGee in York as he has started promoting his 2014 programme of exhibitions, which includes 'Dave Pearson - Colourist'. Ironically the first images he asks for need to be in black and white, for an advertisement in the art magazine 'Jackdaw', which still prints only in black. 

Margaret Mytton and I (Trustees) have also arranged to meet Lucy Innes Williams and Leonora Gummer from the Bridgeman Art Library to look at possibilities of copyrighting some of Dave Pearson's paintings, and discuss the Artist's Resale Right. If we're lucky we may also tie this in with meeting our old friend Edward Lucie-Smith and Sergei Reviakin, who is looking at the possibility of showing Dave's work during Art 14, at Olympia.

Finally, to report that the new displays of Dave Pearson's work in the cafeteria room at Rawtenstall's the Whitaker museum and gallery, have proved very popular with visitors. Last night I met Jackie and Julian (whose See Gallery has now been superseded by their curating roles at the Whitaker) and they told me how positive the comments have been - both about the new cafeteria itself and Dave's work that enhances it.