Works from a collection of modern African art in Argyll and Bute schools has been rediscovered by academics at the University of St Andrews. Researchers have concluded that ten misidentified works from the council-owned Argyll Collection are by well-known 20th-century eastern and southern African artists such as South Africa’s Lucky Sibya, and Henry Tayali, Zambia’s most famous painter.
Kate Cowcher, a lecturer of art history at the University of St Andrews discovered it during a research for a lecture. She noticed that a painting she recognised as by Tanzanian artist Sam Joseph Ntiro was curiously held in a collection in rural Scotland.
She learned that many of the collection’s works were being stored in a high school in Lochgilphead. Though the majority of the 173 works, amassed in the 1960s and 1970s, are by Scottish artists, it also contains a group of 12 paintings, drawings and prints from Africa. They were acquired by the author Naomi Mitchison, who, in collaboration with the Argyll County Council, set up the Argyll Collection to provide children in rural Scotland with access to art.
“Discoveries of African Modern works of this nature are rare anywhere, but especially in somewhere like Scotland,” says Giles Peppiatt, Bonham’s African art specialist. Peppiatt points out that because the African Modern market is relatively nascent and comparatively unlucrative, the likelihood of these works being forged is very low.
The ten works (plus two others that are still being identified) are now due to go on show at the community art centre Dunoon Burgh Hall from 21 May in an exhibition titled Dar to Dunoon: Modern African Art from the Argyll Collection (until 13 June).