Peter Anson paintings go digital

Moray Council Museums Service has just published an illustrated catalogue of the 750 paintings in its collections by maritime artist Peter Anson. The collection includes a wide range of watercolour, pen-and-ink, and pencil paintings, sketches and washes. Digitisation of the images has provided the opportunity to scan not only the familiar paintings, but also a range of sketches and drawings as well as some sketch books, containing some traditional watercolour landscapes painted when Peter Anson was a young man.

Peter Anson, who died in 1975, was an artist and author who devoted his life to his interest in the sea, fishing and the Church. Many of his paintings, which he created throughout his life, record life and events in the fishing ports around north-east Scotland such as Banff and Buckie, where he spent much of his life among the fishing communities.

Throughout the past year, the paintings have been carefully conserved, then digitally scanned to produce a computerised data bank of images of each painting, sketch and drawing in the collection. There are paintings in the collection acquired both before and after the artist's death, most of them on long-term loan to Moray Council from the Trustees of Peter Anson's estate. The collection forms an important historical record of the fishing industry in the north-east, and publication of the catalogue will make this information available to a much wider audience.

At this stage printed copies of the catalogue are available for viewing in Buckie at the Library and at the Buckie and District Fishing Heritage Centre. Speaking on behalf of the Centre, its Chairman Mr Hugh Patience said, "We welcome the publication of the Anson catalogue, and the opportunities that it will offer to gain access to this important collection. Peter Anson's paintings are well known in Buckie, and I am sure that many people will be delighted at the opportunity to browse through the catalogue and see for the first time the true extent of his lifetime's work".

Printed copies of the catalogue are also available at the Local Heritage Centre in Elgin and at the Moray Council Museums Service in Forres, from where the catalogue was assembled and published.

Senior Museums Officer Alasdair Joyce said, "We had become concerned by the need to preserve and protect these paintings for the future, while recognising they should be more accessible to the public. The earliest of the paintings, mostly watercolours, are now over seventy years old and have had a chequered history of display and storage. It was clear to us that some were beginning to show signs of adverse reaction with the mounting and framing materials. A decision was taken, in the interest of preserving the paintings, to transfer them to long-term environmentally controlled storage, in tandem with making a high quality digital database of the images. The originals are now held in our custom-built store in Forres. I appreciate that the people of Buckie feel a strong attachment to these paintings, but the Forres store offers the best controlled environment for their long-term preservation, under the proper conditions, and from where we can look after access to the original material in an appropriate way".

In addition to the catalogue, there are also plans to publish a range of images on the Council's web site in the future. The catalogue, complete with an index to the paintings, is also available on CD on request for anyone who is unable to get to a printed copy, and will be also available from the main libraries in Moray. For the researcher, and for anyone who wants to purchase a copy of a painting, the Museums Service is now able to offer, to order, high-quality prints of the images at a modest price which will help to offset the cost of their continued care and storage. "We shall of course continue to offer access to the original material for any serious research into Peter Anson's work," said Mr Joyce.

Libraries and Museums Manager Mr Alistair Campbell added, "We are also committed to continuing to display a selection of the original paintings at Buckie Library on an occasional basis. We must however adopt measures to ensure that, above all, the paintings are properly cared for and safeguarded in the longer term, and the digitised collection offers the best way to provide access to the images while preserving them for future generations".