Obituary of Anthony Ellis

Anthony (Tony) Ellis (–1964) was an art historian who, as Deputy Director, brought the Bowes Museum to national attention. In 1950 he joined the Victoria & Albert Museum and spent three years working in the Department of Prints and Drawings.

From The Times, 15 July 1964

The sudden death of Tony Ellis last Saturday as the result of a motor accident deprives the North of England of one who had done a great deal to rekindle interest in the Bowes Museum after it had come so near to closing from lack of funds.

Three years spent in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum led to his appointment as Keeper of the Salford City Art Gallery in 1953. But it was when he was moved to the Bowes Museum as Deputy Director in 1958 that he began to make more than local mark. With an infectious enthusiasm he set about examining the private art collections of the North, making a number of important discoveries of little-known art treasures. His keenness and natural charm enabled him to persuade the owners of these to show them to the public in a series of remarkable loan exhibitions he organised at Barnard Castle. The most notable of these were 'Neapolitan Art' in 1962 and 'Italian Art 1600-1800' which opened only eight weeks ago. Both attracted distinguished notice in the national and foreign art press and have enticed scholars from London and abroad to undertake the arduous journey to County Durham.

His initiative in arranging a special display of the furniture, decoration and painting of the Second Empire purchased by Mr and Mrs John Bowes for their Paris house, made a notable contribution to a revival of interest in this period in France which in recent years has led certain museum directors there to brush the dust from much which has lain hidden in their store-rooms for several generations. Tony Ellis had, too, a sharp eye for a fine object and a few years ago he snatched from under the eyes of his colleagues in London that excessively rare thing, a documented Clodion terracotta which he carried off to the Bowes Museum at a very modest price. At 35 he leaves a widow and two young children with whose sorrow his friends will sympathize deeply.

Reproduced with kind permission of The Times
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