Our collections

The Laing Art Gallery's exceptional art collection focuses on British oil paintings, watercolours, ceramics, silver and glassware. The collection has Designated status in recognition of its national and international significance.

From its earliest days the Laing benefited from a large number of important gifts and bequests from prominent local industrialists, public figures and the Contemporary Art Society. In recent years it has grown through funding from, amongst others, the National Art Collections Fund, the Museum, Libraries and Archives Council / Victoria and Albert Museum Purchase Grant Fund, and the Heritage Lottery Fund. The support of the Friends of the Laing Art Gallery continues to be instrumental in building the collection.

Love in Idleness by Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Highlights include outstanding pictures by William Holman Hunt, Edward Burne-Jones, Paul Gauguin, and Victor Pasmore, together with an important group of paintings by 19th-century artist John Martin, who was born and brought up in the North East.

Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Daniel Maclise also feature among the 19th-century paintings, together with significant pictures by local artists TM Richardson, Ralph Hedley and CN Hemy. 20th century artists include Laura Knight, Ben Nicholson, David Bomberg, and Gillian Ayres, and there is a growing contemporary collection.

The Laing's watercolours are also of national importance, and include pictures by Thomas Girtin, JMW Turner, Edward Lear, JF Lewis and Elizabeth Blackadder. There is also a small collection of sculpture, which includes pieces by Albert Toft, Henry Moore and Anthony Caro.

From the extensive decorative art collection, Beilby enamelled glass is of particular significance, and there are fine pieces of Newcastle silver spanning 400 years. The local glass collection features Sowerby studio glass together with Davidson and Sowerby pressed glass. Maling ceramics from the 19th and 20th century form an important part of the collections of North East pottery. There is also a fine collection of Japanese decorative arts and prints.

Many outstanding local paintings and objects are on show in the Northern Spirit display on the ground floor. However, not all collection items are on permanent display. Please contact the Gallery before making a special visit.

The Laing team have been blogging about some of the artworks in the Laing collection - read their blog posts.

If you have an enquiry about our collections please contact us by email: info@laingartgallery.org.uk. We are a very small team with a busy exhibition programme and we will aim to respond to your enquiry within 1 month.

We can only respond to art queries that directly relate to the objects in our collections and are unable to offer opinions (such as identifying artists) or provide valuations for objects owned by members of the public or other institutions. Our expertise is in fine and decorative art and we are unable to research family history.

Before making an enquiry please check our collection website to see if it provides the information you need and to check the details of the object you are interested in. The best way to start your search is to enter just a couple of key words (e.g. artist surname and a main word from the title) into the Keywords box. Please note, the collections website may work best when accessed from a computer rather than by phone.

We will be able to answer your enquiry more efficiently if you include as much detail as possible e.g. the Unique Object Number given on the catalogue record. Our oil paintings and sculpture collections are also available for viewing on the Art UK website: Laing Art Gallery | Art UK

For security reasons we are unable to offer visits to the Laing Art Gallery’s stores and we do not have a study room facility. Requests to view small objects and works on paper from the stores are reviewed on a case by case basis and appointments offered quarterly. We will notify you by email of the next date available.

For image enquiries and licensing please contact Bridgeman Images.

We have over 450,000 objects from our collections to search online. There are two ways to search our collections. If you know what you're looking for, use the standard collections search. If you want to dive in, use our collections discovery engine.

Our venues hold outstanding collections in the fields of archives, art, science and technology, ethnography, archaeology, military and social history, maritime history and natural sciences. Our art, natural science, archives and science and industry collections have been awarded Designated status by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in recognition of their national importance.

Collections range from small insects to large engines and working steam locomotives and include material of local interest as well as collections gathered from across the world. In date they range from items acquired as part of our contemporary collecting programme (including electronic games and MP3 players) to fossils which are hundreds of millions of years old.

Please be aware that this database contains a great variety of information and images. It may include images of objects that could offend some people, or that local communities might consider sacred or special. The images and text published on these collections databases are for private use only, not for copying, reproduction or publication. Images are low resolution. The copyright holder for these digital images is North East Museums. In the case of art works, the artist, maker, designer or their agent may hold copyright in the original artwork. By choosing to view the collections you have accepted these conditions.

If you have any comment or query, please contact collectionenquiry@northeastmuseums.org.uk.

If you would like to reproduce an image or purchase a copy of an image, please view the image licensing pages of our website.

For further information about direct access to stored collections please e-mail research@northeastmuseums.org.uk. You may want to ask us to research for you which may incur a charge. Find out about our paid-for research service.

If you are interested in purchasing a print of a painting or photograph in our collection. You can view our collection at North East Museums Prints.

We welcome proposals from publishers and for commercial licensing of images in our museum and gallery collections. Most of our works are now available for licensing through Bridgeman Images. If the image you're looking for is not available to view on the Bridgeman website, contact: tel: +44 (0)20 7727 4065 or email: uksales@bridgemanimages.com

If you are looking for inspiration, or wish to check an image, feel free to search our collections or if you would like to commission non-commercial research visit our research pages.