Margaret Pilkington — A generous ‘Queen of Arts’

By Lorraine Coughlan and Angela Petyt-Whittaker

Studio portrait of Margaret Pilkington, c.1930s. PIL/3/1/6/7

1. Introduction
2. The Papers of Margaret Pilkington
3. Family background
4. Margaret’s education
5. Philanthropy (f)or a career?
6. The Whitworth Institute (later Art Gallery)
7. Challenging times
8. Her legacy
9. Discussion points
10. Additional resources

Introduction

Margaret Pilkington will be remembered by Manchester first and foremost for her amazing foresight and generosity. Her pioneering views on museums and galleries promoted access for young and underprivileged visitors and financially her purchases of both well-established and young, up-and-coming artists for the Whitworth Art Gallery benefited all. Obviously a socially adept networker, she delighted in bringing together artists and business people, benefactors and visitors, young and old. As a talented artist in her own right, she was a proficient watercolourist and illustrator, but her main artistic achievement was as a wood-engraver.

The Papers of Margaret Pilkington

The Margaret Pilkington archive held at the John Rylands Research Institute and Library comprises over 300 items; materials relating to Margaret’s personal artistic achievements (including watercolours, woodcuts and book illustrations, which took a back seat in later years in spite of her obvious talents), her extremely varied professional life and, most notably, her philanthropic efforts for socially underprivileged people and as a patron of the arts. It is a valuable source of information on arts and crafts during the first half of the 20th century. Her diaries cover her career whilst working with numerous Girls’ Clubs and Institutes, the Red Rose Guild, the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester City Art Gallery, the ‘Lit & Phil’ and Manchester Luncheon Club. The papers are also a good resource for influential family and social life in Manchester, covering the two World Wars.

Family background

Margaret and Dorothy Pilkington as children with their dog, c.1905. PIL/3/1/6/1

Margaret was born in Pendleton in 1891, the elder daughter of Lawrence and Mollie Pilkington. Her sister Dorothy was just two years younger, and they remained close throughout their lives, as neither of them married. Most people recognise the Pilkington name in relation to the world-famous glass company, co-founded by her grandfather. However, her father started his career as colliery manager in the Clifton and Ke(a)rsley Coal Co., until the formation with his brother Charles of Pilkington’s Lancastrian Pottery and Tile Co. at Clifton Junction in the year of Margaret’s birth. The company was renowned for its Lancastrian Lustre ware, even sold at Tiffany’s in New York; many pieces were later donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Their high quality earned them a Royal Warrant and the company commissioned designs from artists such as Walter Crane. Margaret and her sister Dorothy were directors of the firm for many years.

In 1906/7 the family moved from their rented house in Salford, into Firwood (since renamed The Cedars) in Alderley Edge — a large yellow brick, ornate Italianate villa in Woodbrook Road. It was in a run-down state, and they gradually improved it over the thirty eight years they lived there. They were ‘never ostentatious and what money they had they wished to put to good use’. The village was just in the second wave of building encouraged by the Stanley family, owners of a large portion of the area since the 15th century.

Margaret’s education

Watercolour of a woman reading, from one of Margaret’s sketchbooks, 1920. PIL/1/4/1/11

Margaret and Dorothy were both sent to the private Croham Hurst School in South Croydon, where, encouraged by the Quaker headmistress, Margaret showed a great talent for, and enjoyment of, art, which she pursued from 1911 to 1913 at Manchester College of Art, studying painting and drawing under Adolphe Valette. She then decided to defy her parents’ wishes and the accepted social conventions of her background, by enrolling in September 1913 to study painting at the Slade School of Fine Art. Her parents’ apprehension eventually eased and they agreed to let her attend. The following year she began studying wood-engraving at the Central School of Arts and Crafts under the tutorship of Noel Rooke, whom she stayed in touch with for many years. The School employed leading craftsmen as teachers, including May Morris, Douglas Cockerell and Edward Johnston. However, it was Lucien Pissarro (son of the Impressionist painter Camille) whom Margaret felt had the greater impact on her style. She became good friends with the family, and was invited to their home in Hammersmith where they ran their Eragny Press, publishing a series of limited edition fine illustrated books. She acted as an occasional studio assistant, watching Lucien at work, sharing family meals and helping with the routine tasks associated with printmaking and fine book production. At the end of her first year as a full time student, Margaret had been awarded a prize for anatomical drawing, and she stayed on in London until the end of July in order to use the print-making facilities at the Central School, (as she had decided to specialise in illustration), before returning to Alderley Edge. However, her hopes of continuing as a student were cut short as war was declared in August.

Philanthropy (f)or a career?

Print of woodcut made by Margaret as her bookplate, c.1914. PIL/1/4/2/4

During this traumatic time Margaret felt her priorities lay in welfare duties rather than her artistic career. She was quickly drawn into a number of local efforts to cope with the national emergency. Volunteering with the Manchester branch of the Soldiers and Sailors Welfare Association, she visited and distributed meals to half a dozen families allocated to her in Ancoats, where a large proportion of the population were already vulnerable due to poverty and awful housing conditions. She organised art classes at the Ancoats Girls Club, and early in 1915 she joined the organising committee of the Girls’ Institute in Mill Street, also in Ancoats. In later years when the war was over, Margaret and Dorothy, along with a couple of friends, would organise holidays for the girls, travelling ahead to prepare the beds, supplies and catering. One generous example was the rented accommodation for 52 girls for a week at a school in Arnside. From 1920–31 she went on to be the president of the Manchester & Salford Association of Girls Clubs.

1916 saw her being invited by her childhood friend (later Sir) Thomas Barlow to become Honorary Secretary of the newly established Pioneer Club at 59 Princess Street, Manchester which catered for young women who were working in city centre offices and warehouses. Providing them with somewhere to go at lunchtimes, it was an instant success, and for some years was very crowded as expansion wasn’t possible until after the War. This involved Margaret in a wider range of responsibilities — management committees, members committees and all the day to day problems associated with the Club. Tommy was the chairman, and was ‘energetic, lively and amusing, a successful businessman and a keen art collector who came to own the best collection of Durer prints in the country’. He and Margaret would work closely together on several projects connected with the Whitworth in later years.

These ventures quickly took over much of her time, with a daily routine of travelling into Manchester by train which was to last for more than forty years, along with a social conscience which saw her step up to numerous challenges to help the less fortunate. She had taken ‘little interest in the social life in Alderley Edge, hated tennis parties and gossip and preferred to devote her time, considerable energy and financial resources to the city for the benefit of those who lived and worked there’. She was described as fiercely loyal to Manchester and the North West. For five years from 1929 Margaret served as Honorable Secretary of the Manchester Civic Advisory Committee whose mission was ‘To work for a more beautiful city and to stimulate civic pride in the domestic and civic life of citizens’, again working with Tommy Barlow.

In spite of all these demands on her time, she still managed to continue to draw and make prints. In 1915 she had asked Noel Rooke for advice and after some discussion bought a second-hand Albion Press, which she set up in a room over her parents’ garage in Alderley Edge. By early 1916 she was sending examples to Rooke and Pissarro. She also completed designs for a set of nursery tiles fired at the family firm.

By 1920 she had exhibited with the newly founded Society of Wood Engravers, which she joined the following year, and became Honorary Secretary of in 1924. She eventually served as their chairman from 1952 to 1967. Her lifelong admiration for the work of William Morris led to the founding of the Red Rose Guild of Artworkers, of which she became chairman in 1926. She arranged exhibitions of the members’ work in Houldsworth Hall on Deansgate until 1938, and after WWII at the Whitworth Art Gallery from 1946 to 1962. Her appointment diaries showed how much time she devoted to these two bodies over the years. The 1920s were very productive, with Margaret illustrating three of her father’s books, and also her friend Katharine Chorley’s collection of essays Hills and Highways.

The Whitworth Institute (later Art Gallery)

Margaret at home surrounded by art, 1969. PIL/3/1/6/12

However, what became her major involvement with the arts began in 1925 when she was invited to join the council of the Whitworth Institute. She was encouraged in 1936 to become the Whitworth’s Honorary Director, organising exhibitions, founding the Friends of the Whitworth and running the galleries. This arrangement benefited the Manchester Whitworth Institute — to give the Gallery its correct title — as it was suffering financially. This came to a head when the sole Curator had a nervous breakdown and resigned. A proposal had been put forward to share responsibility for looking after the collections between a number of curators under the lead of an Honorary Director. And so Margaret served, unpaid, as that Director with distinction for 22 years. Her pioneering views on museums concentrated on the needs of visitors, especially access for the young and underprivileged. One of her addresses as President (another title she acquired in 1945) to the North West Federation of Museums and Art Galleries included her deep regret that art was perceived as the prerogative of the ‘idle rich’.

She continued to finance, collect for and donate to the collections of the Gallery, adding prints, drawings and watercolours, including some of her own work. Her purchases included Georges Rouault, Edvard Munch, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. She found it hard to resist buying pictures, so the Whitworth benefited immensely from this habit. Margaret and Dorothy were famously hospitable both to local friends and newcomers to the area, while visiting speakers at the Whitworth were either entertained at Alderley Edge, or found their bills at the Midland were mysteriously paid.

Challenging times

The outbreak of WWII brought more challenges — the City Art Galleries Committee had made an arrangement to evacuate its most important possessions to the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth, generously including the Whitworth. In Spring 1939 the Council had been approached by the Corporation of Manchester for permission to use the Gallery as a rest centre for people rendered homeless by air raids, a plan which came into effect eventually in December 1940. At Christmas over 500 people of all ages and conditions found shelter in the cellars, and on the first night were looked after by the Gallery’s staff with (in Margaret’s words) “the assistance of a splendid little nurse from the Health Department and two valiant members of the WVS who had hitch-hiked from Rochdale to give their services”. There was considerable damage close by that night, but the Gallery was untouched. It continued in full use for a fortnight, and when evacuated it had been furnished with bunks and other equipment. From then until the end of the War it was manned night and day with a rota of recruits from the Women’s Voluntary Services, the Police and the Gallery’s staff.

In October 1941, Margaret and Dorothy’s father Lawrence died, followed three months later in January by their mother Mollie. The Stanley family had decided to sell off parcels of Alderley in 1938–9 to cover numerous debts and death duties, with many tenant farmers able to purchase their own land at reasonable prices. The remaining, wooded areas caught Margaret and Dorothy’s eyes and they eventually raised three quarters of the funds to purchase the Woods, with Cheshire County Council covering the remaining quarter, giving over 200 acres for public use to the National Trust. A commemorative plaque has the words:

These woods are given to the National Trust in memory of Lawrence Pilkington and Mary Gavin Pilkington who enjoyed the walks and wide views.

This gift from their daughters was made in 1948 with the generous help of the Cheshire County Council.

Her legacy

Portrait of Margaret after receiving her honorary M.A., 1942. PIL/3/1/6/10

Margaret’s many achievements were recognised locally and nationally. She was awarded an Honorary M.A. from the University of Manchester in 1942, and became a Justice of the Peace for Manchester from 1945. The Friends of the Whitworth commissioned Margaret’s portrait from Sir Stanley Spencer in 1953 and in 1956 she was awarded an OBE. She was the first woman to be president of the Manchester Luncheon Club (1963–4) and the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society (1964–5). She died in 1974 after a long and productive life.

Margaret and Dorothy’s generosity and love of art is reflected in their endowment in 1958 of the Pilkington chair in the history of art at the University of Manchester.

Discussion points

1. How did Margaret Pilkington challenge traditional women’s gender roles during her life?
2. Why do you think Margaret was interested in social reform?
3. What were Margaret’s contributions to the artistic and cultural life of Manchester?

Additional resources

• Rosemary Marsh’s article “Margaret Pilkington and her Circle” from the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, 2001.
• Rosemary Marsh’s very detailed leaflet “Margaret Pilkington” to accompany an exhibition at the Whitworth Art Gallery in 1999.
• The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; an entry on Margaret by Sarah Hyde, September 2004. Revised January, 2011: https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/64826
• The Archives Hub (ELGAR) entry for the Papers of Margaret Pilkington (GB 133 PIL) held at the JRRIL: https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/manchesteruniversity/data/gb133-pil
• “The Whitworth Art Gallery: Past, present and future” Margaret Pilkington’s Presidential Address, 1966.
• Two blogs were written by Specialist Library Assistants Angela Petyt-Whittaker and Lorraine Coughlan just after curating an exhibition at the John Rylands Library in October, 2018 and can be found at:

Rylands BlogMargaret Pilkington: 'Queen of Arts'

Rylands BlogThe Pilkingtons: A Family on the Edge

Images reproduced with the permission of The John Rylands University Librarian and Director of the University of Manchester Library. All images used on this page are licenced via CC-BY-NC-SA, for further information about each image, please follow the link in the caption description.