Zurburan Costume Exhibition

24/06/2009

The Long Dining Room in Auckland Castle has an additional attraction at the moment with an exhibition of the costumes worn by the patriarchs, Jacob and his sons, in Francisco de Zurburán’s famous series of paintings.

The costumes were designed and made by 12 students on the FdA Costume Construction for Stage & Screen course at Cleveland College of Art & Design in Hartlepool. They were guided in their work by lecturer, Julie Archer and assisted by technicians: Jane Havakin and Sohora Mohamed.

“We try to have an open exhibition for the students each year,” said Malcolm Clements, Historical & Contextual Studies Co-ordinator, and, as we have used the Bowes Museum and the Oriental Museum in Durham in the past we were looking for somewhere different. One of my colleagues new of the Zurburán paintings and we were able to arrange for the costumes to be exhibited alongside the paintings.

The students have certainly put a great deal of thought and skill into the creation of these costumes with some wonderful attention to detail, especially in the fabrics themselves. And they are an inspiring addition to the paintings, almost bringing the characters to life.

The artist, Francisco de Zurburán was Spanish and a contemporary of Valázques and El Greco. Painted between 1640 and 1645 each one stands eight feet tall, although the twelfth son, ‘Benjamin’, is not in fact the work of de Zurburán, but of Arthur Pond, an artist, copyist and art critic of the 18th century.

It was Bishop Trevor who, in 1756, acquired this now priceless collection for £124, after a history which probably took them to South America before coming to England.

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