CORNWALL.- Gainsborough, Sargent, Tuke, Romney, Picasso, Moore, Warhol, Nicholson – works by these acclaimed artists and more have been acquired for Falmouth Art Gallery over the past ten years.

In celebration of ten years of fantastic acquisitions aided by donations, grants and bequests, the gallery is hosting a major new exhibition, A Decade of Collecting, which is running until 5 February 2011. The exhibition showcases an impressive selection of works by key artists, many of which were bought for Falmouth with the Art Find's help.

These include the arresting Portrait of Charles Napier Hemy, 1905, by John Singer Sargent. Charles Napier Hemy was Falmouth's first Royal Academician and one of the founding members of the first Falmouth Art Gallery. A striking seascape by Hemy also features in the show. Entitled Along Shore Fisherman, the important work was bought at auction with a £15,450 grant from us in 2008.

Innocence, c 1904, the beautiful watercolour by British painter Thomas Cooper Gotch (1854-1931), was bought with the Art Fund's help this summer. The fantastical painting features a young girl (the artist’s daughter) with an exquisitely painted dragon. The work was acquired at a record breaking auction sale. Another important auction acquisition featured in the show is John Opie’s A Beggar Boy, 1780-82.

Also on show will be works by Francis Bacon, Charles Napier Hemy, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edvard Munch, Joan Miró, Henry Moore, Roy Lichtenstein and Gavin Turk, as well as favourites from the Children’s Illustration Archive, including Dan Dare, Pugwash and Bagpuss, and a rare still from Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’.

The gallery is open Monday to Saturday 10am – 5pm. Admission is free.