The journalist wrote on 10th May: "Art, to his [Sir William’s] mind, was the most fascinating and delightful, and at the same time a most educative hobby anyone could take up... in the education sense, it brushed up our geography and included our history as nothing else did, because the history and art of the country were closely interwoven... Sir William said it had given his wife and himself the greatest pleasure to bring the pictures together, and to give them to the ancient and loyal town of Berwick and hoped they would interest the inhabitants for many years to come."
By the end of his life Sir William had gifted Berwick a total of 50 paintings and 300 decorative art objects, including a small number of Islamic ceramics from Turkey and Syria.
You can learn more about the topic in the book-album “The Cultural Legacy of Uzbekistan in the Collections of Great Britain” (Volume XLVI) in the series "Сultural legacy of Uzbekistan in the world collections".
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A valuable art lover through the eyes of a journalist
Sir William Burrell’s belief in the value of engaging with art was best expressed by a journalist at the Berwickshire News and General Advertiser who interviewed him in 1949 to mark his gift of artworks to the town of Berwick.