Shipley was born in Gateshead near High Street in 1822 and grew up to practice law in Newcastle, but his real life happened in the spaces between work. He bought paintings constantly - Dutch and Flemish masters of the seventeenth century, Italian religious scenes, English watercolours, anything that caught his attention. From 1884 until his death in 1909 he rented Saltwell Towers, the eclectic red-brick fantasy that William Wailes had built nearby, and filled it with canvases. Two thousand five hundred paintings. Imagine the walls. When he died, his will left 30,000 pounds and the entire collection to the City of Newcastle, to be housed in a gallery worthy of the bequest.

Newcastle's Laing Art Gallery had been built in 1904, and the trustees were perplexed - Shipley's will specifically excluded the gallery at Higham Place from receiving the bequest, but only because it was 'too small.' If Newcastle would enlarge it, the 30,000 pounds would follow. Newcastle declined. A long process of legal disentanglement followed, ending with the County Borough of Gateshead being offered the collection instead. Even then, no building could hold all 2,500 paintings; 359 were selected by Shipley's executors, another 145 added by Gateshead's committee. The remainder were sold to fund construction. The new gallery, designed by Arthur Stockwell of Newcastle, opened on 29 November 1917 in the middle of the First World War.

Architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner called it a 'bold arrangement of a brick central block and lower wings containing galleries' - faint praise, but the building has aged into its grade II listing with some dignity. Inside, the original 504 paintings have grown into a collection of around 10,000 works. The Dutch and Flemish holdings are strong; the British watercolours and prints, stronger. The local-interest pieces are the soul of the place: William C. Irving's 1903 painting of the Blaydon Races, the song of every Geordie childhood; Charlie Rogers' 1970 street scene of Redheugh Crossroads, painted by an artist born in Gateshead who never left.

Since 1977 the Shipley has quietly become something Joseph Shipley could never have predicted: one of Britain's leading centres for contemporary craft. The collection now includes ceramics, wood, metal, glass, textiles, and studio furniture - one of the best holdings outside London. The Henry Rothschild collection of studio ceramics is housed here. In 2008, the Designs for Life gallery opened to showcase contemporary craft and design. The partnership with the V&A in London brings touring exhibitions to Gateshead that locals would otherwise need to travel for. The gallery is now managed by North East Museums on behalf of Gateshead Council - a public institution born from one solicitor's private obsession, still doing the work he could not have imagined when he hung his first painting at sixteen.