British Landscapes : A Sense of Place

An exploration of how artists responded to the British landscape between 1910 and 1970

This lavishly illustrated catalogue explores how British artists conveyed the spirit or sense of place during the twentieth century. From an English garden depicted with Post-Impressionist panache, to poetic scenes of Kentish orchards in the aftermath of the First World War, to romantic evocations of ancient sites painted by Paul Nash and Eric Ravilious in the 1930s and 1940s and abstract depictions of the Cornish coast and urban wastelands in the 1950s and 1960s, the book considers how the British landscape has been central to the formation of regional and national identities, and how, tangentially, it can convey the anxieties of sociopolitical events, such as the First and Second World Wars.

British Landscapes covers a wide range of genres, showcasing a history of twentieth-century art in Britain drawn from Pallant House Gallery’s celebrated collection of Modern British art—from the impact of Post-Impressionism on painterly Camden Town and Bloomsbury Group landscapes to the pastoral etchings of FL Griggs, Robin Tanner, and Graham Sutherland in the 1920s; 1930s travel posters and watercolours by John Nash and Eric Ravilious; an exploration of Surrealism through Paul Nash, John Tunnard, and Julian Trevelyan; and wartime landscapes by John Piper, John Craxton, and Keith Vaughan. The final section considers the development of abstraction in British art via the St Ives artists and their contemporaries, such as Ivon Hitchens.