Spirit of Place: Artists and the British Landscape - A Special Interest Day

Introduction:

Artists have drawn and painted the British landscape for over a thousand years. Yet each generation has framed the view in a different way. Some painters have imagined the landscape poetically while others have tried to express how it actually looked under changeable skies. There have been times for wild, mountainous scenery and times for views of gentle pastures. Today, the effects of the climate crisis are setting new challenges for artists. This three lecture study day - based on fascinating original research for Susan’s book Spirit of Place: Artists, Writers and the British Landscape (Thames & Hudson, 2020) - offers us a unique opportunity to share an in-depth look at the long history of landscape art in Britain. 

Timetable:

Arrive by  9.45 AM in the Club Room, Churchill College

Lecture One: Begins promptly at 10.00 AM

Coffee and tea will be served in the room between 11.00 and 11.30 AM

Lecture Two: 11.30 PM

Lunch (not included in the price but which can be taken together in the dining room) at 12.30PM

Lecture Three: 1:30 PM

Followed by time for questions, finishing by 3.00pm

Lecture Details:

The day will begin with a search for the origins of Britain’s landscape tradition in maps and illuminated manuscripts. We will then go on to explore developments by pioneers such as Richard Wilson, Paul Sandby and Thomas Gainsborough. The 18th century was an era of exploration and discovery which brought exciting new ways of looking at the landscape: a balloonist looked down from his basket to draw the astonishing views that unfolded beneath; amateur artists travelling to the Lake District and north Wales went equipped with coloured lenses to cast an atmospheric tint over the scenes they sketched; and Gainsborough himself devised an innovative ‘show box’ for viewing his glass-paintings.

A second lecture focuses on the Romantic Movement, and the ways in which John Constable and J. M. W. Turner rethought landscape art. Constable in particular was a pioneer of close observation, the first artist to study clouds with scientific rigour and show how English landscape actually appeared to the eye under bright, showery English skies. Watercolour opened up exciting new expressive possibilities, and watercolourists of the Golden Age such as Thomas Girtin, John Robert Cozens and John Sell Cotman used this translucent medium with great skill to capture fleeting effects of light and weather. The young Samuel Palmer, meanwhile, was turning his eyes inwards to produce some of the most idiosyncratic and visionary of rural scenes.

The final lecture tells the stories of Victorian painters such as John Everett Millais, who painted the background of his early masterpiece Ophelia out of doors to capture every flower and blade of grass in eye-popping colour and detail. We will examine fluid, atmospheric watercolours of the late 19th and early 20th centuries by masters of the medium such as James McNeill Whistler and John Singer Sargent before considering landscapes of the interwar and wartime years. Official War Artists Paul Nash and Eric Ravilious were both steeped in the tradition of British landscape but brought an entirely modern angle too: Ravilious could paint a Tiger Moth in the manner of Cotman. The lecture will conclude by looking at recent innovations in land art, including contemporary artists’ responses to the climate crisis.

About our Lecturer: Dr Susan Owens, former Curator of Paintings at the V&A, is an independent scholar. She has published widely on aspects of British art and culture. Her book Spirit of Place: Artists, Writers and the British Landscape (Thames & Hudson, 2020) was a Times / Sunday Times Book of the Year and shortlisted for Apollo’s Book of the Year award. Susan’s latest book, Imagining England’s Past: Inspiration, Enchantment, Obsession came out in April 2023 and she is currently completing a book on drawing for Yale University Press.

Please note: Refunds, less the booking fee, can only be made if a replacement attendee can be found from the waiting list.