Ruskin’s and Turner’s influence on later artists

Refuge:  The Art of Belonging (15 February-29 June 2019, at Abbot Hall Gallery) 

 

IN showing Ruskin’s and Turner’s influence today among contemporary artists, the

exhibition will also display a series of large monochrome drawings by Emma Stibbon.

In June 2018, Royal Academician Stibbon retraced the steps of Turner and Ruskin

visiting the Alps.  She took the route made by Ruskin in June 1854 when he produced

a series of daguerreotypes (early photographs) of Alpine scenery, to see what remains

of the glaciers today.  Her work shows how geography has been impacted by climate

change over the last two centuries. Ruskin, Turner & the Storm Cloud will also be

shown at York Art Gallery from March 29 to June 23 2019.

The exhibition book, bringing together a collection of new essays by artists, climate

change scientists, art historians and curators, will be published in March 2019.  More

Lakeland Arts’ exhibitions during 2019: 
 

Refuge, The Art of Belonging (15 February-29 June 2019, Abbot Hall) tells the story

of artists who entered Britain as a result of Nazi occupation alongside a community

project exploring the lives of refugees living in Cumbria. The exhibition examines

displacement within artists’ work and the adoption of new landscapes.

The show features works from Lakeland Arts’ Collection including Hilde Goldschmidt,

Hans Coper, Lucie Rie, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and Kurt Schwitters. Schwitters

(1887-1948) the first multi-media artist, settled in Ambleside, Cumbria, after coming

to Britain as a refugee. Anne, Countess of Pembroke (Lady Anne Clifford) (22 March-

22 June 2019, Abbot Hall) sees an unsung campaigner return home.

Abbot Hall takes part in the National Portrait Gallery’s Coming Home project which is

loaning portraits of iconic individuals to places across the country that they are most

closely associated with. This means Abbot Hall is able to show off the finest portrait

of Lady Anne Clifford, which is in the National Portrait Gallery’s collection. Lady Anne

Clifford (1590-1676) spent much of her life in a long and complex legal battle to obtain

the rights of her inheritance.

This portrait of her, by William Larkin, (c1618), is an excellent example of those commissioned by members of the Court of Charles I. Her fascinating fight is known

through her diaries and the magnificent

The Great Picture, painted in 1646 and on permanent show at Abbot Hall. The Lady

Anne Clifford portrait, on loan from the National Portrait Gallery, will be hung alongside

the portrait of her mother, Lady Margaret Russell, Countess of Cumberland, which was

also painted by William Larkin. Anne’s mother was the only person who supported her

campaign.

The arrival of this important portrait sees mother and daughter reunited in Cumbria.

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JOHN RUSKIN in CUMBRIA & Beyond?

Lakeland Arts’ exhibitions for 2019:

Turner, Ruskin, Scottish Colourists, The Art of Belonging and more 

 

'In 1884 Ruskin wrote about an encroaching “Storm Cloud” - 
a darkening of the skies

that he attributed to the belching chimneys of the modern world.'

Lakeland Arts has revealed key highlights from its exciting 2019 programme of exhibitions.

Helen Watson, Lakeland Arts’ Director of Programming, said:  

'Lakeland Arts has a fabulous and fascinating year ahead. We will be showing off great works from our own collections as well as major loans from across the UK.

'We will be exhibiting more than 450 years of art history as well as contemporary work from artists of today.'

Main summer exhibition:

The main summer show at Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, is Ruskin, Turner & the Storm Cloud (12 July – 5 October 2019).

The exhibition will include more than 100 works and stretch across five rooms.  It is one

of the biggest exhibitions in the UK during the 200^th anniversary of John Ruskin’s birth.

Ruskin, Turner & the Storm Cloud will be the first in – depth examination of the relationship between both men, their work, and the impact Ruskin had in highlighting climate

change. In addition to Ruskin’s paintings and writings, the exhibition will feature an

introductory film along with a new publication incorporating fresh research on Ruskin

and Turner’s work.

Abbot Hall is partnering with York Art Gallery and University of York on Ruskin, Turner & the Storm Cloud. Works from both partners go on show alongside substantial loans

from national and regional collections. Ruskin (1819- 1900) was the leading English

art critic of the Victorian era, as well as an art patron, draughtsman, water colourist,

prominent social thinker and philanthropist.

JMW Turner (1775-1881) was a landscape painter, traveller, poet and teacher. Many

people consider him the first modern painter. Ruskin said of Turner he was ‘the

greatest of the age’ and was a lifelong supporter.  The exhibition will feature watercolours,

drawings and a haunting portrait of Ruskin from the National Portrait Gallery, made in

the aftermath of his first serious mental illness.

In 1884 Ruskin wrote about an encroaching “Storm Cloud” - a darkening of the skies

that he attributed to the belching chimneys of the modern world.  The imagery also

allowed him to articulate his ongoing mental struggles.   Bringing together Victorian

and contemporary works of art, the exhibition will demonstrate the unsettling messages

underpinning Ruskin’s eye for beauty in the natural world.

Ruskin’s anxiety about darkening skies and polluted storm clouds is contrasted with

his early interest in Turner’s luminous pictures. 

The exhibition contains a substantial display of Turner’s watercolours, demonstrating

his evolving style, and his creation of highly-finished sample studies of British and

alpine landscapes. Lakeland Arts’  The Passage of Mount St Gothard (1804) by

Turner will be a key painting on show.   Cultural organisations in Cumbria including

Ruskin Museum and Brantwood in Coniston will also be marking the anniversary of

Ruskin’s birth with a series of exhibitions and events in 2019, making the county the

place to visit for everything Ruskin related.

The Ruskin Museum holds the most comprehensive display in the Lake District about

the life and work of John Ruskin. Brantwood is Ruskin’s former home where he spent

the last 28 years of his life. Helen Watson said:

“Ruskin, Turner & the Storm Cloud will be one of our biggest shows ever. If you havean interest in Ruskin and Turner this is a must-see exhibition.

“Next year is hugely significant in celebrating Ruskin and we are delighted to have this landmark exhibition at Abbot Hall during the 200^th anniversary of his birth. It’s particularly apt that the exhibition takes place in Cumbria – the home of Ruskin and the place he found most inspiration.”

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Wynford Dewhurst: A Manchester Impressionist!

The first retrospective of the English impressionist painter and art theorist Wynford Dewhurst since his death in 1941.

Manchester Art Gallery

 Friday 9 December 2016–Sunday 23 April 2017  Free

A controversial figure on the Anglo-French art scene at the turn of the twentieth century, Wynford Dewhurst is most famous for his 1908 work The Picnic, in the collection of Manchester Art Gallery. He was born in Manchester in 1864 and began his career studying law.  He moved to Paris at the relatively advanced age of 27 to train as an artist, returning to France throughout his life to paint in the valleys of the Seine and the Creuse in the style of Claude Monet, who became his principal mentor.  This exhibition brings together a large selection of Dewhurst’s shimmering paintings with archival photographs and documents to reintroduce the painter to his native city. 

"His views have the archetypal Impressionist quality of appearing in the gallery like windows on to a sunlit world, the purple hills warm and inviting in the distance." 

Dewhurst’s pictures take their cue from Monet, though his particular vision is of a dense ether from which cliffs and castles emerge solidly, glowing as if lit from within.  Although from Manchester, Dewhurst’s affinity was with French landscape and the bright light of the continent.  His views have the archetypal Impressionist quality of appearing in the gallery like windows on to a sunlit world, the purple hills warm and inviting in the distance. 

Dewhurst was an art theorist as well as a painter and his 1904 book Impressionist Painting.  Its Genesis and Development was the first important British study of Impressionism.  The book became notorious for Dewhurst’s insistence that the English landscape tradition, especially the work of John Constable and J. M. W. Turner, was at the root of modern French painting.  Dewhurst’s thesis was that, ‘the French artists simply developed a style which was British in its conception.’ 

The exhibition is brought together by independent curator, Roger Brown and will be accompanied by a fully illustrated book, the first monograph to be written on this influential artist and writer.