Opulence & Anxiety, Landscape paintings from the Royal Academy of Arts
The exhibition, Opulence & Anxiety, Landscape paintings from the Royal Academy of Arts, will be on show at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea from 21 July-23 September in association with Compton Verney.
Thomas Gainsborough RA, Romantic Landscape, c. 1783. Oil on canvas
Curated by Tim Barringer, Paul Mellon Professor, Yale University, USA, this exhibition charts an illuminating path through the history of British landscape painting, presenting an innovative survey of the subject from the eighteenth-century to the present day. Britain's industrial and commercial progress in the years leading up to 1800 inaugurated an age of opulence, represented by a period of wealth and global power, yet the nation also entered an era of extreme anxiety. These conflicting trends are explored in the period covered by this exhibition, which brings together celebrated masterpieces and rarely seen works from the RA's collection.
Gilbert Spencer RA, From My Studio, ca. 1959. Oil on canvas
The exhibition features the work of over forty landscape painters. Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable and J.M.W. Turner are recognised world-wide as masters of the genre, but the exhibition offers an opportunity to consider them alongside the early artists of empire, William Hodges and Thomas Daniell; the Victorian naturalists Thomas Creswick and Benjamin Williams Leader; Edwardian painters Alfred East and George Clausen, and the observers of inter-war Britain including Richard Eurich, L.S. Lowry, John Nash and Sir Stanley Spencer. The exhibition, which is presented in five distinct themes, lastly focuses on recent work by Donald Hamilton Fraser, David Hockney, Barbara Rae and Sir Kyffin Williams.
