Keep calm and carry on because the triumphant return of British landscape painting is here
Carla Passino picks out five of her favourite paintings from a new and ambitious exhibition that charts the rise and evolution of landscape painting.
Landscape has been triumphant for the past few months. With Turner’s 250th anniversary just past, Constable’s fast approaching on June 11 and Gainsborough’s 300th coming up next year, the genre that scholar Bendor Grosvenor considers the pinnacle of British art has been on show everywhere from Tate, with its recently ended ‘Turner and Constable: Rivals & Originals’ behemoth, to Gainsborough’s House in Suffolk, with ‘Gainsborough, Turner & Constable: Inventing Landscape’.
Now, Pallant House in Chichester, West Sussex has embarked on an especially ambitious exhibition that traces not only landscape’s rise in the 18th century, but its evolution over the following 200 years, examining how artists captured coast, countryside — and the emotional connection with the people who live in them. Among the highlights are works by some of the greatest British painters of the 20th century, including these:
Ivon Hitchens, 'Curved Barn', 1922
Hitchens subtitled this picture, which has echoes of Futurism, ‘an essay in essential form and the dynamic relation of one plane to another’, a reference to Clive Bell’s question: ‘Who has not, at least once in his life had a sudden vision of a landscape as pure form?’
Donated by the artist to Pallant House, was one of the first pictures acquired by the museum.
Paul Nash, 'Wittenham', 1935
When, in the early years of the 20th century, Nash saw the Wittenham Clumps — twin Oxfordshire hills topped by ancient beeches — he thought of them as ‘a beautiful legendary country haunted by old gods long forgotten’.
He returned to them time and again, calling them ‘the Pyramids of my small world’ and always capturing the genius loci, the spirit of the place. In this watercolour, dark clouds and a leaden sky suggest the gloom of the interwar years.
Eric Ravilious’s 'Country Life calendar', 1939
On September 17, 1938, Country Life carried an advert for its Beautiful Britain calendar for 1939, which, ‘as usual’ would feature 52 of the magazine’s finest photographs. The cover, however, was a colour lithograph by the master of the South Downs — all available for 2s 6d.
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, 'Snow at Wharfedale II', 1957
Yorkshire’s wintry landscape takes a geometric form in this picture, influenced by American Abstract Expressionism, which Barns-Graham made in the one year in which she taught at the Leeds College of Art.
Prunella Clough, 'Disused Land', 1999
‘A gasometer is as good as a garden, probably better,’ said Clough, who had long been fascinated by industrial debris and wasteland. Over the years, her depiction of overlooked industrial and urban areas became increasingly abstracted. This is one of her very last paintings, made in the year she died.
'British Landscapes: A Sense of Place' is on until November 1, 2026. Visit the Pallant House Gallery for more information and to book tickets.
