For centuries, landscape was usually seen as a backdrop in history or religious paintings, but British Landscapes: A Sense of Place at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester shows how it evolved as a genre in its own right. And in particular, how artists in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries were not just reproducing a scene before their eyes but trying to convey in their pictures the emotions and feelings evoked by the land and countryside: the sense of the place, as Pallant Director Simon Martin, who c urated this exhibition, aptly describes it. The show's not on for much longer, but here's a few of our impressions, and let's start with a painting that's a fine example of how an artist puts current events and concerns on canvas. It was December 1916 when Mark Gertler painted this view of the South Coast Near Swanage . It looks so peaceful, the sea is smooth, the distant cliffs of the headland appear soft and even the nearby greenery is out of focus. But W...
If you're thinking about seeing Wright of Derby: From the Shadows at the National Gallery in London, be warned: There's not a huge amount to this show. The gallery describes it as "the first major exhibition dedicated to the British artist’s 'candlelight' paintings". Major? There are actually only 10 of Joseph Wright's oil paintings in this smallish display, and while they certainly include some of his finest, it's not a lot for your money. Especially as the star attraction is An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump , Wright's masterpiece of 1768, which you can usually see for free just yards away in another room in the gallery, in rather less cramped circumstances. Without a shadow of a doubt, it's an astonishing painting, somehow encapsulating the 18th-century Enlightenment -- the advance of reason and science -- in one image. Whenever we're in the National Gallery we almost always stop by to look at it for a minute or two. There is...