Art History Course | Framing the Landscape in 20th Century British Art

In the years between the First and Second World Wars, printmaking experienced a remarkable revival in Britain. In his introductory lecture art historian Jolyon Drury explores the renewed interest in traditional techniques such as etching and wood engraving and considers how artists captured rural life and labour with clarity and purpose.

A second lecture by Dr Melanie Vandenbrouck, Chief Curator at Pallant House Gallery, will focus on the life and work of Clare Leighton (1898-1989), one of the leading printmakers of the period, whose art reflected not just her own work ethic, but that of the workforce involved in agricultural and manual labour.

This session explores how artists responded to the landscape in wartime through the lens of Surrealism. In the opening lecture, Pallant House Gallery Director Simon Martin discusses the representation of the British landscape during the Second World War, exploring how artists such as Eric Ravilious, Paul Nash, John Craxton and Ceri Richards drew on the language of Surrealism and Neo-Romanticism at a time of uncertainty and conflict.

The second lecture, delivered by Miriam O’Connor Perks, Curator at Pallant House Gallery, will examine the life and work of Graham Sutherland (1903-1980). Transforming the landscape into something psychologically charged and often unsettling, Sutherland’s work reflects both the natural world and the tensions of wartime Britain.

The final session looks at the rise of abstraction in postwar British art. In the introductory lecture, writer and curator Michael Tucker will explore how artists moved away from direct representation towards a more exploratory approach to depicting the landscape.

A concluding lecture by Dr Melanie Vandenbrouck, Chief Curator at Pallant House Gallery, will focus on the life and work of Prunella Clough (1919-1999), whose work sits between abstraction and observation. Her paintings reveal a sensitivity to overlooked urban and industrial environments, rendered through subtle textures and muted colour.

Surrounded by world-class artworks, you’ll gain fresh insight into how in framing the landscape, British artists reflected the changing ideas, values and everyday lives of their times.