In 1935, Paul Nash painted the twin hills of Wittenham Clumps rising from the Oxfordshire Downs. He described them as ‘the Pyramids of my small world.’ They were not dramatic mountains or distant wilderness, but a part of a lived landscape that was walked and revisited – yet in his watercolour they feel monumental. 

Tension between the ordinary and the symbolic runs through British art. The landscape is rarely just a view, but a way of thinking about time, belonging and change. 

This is something we’ve been reflecting on as we prepare British Landscapes: A Sense of Place, our upcoming exhibition drawn from the Gallery’s collection. Looking across these works, one thing becomes clear: artists return to the land not out of habit, but because it offers a space to work through the concerns of their moment. 

At the start of the 20th century, landscape became a vehicle for experimentation. When new ideas about colour and form reached Britain, painters didn’t turn away from gardens and parks – they used them. While Spencer Gore’s The Garden Path, Garth House may depict a traditional English garden, its flickering brushstrokes are alive with modern energy. The familiar setting becomes a testing ground for new ways of seeing.

Elsewhere, artists looked to the land as a record of work and daily life. In the interwar years, Clare Leighton created The Farmer’s Year, a series of wood engravings that follow the rhythms of agricultural labour. Fields are ploughed, crops are gathered, bodies bend and lift. The images are unsentimental and direct, reminding us that landscape is shaped, physically and socially, by human effort. 

During the Second World War, familiar landmarks took on new meaning. Eric Ravilious depicted the Cerne Abbas Giant partially concealed to prevent it guiding enemy aircraft. A prehistoric figure, normally etched boldly into the chalk hillside, was temporarily covered with earth. 

In Ravilious’s image, something ancient and seemingly immovable appears unexpectedly fragile. The white chalk outline that had endured proudly for centuries becomes subject to wartime strategy and fear, revealing how even the most enduring landmarks were drawn into the conflict. 

After the war, artists did not abandon landscape. In St Ives and beyond, abstraction offered another way of responding to place. Wilhelmina Barns-Graham’s Snow at Wharfedale II does not describe a hillside in detail, instead it conveys the sensation of snow and light. For artists such as Barns-Graham, Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth, landscape became structure, rhythm and atmosphere. It was something experienced, not merely depicted. 

Seen together, these works suggest that landscape in British art is never static. It shifts with ideas, technologies and social change. It absorbs anxiety and optimism alike. It reflects regional identities while also connecting to international movements. It can be pastoral, industrial, urban, or abstract. 

And perhaps that is why it still matters. 

Today, conversations about belonging, environment and identity are rarely far from our minds. The landscapes we recognise can feel both enduring and vulnerable. Artists have long understood that paradox, and they show us that the land is not a backdrop to history but part of it. 

To look at these works now is not to step into nostalgia. It is to see how artists have grappled with the same questions we continue to face: how we inhabit a place, how it shapes us, and how it changes over time. 

British Landscapes: A Sense of Place opens at Pallant House Gallery on Saturday 30 May 2026.