The Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle is one of my favourite places. A proper Northern gem, I keep coming back for its permanent collection, not least Isabella and The Pot of Basil by William Holman Hunt. I’ve lost count of the hours spent in contemplation of this masterpiece. The subject matter is a little chilling (um, a lover’s severed head planted up and watered by tears) but that doesn’t detract from the artwork’s magnetic beauty.
The temporary exhibitions at The Laing are just as compelling. The current offering traces the radically different approaches to British landscape painting, from the mid-Victorian era through to the 1920s. Essence of Nature presents a rare opportunity to see around 100 oil and watercolours by leading artists from the Pre-Raphaelite, Rural Naturalist and British Impressionist schools.
The exhibition begins with the Pre-Raphaelites’ ideal of “truth to nature”, represented by such artists as Holman Hunt (1827-1910) and William Dyce (1806–1864.) The influential critic John Ruskin memorably proposed that artists should aim to record nature, “rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing”. The exhibition includes Ruskin’s study of Spray of Dead Oak Leaves (1879) and his on-the-spot mountain view at Mer de Glace, Chamonix, France of 1860. Ruskin venerated mountain landscape for what he saw as its purity and spiritual character. He helped William Inchbold to travel to Switzerland to paint, resulting in 1857 in The Lake of Lucerne: Mont Pilatus in the Distance. This little painting is probably the picture which Holman Hunt described as “really a very beautiful one”, though Ruskin himself was sniffy about Inchbold’s inclusion of houses and gardens around the edge of the lake, sullying the mountain purity.
Essence of Nature: Pre-Raphaelites to British Impressionists is at Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle until October 14, 2023. For more information, click here.
Main image: The Lake of Lucerne Mont Pilatus in the distance, John William Inchbold
