This Green and Pleasant Land: The Story of British Landscape Painting

0:00:05 > 0:00:10Britain has a rich and diverse landscape,

0:00:10 > 0:00:15ceaselessly changing with the seasons and the lives of its people.

0:00:15 > 0:00:18It has provided inspiration to artists for centuries.

0:00:23 > 0:00:27Painting the landscape is a familiar occupation.

0:00:27 > 0:00:30The artist carries his paints, brushes and easel

0:00:30 > 0:00:32out into the countryside

0:00:32 > 0:00:36and faithfully renders the view he sees before him.

0:00:38 > 0:00:43But even when a painter sets out with just such an intention,

0:00:43 > 0:00:46the reality is more complex.

0:00:46 > 0:00:50Every painter brings their own unique vision to the canvas.

0:00:53 > 0:00:55The time in which they live,

0:00:55 > 0:00:59the political, social and economic circumstances of the age

0:00:59 > 0:01:00and their own personal situation

0:01:00 > 0:01:05will all manifest themselves in the final picture.

0:01:13 > 0:01:16Landscape painting is a discipline in which British artists

0:01:16 > 0:01:19are acknowledged to have created some of the greatest work

0:01:19 > 0:01:21made anywhere in the world.

0:01:24 > 0:01:26But it was not born here.

0:01:26 > 0:01:30We imported, borrowed and learnt how to paint the landscape.

0:01:34 > 0:01:35In the process,

0:01:35 > 0:01:38we recorded the history of our country and its people...

0:01:40 > 0:01:42..the value placed on its land...

0:01:43 > 0:01:47..and the aesthetic and cultural worth of our vision of ourselves.

0:02:13 > 0:02:14Until the 1600s,

0:02:14 > 0:02:18the British landscape was all but ignored by painters,

0:02:18 > 0:02:22and British painters were all but ignored

0:02:22 > 0:02:25by those with the money to commission art.

0:02:25 > 0:02:28The break with Rome under Henry VIII

0:02:28 > 0:02:31cut Britain off from the cultural life of the continent,

0:02:31 > 0:02:33and the patronage of the Church,

0:02:33 > 0:02:37which did so much to sustain the arts in Catholic Europe.

0:02:37 > 0:02:40Even our royal portraits were painted by foreigners.

0:02:40 > 0:02:45Hans Holbein, who painted this portrait of Henry, was German,

0:02:45 > 0:02:48and though his work tell us so much about Tudor Britain,

0:02:48 > 0:02:50he had no interest in our landscape.

0:02:51 > 0:02:55I guess it's one of the ironies of a genre of art,

0:02:55 > 0:02:58thought of as being so British, that you have to look beyond Britain

0:02:58 > 0:03:01for the origins of British landscape painting.

0:03:01 > 0:03:05And it derives from Flemish art and Dutch art of an earlier period.

0:03:07 > 0:03:10The first British monarch to show a serious concern

0:03:10 > 0:03:14for the artistic health of his nation was Charles I

0:03:14 > 0:03:16and as if to make up for a previous deficiency,

0:03:16 > 0:03:19it became an obsession for him.

0:03:20 > 0:03:23Charles greatly admired the work of Flemish painters

0:03:23 > 0:03:25like Peter Paul Rubens.

0:03:26 > 0:03:30And was delighted when, in 1629, Rubens arrived in London.

0:03:33 > 0:03:34But his motives were not artistic.

0:03:36 > 0:03:39This was a complex period in European politics

0:03:39 > 0:03:43but if you need directions, ask a historian.

0:03:43 > 0:03:46Rubens comes to London, not as an artist, but as a diplomat.

0:03:46 > 0:03:50He's working for the Spanish crown and he's come to enlist the help

0:03:50 > 0:03:53of one of the more important Protestant kings of Europe,

0:03:53 > 0:03:56King Charles, to bring peace to Europe.

0:03:57 > 0:04:01Rubens painted this allegorical picture during his negotiations,

0:04:01 > 0:04:04portraying Charles as St George.

0:04:06 > 0:04:08Charles wanted to sit for a portrait by Rubens,

0:04:08 > 0:04:11but given that Britain and Spain were still at war,

0:04:11 > 0:04:14that would have been completely unacceptable so he made do with this.

0:04:14 > 0:04:17What you see here is a bucolic vision of harmony.

0:04:17 > 0:04:19This is why it's not just an allegory,

0:04:19 > 0:04:21it's actually a fascinating landscape painting.

0:04:21 > 0:04:25Rubens comes to England as an ambassador and he's very struck.

0:04:25 > 0:04:27He writes home, he writes off to Spain saying,

0:04:27 > 0:04:30"This is a land of extreme beauty and peace.

0:04:30 > 0:04:33"There hasn't been any fighting inside Britain for centuries.

0:04:33 > 0:04:36"It's full of art lovers, antiquarians, collectors.

0:04:36 > 0:04:38"King Charles himself, first among them.

0:04:38 > 0:04:40"The greatest art lover who ever sat on the English throne."

0:04:40 > 0:04:43He portrays the king in a noble guise

0:04:43 > 0:04:46and divine providence is smiling on his land.

0:04:46 > 0:04:49The heavens are beaming down. You can see what looks like Lambeth Palace,

0:04:49 > 0:04:53perhaps Westminster Abbey, Palace of Whitehall, Banqueting House.

0:04:53 > 0:04:54It really is a collage.

0:04:55 > 0:04:57Oh, yes, it is a collage.

0:04:57 > 0:05:01It's a fantasy, I tell you. It's not in any way a realistic painting.

0:05:01 > 0:05:03There's some buildings here

0:05:03 > 0:05:05and I'd like to put them here.

0:05:05 > 0:05:08It's like...they're buildings along the Thames, actually

0:05:08 > 0:05:15and this is somewhere around Aldgate or Islington or somewhere like that.

0:05:31 > 0:05:35It's a beautiful landscape in the background there

0:05:35 > 0:05:38and there's a Thames-like river running through it,

0:05:38 > 0:05:41which accentuates the depth in the picture.

0:05:41 > 0:05:44And yet, I can't help feeling somehow, looking at this painting,

0:05:44 > 0:05:48the more I looked at it, I kept wondering what made this painting

0:05:48 > 0:05:50appear so phoney to me.

0:05:50 > 0:05:52It's all flattery.

0:05:52 > 0:05:54He's being a diplomat. He's being...

0:05:54 > 0:05:57He's sucking up to people and making...

0:05:58 > 0:06:01..making them feel good about themselves.

0:06:03 > 0:06:07The difference between Rubens and me is...

0:06:07 > 0:06:09he's a two-faced son of a bitch, actually.

0:06:11 > 0:06:15What I think Rubens did was to flatter...Charles I.

0:06:15 > 0:06:19He wouldn't be doing what Private Eye were doing in the '60s,

0:06:19 > 0:06:22you know, what I was doing then, in the '60s.

0:06:22 > 0:06:25What I'm trying to do is insult him.

0:06:25 > 0:06:28Today, we'd really think about this as a political cartoon.

0:06:28 > 0:06:30As WikiLeaks has demonstrated,

0:06:30 > 0:06:35diplomats are rather candid in their reports back home

0:06:35 > 0:06:38and indeed Rubens makes all sorts of judgements about Charles

0:06:38 > 0:06:40that are fascinating to a historian.

0:06:40 > 0:06:43The great tragedy of this painting is it's a vision

0:06:43 > 0:06:45that never came to pass.

0:06:45 > 0:06:48In fact, it contributed, really, to Charles' downfall.

0:06:48 > 0:06:50Charles made peace with Spain

0:06:50 > 0:06:53but, in doing so, he won the undying enmity

0:06:53 > 0:06:55of the majority of his subjects.

0:06:55 > 0:07:00The Englishmen did not want this harmonious vision of a united Europe.

0:07:00 > 0:07:01He ain't half...

0:07:01 > 0:07:03a clever bloke.

0:07:03 > 0:07:05I still don't really like him.

0:07:13 > 0:07:17Rubens's trip to Britain marked a turning point in his career.

0:07:17 > 0:07:21At the age of 53, he gave up diplomacy

0:07:21 > 0:07:23and retired to the country.

0:07:23 > 0:07:27Rather less conventionally, he got married to a 16-year-old model.

0:07:29 > 0:07:31But despite Britain's Eurosceptic outlook,

0:07:31 > 0:07:35Rubens had spotted one important fact.

0:07:35 > 0:07:37This was a beautiful country.

0:07:38 > 0:07:42That simple truth was the foundation for all that was to follow.

0:07:46 > 0:07:50Charles, meanwhile, continued to focus rather more on art

0:07:50 > 0:07:53than on his increasingly resentful subjects,

0:07:53 > 0:07:56and soon found a replacement for Rubens.

0:07:56 > 0:07:59Anthony Van Dyck, who had been Rubens's assistant,

0:07:59 > 0:08:01arrived in London 1632

0:08:01 > 0:08:07to take up the position of Principal Painter in Ordinary

0:08:07 > 0:08:09to their majesties.

0:08:10 > 0:08:14In an early Royal commission, Van Dyck depicts Charles's nephew,

0:08:14 > 0:08:16Prince Rupert.

0:08:16 > 0:08:20Through the arch behind him, there's a very English-looking hillside,

0:08:20 > 0:08:23suggesting that Van Dyck had done a bit of research.

0:08:25 > 0:08:28Maybe he was sketching for his own pleasure

0:08:28 > 0:08:31but, because we know that this tree appears in the background

0:08:31 > 0:08:32of one of his paintings,

0:08:32 > 0:08:34the portrait of Prince Rupert,

0:08:34 > 0:08:37it could also be that, from the beginning,

0:08:37 > 0:08:40he already envisaged to build up a repertoire

0:08:40 > 0:08:43to use in his future paintings.

0:08:45 > 0:08:47Van Dyck's pictures of his royal master

0:08:47 > 0:08:49were just what Charles was after,

0:08:49 > 0:08:53reinforcing the divine right of kings in oil paint.

0:08:54 > 0:08:58But however accomplished van Dyck was at painting the landscape,

0:08:58 > 0:09:01it was still just a backdrop.

0:09:01 > 0:09:04His evident pleasure in depicting the countryside

0:09:04 > 0:09:07was something he could only do in a drawing.

0:09:09 > 0:09:11The reason why I love drawings so much

0:09:11 > 0:09:15is because they offer you a glimpse into the thoughts of an artist.

0:09:15 > 0:09:20It's a sort of signature. You're eye-to-eye with the artist,

0:09:20 > 0:09:23seeing how he perceived the world around him.

0:09:29 > 0:09:33While Van Dyck's opportunities to paint the landscape were scarce,

0:09:33 > 0:09:38those of his British contemporaries were almost nonexistent.

0:09:38 > 0:09:40With the exception of vanity pictures

0:09:40 > 0:09:43of the estates and country mansions of the nobility,

0:09:43 > 0:09:47the British showed no interest in paintings of their landscape.

0:09:47 > 0:09:52But there were landscapes hanging on the walls inside these houses.

0:09:54 > 0:09:59Whilst van Dyck was sketching the countryside around London,

0:09:59 > 0:10:03a Frenchman was making a name for himself painting the Roman campagna,

0:10:03 > 0:10:05the countryside around Rome.

0:10:07 > 0:10:11Right...here we are in the Landscape Room, um...

0:10:12 > 0:10:17These paintings were bought by the builder of the house, Thomas Coke,

0:10:17 > 0:10:19on his grand tour in Italy.

0:10:19 > 0:10:24He had the longest recorded grand tour in history. It was six years.

0:10:24 > 0:10:28The most important painter here is Claude Lorrain.

0:10:28 > 0:10:32The paintings are these wonderful, sort of, classical landscapes.

0:10:34 > 0:10:35At the time,

0:10:35 > 0:10:38these paintings wouldn't have been thought of as landscapes.

0:10:38 > 0:10:41Instead, they were mythical representations

0:10:41 > 0:10:44of stories from classical antiquity.

0:10:44 > 0:10:47For example, this is a Greek mythological scene,

0:10:47 > 0:10:49Argus Guarding Io.

0:10:49 > 0:10:52Such stories gave a sense of moral seriousness

0:10:52 > 0:10:56that a simple view of an Italian hillside would not have displayed.

0:10:58 > 0:11:01As long as everyone went along with this premise,

0:11:01 > 0:11:05Claude could continue to paint the countryside.

0:11:05 > 0:11:08He was under no illusions about this ruse himself.

0:11:08 > 0:11:11"I sell the landscape," he said.

0:11:11 > 0:11:13"The figures are gratis."

0:11:14 > 0:11:16Holkham is quite unique, actually,

0:11:16 > 0:11:20in the fact that it is really the work of one man,

0:11:20 > 0:11:22the builder of the house, Thomas Coke.

0:11:22 > 0:11:25He and his friends, all of whom were very learned,

0:11:25 > 0:11:29they used to retire to the library and read the great classics

0:11:29 > 0:11:32and they would read them in ancient Latin or ancient Greek.

0:11:32 > 0:11:37So they all understood the symbolism of various paintings in here.

0:11:37 > 0:11:40And then you could look out the window

0:11:40 > 0:11:43and you could see the English landscape

0:11:43 > 0:11:46that he had moulded in an Italianate style.

0:11:50 > 0:11:53Magnificent as the setting of Holkham Hall is,

0:11:53 > 0:11:56the idea that you might fashion a little bit of Italy

0:11:56 > 0:11:58from the raw materials of England

0:11:58 > 0:12:01was most perfectly realised in a valley in Wiltshire.

0:12:12 > 0:12:15This is Stourhead,

0:12:15 > 0:12:20created by a wealthy banker, Henry Hoare, after his visit to Italy.

0:12:31 > 0:12:34His inspiration for this manufactured landscape

0:12:34 > 0:12:37was another myth, and another painting by Claude.

0:12:40 > 0:12:44This is one of Claude's most famous paintings

0:12:44 > 0:12:45in the National Gallery in London.

0:12:45 > 0:12:48This is Aeneas at Delos.

0:12:48 > 0:12:51In the left foreground, we've got a bridge

0:12:51 > 0:12:55and then here is a view of a Pantheon-type building,

0:12:55 > 0:12:57as we see over across the lake.

0:12:57 > 0:13:00This image is often cited by art historians

0:13:00 > 0:13:03as being an obvious precursor

0:13:03 > 0:13:06for what Henry Hoare was trying to achieve here in three dimensions,

0:13:06 > 0:13:07not on a canvas.

0:13:10 > 0:13:13Claude's landscapes came from his imagination

0:13:13 > 0:13:17but his art had a powerful effect on men like Henry Hoare.

0:13:18 > 0:13:21The immense undertaking involved

0:13:21 > 0:13:24in creating a real landscape based on a painting,

0:13:24 > 0:13:27underlined the lengths to which a wealthy man could go

0:13:27 > 0:13:28to live in Arcadia.

0:13:30 > 0:13:33Stourhead was an extraordinary achievement,

0:13:33 > 0:13:37creating a landscape that was to inspire artists for centuries

0:13:37 > 0:13:39and opening the door for Capability Brown

0:13:39 > 0:13:42and the landscape-garden movement that followed.

0:13:42 > 0:13:45In displaying their learning in this way,

0:13:45 > 0:13:48the British upper classes saw themselves

0:13:48 > 0:13:52as embodying all the virtues of the antique past.

0:13:52 > 0:13:56Adopting the cultural and political trappings of the Roman Empire,

0:13:56 > 0:14:01proclaimed the noble ideals of what was to become the British Empire.

0:14:04 > 0:14:08These young men were inculcated in the classics

0:14:08 > 0:14:12at English public school, and when they leave, they go on a grand tour

0:14:12 > 0:14:14which is a kind of finishing school,

0:14:14 > 0:14:17where they take their copies of their Virgil and their Cicero

0:14:17 > 0:14:22and their Ovid with them as a kind of portable guidebook to Italy.

0:14:26 > 0:14:30Grand tours were also an opportunity to do a bit of shopping for art

0:14:30 > 0:14:32to hang on the walls back home.

0:14:34 > 0:14:38And the young British "milords" were legendary shopaholics,

0:14:38 > 0:14:41buying up anything with an Italian name,

0:14:41 > 0:14:43however indifferent the quality.

0:14:45 > 0:14:49So where did this leave the aspiring home-grown talent?

0:14:50 > 0:14:56The artists had a more fragmented opportunistic relationship

0:14:56 > 0:14:57with classical culture.

0:14:57 > 0:15:00Basically, it was incredibly difficult for some of them

0:15:00 > 0:15:02to even get to Italy.

0:15:02 > 0:15:06We know some of them were patronised by wealthy British aristocrats

0:15:06 > 0:15:08who actually pay for them to go,

0:15:08 > 0:15:11but often we know that it's much more of a social

0:15:11 > 0:15:13and economic struggle for them to get by.

0:15:15 > 0:15:19This landscape was painted by a British painter, George Lambert.

0:15:19 > 0:15:22He certainly knew what was required.

0:15:22 > 0:15:26All the elements that made Claude so successful are here.

0:15:26 > 0:15:29The soft Italian light and the classical ruins.

0:15:34 > 0:15:37George, though, never made it to Italy.

0:15:42 > 0:15:45Lambert was not alone in his growing frustration

0:15:45 > 0:15:48with the status of British artists in their home market.

0:15:48 > 0:15:51Along with his great friend William Hogarth,

0:15:51 > 0:15:54he resented the preference for foreign painters

0:15:54 > 0:15:57and continental landscapes.

0:15:58 > 0:16:05In 1733, he painted this view of Box Hill in Surrey.

0:16:05 > 0:16:08It may be the first time a British artist painted a British landscape

0:16:08 > 0:16:11for its own sake.

0:16:11 > 0:16:13It was not just the background to a portrait.

0:16:13 > 0:16:17It showed no country mansion or estate.

0:16:17 > 0:16:20It was an accurate representation of a real place

0:16:20 > 0:16:24and it still looks pretty much the same today.

0:16:30 > 0:16:32In the foreground of Lambert's painting,

0:16:32 > 0:16:35some farm labourers are harvesting the corn,

0:16:35 > 0:16:39but today, in the same valley, they're harvesting grapes.

0:16:44 > 0:16:46In much the same way that English wine

0:16:46 > 0:16:49is still seen as something of a novelty in its home market,

0:16:49 > 0:16:52Hogarth and Lambert struggled in a British art market

0:16:52 > 0:16:56that still had a palate attuned to continental tastes.

0:17:01 > 0:17:04Richard Wilson, a well-connected Welshman,

0:17:04 > 0:17:08painted this view of Westminster Bridge under construction in 1744.

0:17:10 > 0:17:14The undoubted disadvantage of being Welsh and not Italian

0:17:14 > 0:17:17was bought home to him when Canaletto moved to London

0:17:17 > 0:17:19and painted the same scene.

0:17:20 > 0:17:25Wilson decided to make the journey in reverse and moved to Italy.

0:17:25 > 0:17:30Once in Rome, he began turning out Arcadian landscapes

0:17:30 > 0:17:33with all the hallmarks of a Claude.

0:17:33 > 0:17:36His relocation did the trick and he became hugely popular

0:17:36 > 0:17:40with the same British aristocrats who had ignored him at home.

0:17:42 > 0:17:45After seven years, Wilson returned to Britain,

0:17:45 > 0:17:48but he never quite got Italy out of his system,

0:17:48 > 0:17:51which was very evident in the pictures he made.

0:17:52 > 0:17:55'I think Richard Wilson is being very clever, actually.

0:17:55 > 0:17:58'I think he learned a great deal when he was in Rome

0:17:58 > 0:18:01'and took what he learned about the classical idealisation

0:18:01 > 0:18:04'of the landscape back to appeal to the British passion

0:18:04 > 0:18:07'at the time for all things Italian.

0:18:07 > 0:18:10'He's looking at the British landscape

0:18:10 > 0:18:12'but with that kind of Italian filter.'

0:18:13 > 0:18:17This looks like as close as I'm going to get

0:18:17 > 0:18:22to perhaps where Richard Wilson would have painted this view from.

0:18:22 > 0:18:25Incredibly, actually, it's quite similar.

0:18:25 > 0:18:28I can recognise a lot of the main motifs. There's the Holt Bridge.

0:18:28 > 0:18:31There's the hills in the distance.

0:18:31 > 0:18:36From this point, you can't actually see the church

0:18:36 > 0:18:41and also he seems to have exaggerated quite a lot, for artistic purposes,

0:18:41 > 0:18:43the rocky escarpment on the right-hand side.

0:18:43 > 0:18:48Interestingly, whereas Claude, I feel,

0:18:48 > 0:18:50has this kind of serenity about the sky -

0:18:50 > 0:18:53it feels like it's going to last forever -

0:18:53 > 0:18:55this is kind of slightly wild.

0:18:55 > 0:18:58It does have a real kind of British feel about it.

0:18:58 > 0:19:00The sky is incredibly similar.

0:19:00 > 0:19:02You've got these grey clouds all around

0:19:02 > 0:19:04and here the clouds are enveloping the picture.

0:19:04 > 0:19:08There's just this little glimpse of this magical moment

0:19:08 > 0:19:10where you have this light coming through

0:19:10 > 0:19:12and shining down on these three people.

0:19:14 > 0:19:16I've always been interested in Claude paintings

0:19:16 > 0:19:19and I've recreated a number myself.

0:19:19 > 0:19:23I wanted to photograph the landscape around Britain today

0:19:23 > 0:19:28but elevating it to the status of Claudian-Arcadian vision.

0:19:28 > 0:19:31That's exactly what Richard Wilson is doing.

0:19:31 > 0:19:35He's transposing Claude's ideals but then he's making it with a landscape

0:19:35 > 0:19:37that people would recognise.

0:19:38 > 0:19:41I'm going to take some photographs now myself

0:19:41 > 0:19:45to try and construct my own view of the Holt Bridge

0:19:45 > 0:19:48and the surrounding area from the reality that I see here.

0:19:48 > 0:19:50But using my own artistic licence

0:19:50 > 0:19:54to capture what Wilson has captured here.

0:20:13 > 0:20:16We have to remember the landscape we see

0:20:16 > 0:20:19and it's always filtered, it's always a construction

0:20:19 > 0:20:21and it's always been managed.

0:20:21 > 0:20:24And so that's quite interesting that now when you come back

0:20:24 > 0:20:28and you try and look at a landscape painting in the same spot,

0:20:28 > 0:20:32it's changed because the landscape has been managed in a different way

0:20:32 > 0:20:35and now we're seeing, in fact, there are more trees than there were

0:20:35 > 0:20:38300-400 years ago, which is actually really interesting,

0:20:38 > 0:20:40cos you wouldn't expect that.

0:20:41 > 0:20:43How the landscape was managed

0:20:43 > 0:20:46was a thorny issue throughout the 18th century,

0:20:46 > 0:20:51and this controversy was reflected in the way it appeared in paintings.

0:20:51 > 0:20:54The portrayal of Britain as a new Rome

0:20:54 > 0:20:57never lost its appeal to the aristocracy,

0:20:57 > 0:20:59but as the century progressed,

0:20:59 > 0:21:02art became affordable to less elevated members of society

0:21:02 > 0:21:05who didn't care for fashionable foreign names

0:21:05 > 0:21:09and, in any case, preferred to see the land in which they lived

0:21:09 > 0:21:11presented in a more familiar guise.

0:21:11 > 0:21:16Britain was surely best painted by British artists

0:21:16 > 0:21:18who naturally grew up loving it themselves,

0:21:18 > 0:21:23and we begin to recognise that our landscape was too beautiful

0:21:23 > 0:21:24to play a supporting role.

0:21:27 > 0:21:32In 1749, a 22-year-old artist from Sudbury in Suffolk

0:21:32 > 0:21:36painted this picture of a country neighbour and his new wife.

0:21:36 > 0:21:39Thomas Gainsborough's Mr and Mrs Robert Andrews

0:21:39 > 0:21:42was a thoroughly modern picture with a message.

0:21:44 > 0:21:48There is no pretence here. This is not Italy.

0:21:48 > 0:21:51We are unmistakeably looking at a Suffolk landscape.

0:21:51 > 0:21:55Even the tree under which they are sitting is a native oak.

0:22:02 > 0:22:07What's wonderful about being here is that this tree is still growing.

0:22:07 > 0:22:12It's fantastic. It's now become one of these marvellous old veterans,

0:22:12 > 0:22:15of which we've got a very large number in this country

0:22:15 > 0:22:17and which we ought to be very proud of.

0:22:20 > 0:22:22But I have to say that, looking at this landscape,

0:22:22 > 0:22:26I'm rather amazed really because I'd always thought

0:22:26 > 0:22:30that this was Gainsborough painting a real landscape

0:22:30 > 0:22:35almost from the place where he had put his easel en plein air

0:22:35 > 0:22:39so to speak, but it's actually all a bit different from that.

0:22:40 > 0:22:44I walked up that slope and it's much steeper than you might expect

0:22:44 > 0:22:46from the painting.

0:22:46 > 0:22:48And I think that what Mr Andrews wanted to say

0:22:48 > 0:22:54was that here is a very up-to-date, newly-enclosed farmed landscape.

0:22:54 > 0:22:58The old way of farming, the beasts wandered around

0:22:58 > 0:23:00and you couldn't develop a breed

0:23:00 > 0:23:03because, really, they shagged everything.

0:23:03 > 0:23:08But here you can breed to improve this strain of animals

0:23:08 > 0:23:12and you can even see in the wheat fields here, that it's been drilled.

0:23:12 > 0:23:16The old way, you scattered seed, broadcast like that.

0:23:16 > 0:23:21Now, with Jethro Tull's seed drill, you could sow it in lines.

0:23:21 > 0:23:24That was much more efficient, made better use of the seed.

0:23:24 > 0:23:26You could hoe between it and so on and so forth.

0:23:26 > 0:23:29But it all looks to me very, very new.

0:23:29 > 0:23:31I think hasn't... I think he's only just done it.

0:23:31 > 0:23:35And I think that this is the point of the landscape.

0:23:35 > 0:23:40I think that he's wanting to show off his new agricultural technology.

0:23:52 > 0:23:57I've farmed in Bulmer for 35 years on the land that adjoins Andrews'.

0:23:57 > 0:24:03And as a young man, I aspired to apply the same sort of enquiring,

0:24:03 > 0:24:06investigative, scientific approach that he was taking.

0:24:09 > 0:24:13One reason for me that the painting is so important

0:24:13 > 0:24:16is that it shows British agriculture

0:24:16 > 0:24:20at the time to be at the forefront of world farming.

0:24:20 > 0:24:22And Tolstoy, in War And Peace,

0:24:22 > 0:24:27refers to Count Nikolai being interested in English farming,

0:24:27 > 0:24:31because English farming, at the time, was the best.

0:24:31 > 0:24:35Well, this in 1750 is really the start

0:24:35 > 0:24:38of our modern idea of the countryside.

0:24:38 > 0:24:43It's somewhere that people go to... enjoy leisure, really.

0:24:43 > 0:24:48It's a very, very modern idea. This is a lifestyle painting.

0:24:48 > 0:24:52And I could easily imagine this couple, seated here today,

0:24:52 > 0:24:56wearing Barbour jackets and Hunter wellies.

0:24:56 > 0:24:59He'd have a Purdey under his arm. She'd have her dogs.

0:24:59 > 0:25:02And this is a lifestyle that's still very desirable.

0:25:02 > 0:25:05You only have to look in the advertisement pages of Country Life

0:25:05 > 0:25:08to see that this is the aspirational lifestyle today,

0:25:08 > 0:25:12just as much as it was in 1750.

0:25:12 > 0:25:14And I think, even the way that he's standing,

0:25:14 > 0:25:18it seems to me he's a prosperous comfortable chap. He's had...

0:25:18 > 0:25:21a lot of good luck in life, I think, probably.

0:25:21 > 0:25:24I could imagine him being in the Tory cabinet today.

0:25:27 > 0:25:30Despite devoting over half of the picture to the Suffolk landscape,

0:25:30 > 0:25:33Mr And Mrs Andrews is still a portrait.

0:25:38 > 0:25:41In the classical league table of artistic value,

0:25:41 > 0:25:44a hierarchy handed down from the Italian Renaissance,

0:25:44 > 0:25:48landscape was an inferior subject for painters,

0:25:48 > 0:25:51coming just ahead of animals and bowls of fruit.

0:25:55 > 0:25:58Landscape was really rather looked down upon.

0:25:58 > 0:26:03He saw landscape as somewhere where you went to relax.

0:26:03 > 0:26:07Not just being in it, but also for himself, drawing it and painting it.

0:26:07 > 0:26:13It was almost his own secret pleasure that was done very much for himself.

0:26:13 > 0:26:15What you see in the flicker and glitter

0:26:15 > 0:26:18and fluid excitement of his painted surfaces

0:26:18 > 0:26:21is an idea that this is real emotion which has been conveyed here.

0:26:21 > 0:26:25You are kind of buying into a vision of the landscape

0:26:25 > 0:26:27which is informed by a notion of sensibility

0:26:27 > 0:26:30and formed deeply by a notion of Gainsborough himself

0:26:30 > 0:26:34being an artist who, through his manipulation of paint,

0:26:34 > 0:26:39is embodying an emotional response to landscape and to nature.

0:26:39 > 0:26:44From what we know about Gainsborough, he was something of a radical.

0:26:44 > 0:26:48But comes across as a very lovable and likeable figure.

0:26:48 > 0:26:50He clearly had a great sense of humour.

0:26:50 > 0:26:53And I think he'd be the sort of person that would welcome

0:26:53 > 0:26:58all ideas and interpretations and take them as he found them.

0:27:01 > 0:27:03The radical ideas that excited Gainsborough

0:27:03 > 0:27:08were also having a profound effect on the landscape he painted.

0:27:10 > 0:27:12It wasn't just the Industrial Revolution

0:27:12 > 0:27:14that was gaining momentum.

0:27:14 > 0:27:18New farming methods were revolutionising the countryside too.

0:27:20 > 0:27:24In 1778, Gainsborough painted this picture of his friend,

0:27:24 > 0:27:26Thomas Coke of Holkham Hall,

0:27:26 > 0:27:31one of the greatest agricultural reformers of the day.

0:27:31 > 0:27:35He made farming fashionable for the gentry.

0:27:35 > 0:27:41And he encouraged all his various farm tenants to improve their land.

0:27:41 > 0:27:47We had the Industrial Revolution happening around about the same time

0:27:47 > 0:27:51and there was a very real need to feed the country.

0:27:51 > 0:27:54And agriculture, there was a need, a necessity for it to change,

0:27:54 > 0:27:56to get more efficient.

0:27:58 > 0:28:01Despite his success as a portrait painter,

0:28:01 > 0:28:03Gainsborough wrote to a friend that he would like,

0:28:03 > 0:28:05"To retire to a sweet village

0:28:05 > 0:28:09"and spend the fag end of life painting landscapes."

0:28:10 > 0:28:13When he died, the corridors of his house were piled high

0:28:13 > 0:28:17with these pictures, for which there was no market.

0:28:18 > 0:28:20Gainsborough may have had mixed feelings

0:28:20 > 0:28:22about painting his wealthy patrons,

0:28:22 > 0:28:25but portraiture gave him both financial security

0:28:25 > 0:28:27and artistic integrity.

0:28:27 > 0:28:30Another gifted landscapist, his near contemporary,

0:28:30 > 0:28:33George Stubbs, was less fortunate.

0:28:33 > 0:28:37He was a sporting artist.

0:28:37 > 0:28:43Stubbs' extraordinary achievement really is to elevate this lowly genre

0:28:43 > 0:28:48of sporting art into something which is so aesthetically distinguished.

0:28:48 > 0:28:54What we have is a vision of order and clarity,

0:28:54 > 0:28:57which is meant to evoke classical painting.

0:28:57 > 0:29:01Here is the Duke of Richmond admiring his racehorses

0:29:01 > 0:29:05being exercised on his estate at Goodwood.

0:29:05 > 0:29:08In much the same way that Gainsborough had been employed

0:29:08 > 0:29:12to show off Robert Andrews' modern farming techniques,

0:29:12 > 0:29:16Stubbs has been hired to show off the Duke's thoroughbreds.

0:29:16 > 0:29:20In both cases, of course, the landscape is the real star.

0:29:21 > 0:29:26Today, this same landscape is home to another kind of thoroughbred.

0:29:39 > 0:29:41More than any other factor,

0:29:41 > 0:29:44it has been the sporting enthusiasms of its various owners

0:29:44 > 0:29:48that has shaped the landscape of the Goodwood Estate.

0:29:48 > 0:29:50It's fascinating to look at the Stubbs'

0:29:50 > 0:29:52and see how little the landscape's changed.

0:29:52 > 0:29:55That is exactly where the golf course is now.

0:29:55 > 0:29:57That's where they were shooting.

0:29:57 > 0:29:59Shooting's played a major part in the landscape.

0:29:59 > 0:30:01There's been shooting here for 300 years.

0:30:01 > 0:30:03That's preserved the landscape and the woodland

0:30:03 > 0:30:06and helped to develop it in a positive way.

0:30:06 > 0:30:08It overlooks the sea, the cathedral's still there.

0:30:08 > 0:30:10It's changed very, very little.

0:30:10 > 0:30:14We've got horseracing in 1801, the cricket, way back in 1727.

0:30:14 > 0:30:16Motor racing in 1948.

0:30:16 > 0:30:18They've all just grown out of an enthusiasm

0:30:18 > 0:30:20to become part of the British summer.

0:30:22 > 0:30:25And in that sense, I think they enhanced the landscape

0:30:25 > 0:30:27and they've become part of it in their own way.

0:30:27 > 0:30:30And we just want to make the most of it

0:30:30 > 0:30:32and preserve a truly beautiful piece of England.

0:30:39 > 0:30:42Stubbs was not a man to do things by halves.

0:30:44 > 0:30:48In order to paint horses better than anyone else ever had,

0:30:48 > 0:30:50he rented a remote farmhouse in Lincolnshire

0:30:50 > 0:30:55and with the aid of Mrs Stubbs, spent 18 months cutting them up

0:30:55 > 0:30:57to see what they were made of.

0:30:59 > 0:31:03He brought a similar dedication to the landscapes in which they stood.

0:31:03 > 0:31:04Lot 45.

0:31:04 > 0:31:07£7 million for this lot. £7 million to start.

0:31:07 > 0:31:10The package was irresistible.

0:31:10 > 0:31:14At £7,500,000. At £7,500,000.

0:31:14 > 0:31:19A winning combination that flattered the animals and their owners...

0:31:22 > 0:31:25..and set them in a landscape that flattered Britain

0:31:25 > 0:31:26in much the same way.

0:31:26 > 0:31:31Last chance. I am selling for £9 million.

0:31:31 > 0:31:33Any more?

0:31:33 > 0:31:35Sold. £9 million. Thank you very much.

0:31:35 > 0:31:39Not bad for a sporting artist.

0:31:41 > 0:31:43Towards the end of his career,

0:31:43 > 0:31:46Stubbs painted a series of rural landscapes

0:31:46 > 0:31:50with agricultural workers going about their business.

0:31:50 > 0:31:53These figures are known as staffage.

0:31:53 > 0:31:58Staffage is a lazy term used by art historians

0:31:58 > 0:32:02to describe the figures that will occupy landscape paintings.

0:32:02 > 0:32:05If you've got a portrait with people sitting in the landscape,

0:32:05 > 0:32:06that's not staffage.

0:32:06 > 0:32:10But if you have a landscape where various invented figures

0:32:10 > 0:32:13do things, they are staffage.

0:32:13 > 0:32:16It's a challenge when we look at these paintings to say,

0:32:16 > 0:32:19either, "They are noble and they're elevating

0:32:19 > 0:32:23"and they are creating this kind of heroism of everyday life,

0:32:23 > 0:32:25"which is being presented to us here."

0:32:25 > 0:32:31Or you say, "This is a dehumanising vision of rural life

0:32:31 > 0:32:34"from the perspective of the overseer or the landowner."

0:32:34 > 0:32:37And I'm not sure myself quite where Stubbs sits.

0:32:38 > 0:32:43Stubbs' rural labourers appear to be contented, clean and well-dressed,

0:32:43 > 0:32:46just as the British ruling classes liked to imagine them.

0:32:47 > 0:32:49But the dubious honesty of this portrayal

0:32:49 > 0:32:52became even more politicised in 1789,

0:32:52 > 0:32:56when matters took a dramatic turn in France.

0:32:56 > 0:33:00When the French Revolution happens, of course, there's widespread panic

0:33:00 > 0:33:03because the British proletariat

0:33:03 > 0:33:08might pick up on some of the ideas being articulated across the Channel,

0:33:08 > 0:33:11and behave in a similar way.

0:33:11 > 0:33:17Stubbs has offered an extraordinary vision of the agricultural scene,

0:33:17 > 0:33:20because the corn isn't full of weeds or poppies.

0:33:20 > 0:33:22The labourers don't get dirty.

0:33:22 > 0:33:24They don't even break sweat.

0:33:24 > 0:33:28They've already got everything that the French are revolting for.

0:33:29 > 0:33:32These labourers may have had other reasons

0:33:32 > 0:33:35to harbour dark thoughts of revolution.

0:33:35 > 0:33:40For some, the improvements in farming had come at a high price.

0:33:40 > 0:33:43Throughout the 18th century, the Enclosure Acts

0:33:43 > 0:33:47had changed the face of the British landscape.

0:33:47 > 0:33:52Ancient common lands, where grazing rights were shared, were enclosed

0:33:52 > 0:33:55and absolute property rights were enforced by the landowners.

0:34:01 > 0:34:04The effect of these draconian changes were felt most keenly

0:34:04 > 0:34:05by the rural poor.

0:34:07 > 0:34:11A London painter called George Morland began to paint landscapes

0:34:11 > 0:34:16that told the stories of this new, dispossessed underclass.

0:34:16 > 0:34:18A rather less comfortable vision of society

0:34:18 > 0:34:22than that offered by Stubbs's happy labourers.

0:34:37 > 0:34:41Ferreting, the subject of this picture from 1792,

0:34:41 > 0:34:44was no simple country pastime.

0:34:44 > 0:34:46It could get you hung.

0:34:51 > 0:34:52Sit down!

0:34:59 > 0:35:03'The mechanics of how people go ferreting -

0:35:03 > 0:35:07'man, dog, ferret, working in harmony to catch these rabbits -

0:35:07 > 0:35:09'is timeless.'

0:35:10 > 0:35:14'But there will always be people who have permission

0:35:14 > 0:35:17'and people who don't have permission.'

0:35:19 > 0:35:22Having this dog to tell me where the rabbits are,

0:35:22 > 0:35:24it makes my life a lot more easier.

0:35:24 > 0:35:29As I'm putting the nets down, you'll see, she'll go around the warrens

0:35:29 > 0:35:32and she will distinctively mark where the occupied warrens are.

0:35:32 > 0:35:36And that's the beauty of having a good lurcher as a ferreting dog.

0:35:37 > 0:35:41'Back then, the ferret wouldn't be transported in a box like today.

0:35:41 > 0:35:43'There'd be little pockets sewn into the jackets.

0:35:43 > 0:35:47'They'd keep the ferret in there so they could walk through the town

0:35:47 > 0:35:49'and nobody knew what they were up to.'

0:35:52 > 0:35:54Hey! Hey!

0:35:54 > 0:35:57'People, when they come on to hardships, have survived wars,

0:35:57 > 0:36:00'recessions and strikes by eating rabbit.

0:36:00 > 0:36:02'If they were quiet

0:36:02 > 0:36:05'and had a good dog, they could have filled bucketfuls of rabbits.'

0:36:07 > 0:36:09It wasn't just about the rabbits.

0:36:09 > 0:36:13Everything on this land belonged to the landowner.

0:36:13 > 0:36:15Whether it be the berries,

0:36:15 > 0:36:18the mushrooms, it was a larder and it was his larder.

0:36:18 > 0:36:23Even the twigs and the firewood, he owned everything.

0:36:23 > 0:36:27To him, taking a rabbit is the same as taking the berries and mushrooms,

0:36:27 > 0:36:29the same as taking his family silver.

0:36:29 > 0:36:33It was his and he didn't want anybody to take it.

0:36:33 > 0:36:36A favourite subject for Morland was the country inn.

0:36:36 > 0:36:39We can feel sure these scenes are particularly accurate,

0:36:39 > 0:36:43as he spent so much of his own time drinking.

0:36:43 > 0:36:46Though he earned a fortune from engravings of his work,

0:36:46 > 0:36:48he spent it even faster.

0:36:49 > 0:36:55Because he was painting to drink, he can be very, very sloppy.

0:36:55 > 0:36:56But he can also be quite risky.

0:36:56 > 0:36:59For example, this is during the period of the French wars.

0:36:59 > 0:37:03He would show rustics drinking in pubs.

0:37:03 > 0:37:05This was thought to be a very bad idea,

0:37:05 > 0:37:07because if people get together in their own space

0:37:07 > 0:37:09they might start communicating ideas.

0:37:10 > 0:37:12Morland, being seen as a figure

0:37:12 > 0:37:15who takes into account aspects of rural life,

0:37:15 > 0:37:18which were meant to be brushed under the carpet.

0:37:18 > 0:37:21Poaching and ferreting and the drinking and the disagreement

0:37:21 > 0:37:23and the potential for violence in the countryside,

0:37:23 > 0:37:27which maybe sometimes we can detect within his work.

0:37:31 > 0:37:34The impact of political and social changes in the wider world

0:37:34 > 0:37:35was to have a profound effect

0:37:35 > 0:37:39on the development of landscape painting at home.

0:37:40 > 0:37:45The revolution in France made travel on the continent almost impossible

0:37:45 > 0:37:50and bought to an end the conveyor belt of art and ideas from Italy.

0:37:50 > 0:37:53The British grand tourist had nowhere to go.

0:37:56 > 0:37:59But, artistically at least, things were improving on the home front.

0:38:02 > 0:38:05We could now confidently point to our own painters,

0:38:05 > 0:38:09like Stubbs and Gainsborough, as supremely accomplished.

0:38:12 > 0:38:14By offering training to young painters

0:38:14 > 0:38:16at the St Martin's Lane Academy,

0:38:16 > 0:38:20Hogarth and Lambert had brought about the establishment in 1768

0:38:20 > 0:38:22of the Royal Academy of Arts.

0:38:24 > 0:38:26Yet, despite this progress,

0:38:26 > 0:38:30in some quarters, attitudes to landscape art were ingrained.

0:38:30 > 0:38:33The discourses of the first president of the Academy,

0:38:33 > 0:38:34Sir Joshua Reynolds,

0:38:34 > 0:38:37rigidly promoted the classical artistic hierarchy

0:38:37 > 0:38:41that saw landscape painting as a lesser discipline.

0:38:41 > 0:38:44But the popularity of Morland's work

0:38:44 > 0:38:48had shown that people didn't pay much mind to that sort of talk.

0:38:50 > 0:38:56Britain was all set to enter a golden age of landscape art.

0:38:58 > 0:39:02At just this moment, a talented young Londoner completed his studies

0:39:02 > 0:39:04at the Royal Academy schools,

0:39:04 > 0:39:08only to discover that the origin of everything he had been taught

0:39:08 > 0:39:12was important about art was now inaccessible to him.

0:39:12 > 0:39:15Joseph Mallord William Turner,

0:39:15 > 0:39:19who was to take British landscape painting to its highest eminence,

0:39:19 > 0:39:21would have loved to have travelled to Italy,

0:39:21 > 0:39:24but instead he had to experience it at second hand.

0:39:27 > 0:39:30Having grown up a stone's throw from one aristocrat's

0:39:30 > 0:39:35recreation of an Italian scene - the Piazza at Covent Garden -

0:39:35 > 0:39:38he soon became inspired by another.

0:39:38 > 0:39:39The gardens of Stourhead.

0:39:50 > 0:39:54Stourhead was by now the property of Richard Colt Hoare,

0:39:54 > 0:39:57the grandson of its creator, Henry Hoare.

0:40:04 > 0:40:09This is an image by the young Turner when he was in his early 20s,

0:40:09 > 0:40:12and what we see here is not only the beginnings

0:40:12 > 0:40:14of Turner's painterly practice

0:40:14 > 0:40:17but also the idea that the landscape that was inspired

0:40:17 > 0:40:22by the 17th-century painting is then becoming painted again

0:40:22 > 0:40:23in the late 18th century.

0:40:25 > 0:40:28You can see the temple across the lake and Turner,

0:40:28 > 0:40:31in painting this landscape, is very much putting himself

0:40:31 > 0:40:34within a tradition of artists that looks back to Claude.

0:40:34 > 0:40:38So we go from canvas to the landscape and then back on to canvas.

0:40:43 > 0:40:47Richard Colt Hoare had just managed to complete his grand tour

0:40:47 > 0:40:50before war with France made European travel impossible.

0:40:52 > 0:40:54A keen amateur artist himself,

0:40:54 > 0:40:59he gave Turner a drawing he had made of Lake Avernus, near Naples,

0:40:59 > 0:41:00and commissioned a painting from him

0:41:00 > 0:41:03to depict a classical myth from Virgil.

0:41:06 > 0:41:09The young Turner frequently imitated the style of other artists

0:41:09 > 0:41:11as a way of improving his own technique,

0:41:11 > 0:41:14and he painted this picture as a pastiche

0:41:14 > 0:41:16of the work of Richard Wilson.

0:41:18 > 0:41:22The lake represents the gateway to the underworld,

0:41:22 > 0:41:26a symbolic theme that reappears in the man-made landscape at Stourhead.

0:41:30 > 0:41:33You feel here like you are coming underground,

0:41:33 > 0:41:37into this sort of watery, cavernous world,

0:41:37 > 0:41:41where you're encountering different creatures,

0:41:41 > 0:41:45like the sculpture of the river god at the entrance as you come in.

0:41:45 > 0:41:49Certainly, this is such a shift away from the earlier 18th century,

0:41:49 > 0:41:52where the emphasis is on taming nature.

0:41:52 > 0:41:57This is allowing nature to confront us in her wildest form.

0:42:07 > 0:42:09This new aesthetic ideal,

0:42:09 > 0:42:12which gained favour as we gained artistic confidence,

0:42:12 > 0:42:15was that of a picturesque beauty.

0:42:15 > 0:42:18And to trace its origins, we need to rewind a little.

0:42:23 > 0:42:27In 1761, Richard Wilson painted this view of a crumbling Roman arch

0:42:27 > 0:42:31with all his characteristic Italian touches.

0:42:33 > 0:42:36But not only was it once again not in Italy,

0:42:36 > 0:42:38it was not a ruin.

0:42:39 > 0:42:43Until about 50 years ago, this was thought to be a view

0:42:43 > 0:42:45of an archway in the Borghese gardens in Rome

0:42:45 > 0:42:50until someone pointed out that it was in Kew Gardens, London, TW9.

0:42:50 > 0:42:54This arch was the first example of a classical ruin

0:42:54 > 0:43:00newly built from scratch to satisfy a fashionable taste for decay.

0:43:00 > 0:43:02In 1709, Sir John Vanbrugh

0:43:02 > 0:43:04was building Blenheim Palace

0:43:04 > 0:43:08and he wrote a letter to the Duchess of Mulberry's client

0:43:08 > 0:43:11about this ruined manor house called Woodstock Manor.

0:43:11 > 0:43:14And in the letter he says, "Can we preserve the manor?"

0:43:14 > 0:43:17And it was the first time ever that anyone had tried

0:43:17 > 0:43:19to preserve a building.

0:43:19 > 0:43:21And he says, "If we plant trees around it,

0:43:21 > 0:43:23"it will look like the most attractive object

0:43:23 > 0:43:25"that a landscape painter could invent."

0:43:26 > 0:43:27So with that letter,

0:43:27 > 0:43:30you get the beginning of a whole movement, the picturesque,

0:43:30 > 0:43:33the idea that you can compose a landscape like a framed picture,

0:43:33 > 0:43:35but you can walk into that picture.

0:43:35 > 0:43:40But also that idea of the imagination and association, which can be about

0:43:40 > 0:43:42crashing rocks and waterfalls and all that stuff, but it also can be as

0:43:42 > 0:43:48simple as the idea that when you see smoke drifting up from a clearing

0:43:48 > 0:43:51in the wood, you conjure up a pretty little cottage and a fireside.

0:43:55 > 0:43:57Examples of fine picturesque views

0:43:57 > 0:44:00were conveniently available in Britain.

0:44:02 > 0:44:06And travelling to the remoter, more rugged parts of the kingdom

0:44:06 > 0:44:08to admire them filled the breech left

0:44:08 > 0:44:10by the loss of the classical grand tour.

0:44:13 > 0:44:16The habit of visiting these landscapes filtered down

0:44:16 > 0:44:20the social strata to a wider public and guidebooks began to appear

0:44:20 > 0:44:24to direct the new tourists to the most agreeable views.

0:44:28 > 0:44:30The location that best exemplified

0:44:30 > 0:44:33the picturesque idea was the Wye Valley...

0:44:34 > 0:44:38..and Tintern Abbey in particular.

0:44:40 > 0:44:45Turner painted Tintern in 1794, but he was a Johnny-come-lately.

0:44:45 > 0:44:49Its charms had first been widely proclaimed several years earlier

0:44:49 > 0:44:53by William Gilpin in his guide book "Observations on the River Wye

0:44:53 > 0:44:58"and Several Parts of South Wales, etc, Relative Chiefly

0:44:58 > 0:45:03"to Picturesque Beauty, Made in the Summer of the Year 1770".

0:45:07 > 0:45:11The beautiful landscape is rather monotonous. The picturesque landscape

0:45:11 > 0:45:14is rich and inviting, and you as the viewer

0:45:14 > 0:45:18are kind of invited on a journey through these various forms.

0:45:18 > 0:45:22So a ruin is picturesque, a completed, shiny new church isn't.

0:45:23 > 0:45:26And then was that fetishisation of the crumbling and the decay

0:45:26 > 0:45:30and the ivy which is crawling over rubble.

0:45:30 > 0:45:32That is what picturesque is about.

0:45:37 > 0:45:41The pursuit of ever-more dramatic light effects was another feature

0:45:41 > 0:45:43of picturesque landscapes.

0:45:43 > 0:45:45In this, Turner excelled.

0:45:50 > 0:45:53He was an avid recorder of sunrise and sunset,

0:45:53 > 0:45:58always looking for a sense of shock and awe in natural phenomena.

0:46:02 > 0:46:06In 1817, he produced this dramatic view of the eruption

0:46:06 > 0:46:07of Mount Vesuvius.

0:46:10 > 0:46:13He still hadn't been to Italy himself, but so many other artists

0:46:13 > 0:46:18had painted the scene that he felt confident he could tackle it.

0:46:19 > 0:46:23A volcano erupting was the perfect example of a philosophical idea

0:46:23 > 0:46:26that went hand-in-hand with these picturesque landscapes.

0:46:26 > 0:46:29The concept of the sublime.

0:46:31 > 0:46:35The sublime landscape overwhelms you. There's that possibility of threat,

0:46:35 > 0:46:37that indication of danger and excitement.

0:46:37 > 0:46:40It is thrilling, it makes you feel very small.

0:46:40 > 0:46:42You find increasingly at public exhibitions

0:46:42 > 0:46:45and through printed reproductions,

0:46:45 > 0:46:47pictures of avalanches,

0:46:47 > 0:46:49of...volcanoes,

0:46:49 > 0:46:52of floods, of danger.

0:47:02 > 0:47:04In the absence of British volcanoes

0:47:04 > 0:47:08to provide this magical combination of beauty and danger,

0:47:08 > 0:47:11painters discovered a similar visual feast closer to home

0:47:11 > 0:47:14in the furnaces of the Industrial Revolution.

0:47:18 > 0:47:21Coalbrookdale by Night, by Phillip de Loutherbourg,

0:47:21 > 0:47:26shows the Bedlam blast furnace smelting the local iron ore

0:47:26 > 0:47:29in a picture that could almost be the mouth of hell.

0:47:31 > 0:47:34The process continues today, on a more modest scale,

0:47:34 > 0:47:40just up the valley from the original site at Blists Hill Victorian Town.

0:47:40 > 0:47:44Ironwork in general, the dangerous side of it has always been known

0:47:44 > 0:47:47and injuries would have occurred on a regular basis, burns, and you would

0:47:47 > 0:47:51have had to be strong physically to get through this sort of trade.

0:47:51 > 0:47:55This picture obviously goes back to when iron first started.

0:47:55 > 0:47:59This is all quite new and people coming in and seeing the sky change

0:47:59 > 0:48:02colour would have been quite excited to have seen what was going on.

0:48:02 > 0:48:05It looks a very nice picture and I've actually got one of these

0:48:05 > 0:48:08on my house wall at home, you know, in the hallway.

0:48:11 > 0:48:13As with agriculture,

0:48:13 > 0:48:18industrialisation changed the landscape with alarming speed.

0:48:18 > 0:48:22Public admiration for technological progress and prosperity it created

0:48:22 > 0:48:26was tempered by a concern for the loss of the rural way of life.

0:48:37 > 0:48:40In a remote Suffolk village, the young son of the local miller

0:48:40 > 0:48:42was painting the landscape in which he had grown up

0:48:42 > 0:48:44showing no hint of this threat.

0:48:49 > 0:48:52John Constable, an almost exact contemporary of Turner,

0:48:52 > 0:48:56was to achieve an equally elevated status as a landscape painter.

0:49:01 > 0:49:05There is a sort of mystery about why on earth John Constable wanted

0:49:05 > 0:49:07to be a painter, because there were,

0:49:07 > 0:49:11of course, no public galleries at the time when he formed this ambition.

0:49:11 > 0:49:15What he says about it is, "These places made me a painter,"

0:49:15 > 0:49:17and I suppose we have to believe that,

0:49:17 > 0:49:20that it was actually this landscape around East Bergholt

0:49:20 > 0:49:22which made him want to be a painter.

0:49:22 > 0:49:28The peak of Constable's achievement comes from 1818, 1819,

0:49:28 > 0:49:33you get this series of tremendously powerful landscapes.

0:49:33 > 0:49:39They were all painted out of perhaps 200 or 300 yards of towpath.

0:49:39 > 0:49:44Six stonking, wonderful pictures, of which The Hay-Wain is the best known.

0:49:44 > 0:49:49In general, it has changed remarkably little over the last 900 years.

0:49:49 > 0:49:51A few details have changed,

0:49:51 > 0:49:54Willie Lott's cottage over there has lost an outbuilding,

0:49:54 > 0:49:57the water is a little higher, the trees are different.

0:49:57 > 0:50:01But basically, it's exactly the same place.

0:50:01 > 0:50:06And actually, the remarkable thing about this picture is the...

0:50:06 > 0:50:10immense effort that Constable made to make it accurate.

0:50:12 > 0:50:14But despite this fetish for accuracy,

0:50:14 > 0:50:18Constable was not averse to rearranging things if he needed to.

0:50:18 > 0:50:22As a rather mature student, at the age of 23 he attended

0:50:22 > 0:50:25the Royal Academy schools and had developed a deep admiration

0:50:25 > 0:50:27for Claude and Gainsborough.

0:50:30 > 0:50:34By the time he came to paint The Hay-Wain, he was fully immersed

0:50:34 > 0:50:36in the Claudian landscape tradition, freely adapting

0:50:36 > 0:50:40the countryside he loved to the conventions of the genre.

0:50:45 > 0:50:51"The actual Ordnance Survey-type topography, topography that you could

0:50:51 > 0:50:53"perhaps depict...

0:50:53 > 0:50:58"in an illusory way through photography, has no interest to me.

0:51:03 > 0:51:06"If you say, but where is Blakeney Point

0:51:06 > 0:51:10"and where is the land at the other side of the Wash,

0:51:10 > 0:51:11"I couldn't care less.

0:51:11 > 0:51:13"If I need to move something, I move it.

0:51:13 > 0:51:16"And I am moving about seas of paint."

0:51:17 > 0:51:21When you're talking about, "What is it that makes Constable great?" -

0:51:21 > 0:51:27it certainly isn't topography. People say, "Oh, it's just like that."

0:51:27 > 0:51:29Of course, it's not like that at all.

0:51:29 > 0:51:31There is really no case to argue that

0:51:31 > 0:51:35topography has anything to do with the greatness or the quality of it.

0:51:35 > 0:51:38In fact, it has a lot to do with the quality because it is usually abysmal

0:51:38 > 0:51:42if the pursuit of the painting is something that can be done

0:51:42 > 0:51:46by other means, recorded by another means, mechanical means, better.

0:51:47 > 0:51:50So topography isn't it.

0:51:52 > 0:51:55I think Constable was a revolutionary painter,

0:51:55 > 0:52:00trying to make from very, very humble subjects

0:52:00 > 0:52:02a sublime art form.

0:52:02 > 0:52:06But what we like to look at, because we are a rhetorical nation,

0:52:06 > 0:52:09is a more sentimental, and more nostalgic way

0:52:09 > 0:52:11of looking at the world.

0:52:11 > 0:52:14And why the coach trips go on to this day

0:52:14 > 0:52:19is because Constable has a position, almost in the English psyche,

0:52:19 > 0:52:23as representing a golden age, a better time.

0:52:23 > 0:52:27People don't want to know about the agricultural unrest

0:52:27 > 0:52:32and about the turmoil that was going on in England in the late 18th

0:52:32 > 0:52:34and into the early 19th century.

0:52:37 > 0:52:40Like Stubbs before him, Constable offered us a vision

0:52:40 > 0:52:46of rural contentment, an endless summer of reassuring tranquillity.

0:52:47 > 0:52:50Whilst he was painting this picture he wrote to his fiancee,

0:52:50 > 0:52:54Maria Bicknell, that he was living wholly in the fields

0:52:54 > 0:52:56and seeing nothing but harvest men.

0:52:58 > 0:53:01Painted in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars,

0:53:01 > 0:53:04the subject of the picture, the wheat field itself, had been

0:53:04 > 0:53:07instrumental in the British victory.

0:53:07 > 0:53:11But the country was suffering a period of post-war austerity.

0:53:11 > 0:53:14A hungry peasant is a potential revolutionary.

0:53:14 > 0:53:17In the early 19th century, Napoleon decides the way

0:53:17 > 0:53:21to beat the British - because he can't take them on at sea, his fleets

0:53:21 > 0:53:25keep getting thrashed - is to close the markets of Europe entirely.

0:53:25 > 0:53:28To announce an economic blockade to refuse to let any British goods

0:53:28 > 0:53:30into the ports of Europe and refuse to allow

0:53:30 > 0:53:34any of his subject European countries to export anything to Britain.

0:53:34 > 0:53:37And that motivates the British elite to close ranks.

0:53:37 > 0:53:42Poets, artists, writers, cartoonists, come together and portray Britain

0:53:42 > 0:53:47as a vast larder, a bottomless pit of food and happiness with enough

0:53:47 > 0:53:50for everybody in the country to share.

0:53:50 > 0:53:53Which is very different to the experience of most working people

0:53:53 > 0:53:55in 19th century Britain at the time.

0:53:56 > 0:54:00Whilst relying on the countryside for inspiration, Constable insulated

0:54:00 > 0:54:04himself from the reality of rural unrest by immersing himself

0:54:04 > 0:54:06in his art and in his young family.

0:54:11 > 0:54:14Constable married Maria in 1816

0:54:14 > 0:54:16and they visited Brighton on their honeymoon.

0:54:16 > 0:54:19They returned to live there in the 1820s as it was thought

0:54:19 > 0:54:23the sea air would be beneficial for the health of his wife.

0:54:25 > 0:54:29His affection for the town was clouded by its new popularity

0:54:29 > 0:54:31as a resort for fashionable Londoners,

0:54:31 > 0:54:34a change that was swamping its original character

0:54:34 > 0:54:36and competing with its fishing industry.

0:54:42 > 0:54:46Technically, this is an extraordinary piece of work.

0:54:46 > 0:54:50For me, as a film-maker, it's very noticeable where the light

0:54:50 > 0:54:52is coming from. But the effect...

0:54:52 > 0:54:55that he has in here as a painter,

0:54:55 > 0:54:57the effect on the clouds,

0:54:57 > 0:55:01you know, the light, the light of this piece is very accurate.

0:55:02 > 0:55:05His feeling about Brighton,

0:55:05 > 0:55:11he loved it, but he had begun to think of it as...

0:55:11 > 0:55:13London or Piccadilly-on-Sea.

0:55:13 > 0:55:18Because all these buildings on the Marine Parade

0:55:18 > 0:55:21had started being built and they were...

0:55:21 > 0:55:23He was sad about it.

0:55:23 > 0:55:26There is a sense of time changing in it.

0:55:26 > 0:55:31These people, they don't seem in the same period as the terraces up here.

0:55:32 > 0:55:34Looking down at Marine Parade,

0:55:34 > 0:55:38I obviously think of meeting mates on the beach.

0:55:38 > 0:55:43I lived in Brighton from the age of two, I guess, until 12.

0:55:43 > 0:55:49During the war, a lot of the beach was covered in barbed-wire.

0:55:49 > 0:55:52You couldn't go on it. There was a sense of danger.

0:55:52 > 0:55:57For young boys, it wasn't scary danger, it was exciting danger.

0:56:04 > 0:56:08At the time of this picture, his wife was very ill and Brighton was

0:56:08 > 0:56:11thought of as a spa town at one time.

0:56:11 > 0:56:15Come and take the waters at Brighton. The sea and the salt.

0:56:15 > 0:56:18So this has a sense of sadness about it.

0:56:18 > 0:56:21It also probably...

0:56:22 > 0:56:25..added to his sense of sadness, the fact that his wife

0:56:25 > 0:56:28was very ill and they came for the spa

0:56:28 > 0:56:31and I don't think it helped that much.

0:56:33 > 0:56:35In 1828,

0:56:35 > 0:56:37Maria died of tuberculosis,

0:56:37 > 0:56:41leaving Constable with seven children to raise.

0:56:41 > 0:56:44But even this tragedy did not lead him to question

0:56:44 > 0:56:47his vocation as a landscape painter.

0:56:49 > 0:56:55Although he could sell things, he was significantly bloody-minded insofar

0:56:55 > 0:56:58as if he got commissions, he saw these as millstones around his neck,

0:56:58 > 0:57:00curbing his creativity.

0:57:00 > 0:57:03So from the artist as a pragmatic journey man,

0:57:03 > 0:57:07Constable becomes our ideal of the sort of suffering soul

0:57:07 > 0:57:10who has great outbursts of...

0:57:10 > 0:57:14personal creativity which finish up as landscape paintings on a canvas.

0:57:15 > 0:57:17In the early years of the 19th century,

0:57:17 > 0:57:21Britain suddenly found herself with two powerful but contrasting visions

0:57:21 > 0:57:23of her landscape.

0:57:23 > 0:57:27The paintings of John Constable and William Turner were the stars

0:57:27 > 0:57:29of the Royal Academy shows.

0:57:29 > 0:57:31But they were as different in temperament

0:57:31 > 0:57:33as they were in artistic technique.

0:57:36 > 0:57:38The difference is really a simple one,

0:57:38 > 0:57:43of Constable being totally immersed

0:57:43 > 0:57:45in England...

0:57:47 > 0:57:50..and Turner being completely immersed in the world,

0:57:50 > 0:57:51the known world.

0:57:53 > 0:57:58In real terms, Constable stayed in England all his life, whereas Turner

0:57:58 > 0:58:03toured Europe. And if there had been things such as flight,

0:58:03 > 0:58:06Turner would have done the world, without a doubt.

0:58:09 > 0:58:121819 was Turner's year.

0:58:12 > 0:58:15He finally made his much-postponed journey to Italy

0:58:15 > 0:58:18and the pictures he makes on this trip are the foundation

0:58:18 > 0:58:20of his reputation.

0:58:22 > 0:58:25Even after nearly 30 years of anticipation,

0:58:25 > 0:58:27Italy surpassed his expectations.

0:58:30 > 0:58:34Painting mainly in watercolour, he worked like a man possessed.

0:58:34 > 0:58:37It was as if Venice had spent a thousand years

0:58:37 > 0:58:39preparing for Turner to show up.

0:58:41 > 0:58:45He caught perfectly the evanescent light, the heat and shimmer

0:58:45 > 0:58:48of a vaporous sun gently reflected on the water

0:58:48 > 0:58:52and the almost intangible architecture.

0:58:52 > 0:58:54The techniques he perfected here

0:58:54 > 0:58:57would reverberate through the rest of his career.

0:58:59 > 0:59:03You have a sense in Turner of an expanded world view.

0:59:03 > 0:59:05He travelled extensively.

0:59:05 > 0:59:11His art ranges in its effects and in its styles a great deal.

0:59:11 > 0:59:14You can see Turner sort of poised between an old world

0:59:14 > 0:59:20and a modern world in that respect, but being driven at the same time by

0:59:20 > 0:59:24the ambitions and the commercial enterprise that were very much

0:59:24 > 0:59:27part and parcel of being an artist in the 19th century.

0:59:28 > 0:59:33In 1837, his great rival John Constable died.

0:59:33 > 0:59:37His picturesque landscapes never really lost their appeal.

0:59:37 > 0:59:40The British art buyer never stopped wanting

0:59:40 > 0:59:43paintings that stirred emotion,

0:59:43 > 0:59:48that invited us, like Alice, to step through the glass into the picture.

0:59:48 > 0:59:51But Turner was just getting into his stride.

0:59:53 > 0:59:57His late style, an idiosyncratic development of the pictures he made

0:59:57 > 1:00:00on that first trip to Italy, is still revolutionary today.

1:00:02 > 1:00:07This picture from 1844 was thought to show a view of Venice

1:00:07 > 1:00:11until, being prepared for an exhibition in 2003, it became clear

1:00:11 > 1:00:14his inspiration was Portsmouth.

1:00:17 > 1:00:23A year later he made this picture, Norham Castle, Sunrise.

1:00:23 > 1:00:27A lot of the pictures which look most radical,

1:00:27 > 1:00:32most like Impressionism or Rothko or 20th century abstraction,

1:00:32 > 1:00:37are actually unfinished pictures which were left in his studio.

1:00:37 > 1:00:40But the unfinished appearance of these late paintings

1:00:40 > 1:00:43may not be that unrepresentative of the way he was heading.

1:00:45 > 1:00:50Turner died in 1851, proclaiming that, "The Sun is God."

1:00:52 > 1:00:57His death was an emphatic full stop in a chapter that had seen Britain

1:00:57 > 1:01:01establish herself at the forefront of landscape painting.

1:01:01 > 1:01:04Queen Victoria was now on the throne

1:01:04 > 1:01:07and Turner's inventiveness was inspiring a new generation

1:01:07 > 1:01:10to take his ideas in unpredictable directions.

1:01:12 > 1:01:16If he were looking down from heaven, he was in for a bit of a surprise.

1:01:20 > 1:01:23It's interesting to think what the Victorian public might have thought

1:01:23 > 1:01:25if confronted by a great late Turner.

1:01:25 > 1:01:30Very much about an impression of light in vapour, and then moving

1:01:30 > 1:01:35swiftly on and seeing the incredible, mind-boggling detail

1:01:35 > 1:01:40and the garish, strident colours of this Holman Hunt

1:01:40 > 1:01:43must have been an enormous shock.

1:01:43 > 1:01:44Well, now, here we are.

1:01:44 > 1:01:49I think we are a little bit below where Hunt was, by the looks of it,

1:01:49 > 1:01:51but where Hunt was, Lover's Seat,

1:01:51 > 1:01:54seems to have fallen into the sea, pretty well.

1:01:54 > 1:01:58I think what's extraordinary about this painting and the Pre-Raphaelite

1:01:58 > 1:02:01paintings generally is the spirit of inquiry.

1:02:01 > 1:02:05Hunt would have been fascinated by the geology of this place

1:02:05 > 1:02:08and the botany, the flora and fauna.

1:02:08 > 1:02:11I very much doubt there's much studio time on this painting,

1:02:11 > 1:02:12it's all out of doors.

1:02:12 > 1:02:16He has stood here and let it seep into him.

1:02:16 > 1:02:20Every inch of the sheep, every meticulous bit of its fur

1:02:20 > 1:02:24and their faces and even the way the light comes through

1:02:24 > 1:02:26the ears and you can see the blood

1:02:26 > 1:02:31and cartilage, it's so carefully observed and so directly of nature.

1:02:31 > 1:02:34The Pre-Raphaelites were all about 18 years old.

1:02:34 > 1:02:39They were very young. They formed the Brotherhood in 1848,

1:02:39 > 1:02:42some three or four years before Hunt painted this picture.

1:02:42 > 1:02:461848, of course, was the great year of revolution across Europe.

1:02:46 > 1:02:47We are talking about a revolution

1:02:47 > 1:02:51not just political, but scientific as well.

1:02:51 > 1:02:53People were beginning to realise,

1:02:53 > 1:02:55the fossil record was telling the scientists,

1:02:55 > 1:02:58that the Earth was actually billions of years old,

1:02:58 > 1:03:02not thousands of years old as the Bible had some Victorians believe.

1:03:02 > 1:03:07But 1848 was also a very dangerous time, politically,

1:03:07 > 1:03:10and that is one of the meanings that's given to this picture,

1:03:10 > 1:03:14which, when it was first exhibited, was called Our English Coasts.

1:03:14 > 1:03:19This was about the vulnerability of Britain to attack from France.

1:03:19 > 1:03:23Napoleon III had just come to power and there was a fear that we might

1:03:23 > 1:03:26have the whole Napoleon thing all over again.

1:03:28 > 1:03:32Holman Hunt and his Pre-Raphaelite colleagues remain controversial to

1:03:32 > 1:03:35this day, and tarnished by an association with the perceived

1:03:35 > 1:03:39moral values of the Victorian age.

1:03:39 > 1:03:43Looking at this picture, it's hard to understand why today

1:03:43 > 1:03:47the word Victorian is still a pejorative and slightly dirty word.

1:03:47 > 1:03:50The idea that it's a repressive time is simply wrong.

1:03:50 > 1:03:54The idea that it's a culturally stagnant time is absolutely wrong.

1:03:54 > 1:03:56It was our visual renaissance,

1:03:56 > 1:03:59and the Pre-Raphaelites were at the heart of it.

1:04:08 > 1:04:11The hyper-realism of the Pre-Raphaelites

1:04:11 > 1:04:14became the house style in Victorian Britain.

1:04:20 > 1:04:24In the 1860s, a painter called John Atkinson Grimshaw

1:04:24 > 1:04:28began to produce romantic, twilight depictions

1:04:28 > 1:04:31of the great Northern industrial cities,

1:04:31 > 1:04:34like this scene of his native Leeds.

1:04:34 > 1:04:38His knack of capturing a particular melancholy moment at dusk

1:04:38 > 1:04:41struck a chord with the sentimental Victorians

1:04:41 > 1:04:43and he set up shop in London,

1:04:43 > 1:04:47hoping to pull off the same trick in the capital.

1:04:47 > 1:04:52In 1881, he painted this view of Heath Street in Hampstead.

1:04:55 > 1:04:59I'm from round here, which is the joke, arty village of Hampstead,

1:04:59 > 1:05:01and I know this street very well.

1:05:01 > 1:05:03Or at least I thought I knew it very well.

1:05:03 > 1:05:08What I didn't realise was that one of my favourite potboiler

1:05:08 > 1:05:13Victorian artists, Atkinson Grimshaw, had done it. That he'd done,

1:05:13 > 1:05:20as it appears, that view, which is a raised bit called the Mount.

1:05:20 > 1:05:25It's all done in the usual Grimshaw way of light,

1:05:25 > 1:05:28gaslight on water at...

1:05:28 > 1:05:31It's not dark, but it's dusk,

1:05:31 > 1:05:35and there's a bit of moonlight, all the usual romantic tricks.

1:05:35 > 1:05:40And then I look up there and it's not the same, and you realise

1:05:40 > 1:05:46that he's reworked it to make it as dramatic as possible.

1:05:46 > 1:05:49And when you look down the street, you realise that

1:05:49 > 1:05:53that perspective's been changed, too, because it curves too much.

1:05:53 > 1:05:57And that's all clever stuff in the composition,

1:05:57 > 1:06:00which looks very compelling,

1:06:00 > 1:06:03terribly attractive and terribly real.

1:06:03 > 1:06:09Now, the thing that drew me to Atkinson Grimshaw in the first place

1:06:09 > 1:06:13was the romance of a Northern 19th century city,

1:06:13 > 1:06:16and his great market was a certain kind

1:06:16 > 1:06:20of Northern 19th century industrialist.

1:06:20 > 1:06:26And I'm none of those things, but it got to me, that particular romance,

1:06:26 > 1:06:28it got to me even before I'd seen,

1:06:28 > 1:06:31you know, a 19th century Northern city.

1:06:31 > 1:06:35And then later, I lapped them all up.

1:06:35 > 1:06:39He was a magic weaver, and they were, in a way, a sort of potboiler,

1:06:39 > 1:06:42a sort of very, very superior potboiler.

1:06:42 > 1:06:45But, by God, they work.

1:06:46 > 1:06:51Grimshaw had no formal training as a painter, but once he perfected

1:06:51 > 1:06:54his trademark combination of moonlight and gaslight

1:06:54 > 1:06:56with a hint of autumnal dampness,

1:06:56 > 1:07:01he realised it was infinitely adaptable, whatever your subject.

1:07:02 > 1:07:07It's what movie-makers call the magic hour,

1:07:07 > 1:07:10it's the last hour of daylight

1:07:10 > 1:07:13when the sun has set, but it's not completely dark.

1:07:13 > 1:07:17It's got a particular magic quality.

1:07:17 > 1:07:21And then we have the marvellous sky and the light on the river,

1:07:21 > 1:07:25and it is lovely and it is very, very evocative.

1:07:25 > 1:07:29People think something's going to happen.

1:07:29 > 1:07:34Something did happen to painting at the time.

1:07:34 > 1:07:38Impressionism, a style very strongly concerned with the landscape,

1:07:38 > 1:07:43was turning the art world upside down across the Channel.

1:07:43 > 1:07:46Monet even came to London to show us how to do it.

1:07:46 > 1:07:49But it didn't go down very well over here -

1:07:49 > 1:07:51we were still in a Pre-Raphaelite mood.

1:07:54 > 1:07:57The first signs of a British avant-garde

1:07:57 > 1:08:01finally began to emerge in the first years of the 20th century.

1:08:01 > 1:08:04The Camden Town Group, named for the area where they met,

1:08:04 > 1:08:07depicted a serene and tranquil urban landscape -

1:08:07 > 1:08:09celebrating the mundane,

1:08:09 > 1:08:13deserting realism for the strident palette of Post-Impressionism.

1:08:13 > 1:08:19They were inspired by a vision of a new Britain being built at the time.

1:08:19 > 1:08:23'Ebenezer Howard, the pioneer of garden cities, built Letchworth

1:08:23 > 1:08:25'with tree-lined roads and a town centre,

1:08:25 > 1:08:29'the first complete New Town where people could live as well as work

1:08:29 > 1:08:30'in pleasant surroundings.'

1:08:32 > 1:08:36The admiration which these new towns evoked is unmistakeable

1:08:36 > 1:08:40in this view of Letchworth by Spencer Gore.

1:08:40 > 1:08:43This was absolute Utopia. The suburbs were the Brave New World.

1:08:43 > 1:08:45People say that the Camden Town Group found delight

1:08:45 > 1:08:50in the mundane, but this wasn't mundane, absolutely not.

1:08:50 > 1:08:51This was totally and utterly aspirational

1:08:51 > 1:08:54in the same way that living in a loft apartment for a city dweller now

1:08:54 > 1:08:56might be seen as aspirational.

1:08:56 > 1:08:59I mean, when you look at southern middle-class Letchworth,

1:08:59 > 1:09:00it looks beautiful,

1:09:00 > 1:09:04and it was seen as a wonderfully spacious place to move to.

1:09:04 > 1:09:07It's still classed by many as a dream.

1:09:07 > 1:09:08I mean, you've got to imagine

1:09:08 > 1:09:12that people have been living in a city that's got back-to-back housing,

1:09:12 > 1:09:15and then suddenly you can live in housing like that.

1:09:15 > 1:09:17Well, who wouldn't want to?

1:09:17 > 1:09:22This is still classed by many as a wonderful place to live.

1:09:33 > 1:09:35The philanthropist Dame Henrietta Barnett,

1:09:35 > 1:09:37who built Hampstead Garden Suburb,

1:09:37 > 1:09:39hoped to create a community of helpful neighbours

1:09:39 > 1:09:42where, "From every part there shall be good views

1:09:42 > 1:09:45"or glimpses of distant country."

1:09:47 > 1:09:50I grew up in the Hampstead Garden Suburb

1:09:50 > 1:09:52with a father who was an academic

1:09:52 > 1:09:55who specialised in urban planning, and who was involved

1:09:55 > 1:10:00in the garden city movement himself and the planning of the green belt,

1:10:00 > 1:10:02so I grew up with people who were theoreticians

1:10:02 > 1:10:08of garden suburbs in a garden suburb! That will do things to a child!

1:10:10 > 1:10:13Dame Henrietta's goal was a socially diverse community

1:10:13 > 1:10:16with homes for all income levels.

1:10:17 > 1:10:21It would offer working people, "The opportunity of taking a cottage

1:10:21 > 1:10:25"with a garden within a tuppenny fare of Central London."

1:10:26 > 1:10:30William Ratcliffe, a founder member of the Camden Town Group,

1:10:30 > 1:10:33was an enthusiastic resident.

1:10:33 > 1:10:38I mean, there were other kind of utopian aspects to this,

1:10:38 > 1:10:41if not exactly socialist, at any rate socialistic,

1:10:41 > 1:10:44such as there being kind of no pubs -

1:10:44 > 1:10:47we've got to remember the importance of the temperance movement at the end

1:10:47 > 1:10:52of the 19th century - and no shops, no commercial activity at all.

1:10:52 > 1:10:55By the Second World War, if not before,

1:10:55 > 1:11:00that dream of a socially-mixed community had completely gone.

1:11:00 > 1:11:02You've got to bear in mind, these houses,

1:11:02 > 1:11:08even these modest artisans' houses, are now probably a million a pop.

1:11:08 > 1:11:11I grew up beyond the North Circular

1:11:11 > 1:11:15in the kind of annex of the Hampstead Garden Suburbs

1:11:15 > 1:11:16and so to me -

1:11:16 > 1:11:20and this is what I find so enjoyable and evocative about this painting

1:11:20 > 1:11:26and being here again - to me this area was a kind of

1:11:26 > 1:11:30bourgeois Valhalla or kind of Elysian Field,

1:11:30 > 1:11:34being slightly plusher than we were.

1:11:34 > 1:11:36So I think that's all captured rather well.

1:11:36 > 1:11:42It looks like a kind of middle-class city on the hill.

1:11:42 > 1:11:45It's infused with a kind of honeyed conception

1:11:45 > 1:11:48of what suburban living might be like.

1:11:48 > 1:11:53This view is a kind of impossiblist view painted from about 40 feet up

1:11:53 > 1:11:57from a tower that was attached to the kind of "clubhouse",

1:11:57 > 1:12:00the "suburban clubhouse" - that must have been a fun venue! -

1:12:00 > 1:12:05that William Ratcliffe stood on to get this view of, I suppose,

1:12:05 > 1:12:11the future of a kind of rationally and beautifully planned urban scape.

1:12:11 > 1:12:13And perhaps it's somewhat ironic

1:12:13 > 1:12:19that the tower was bombed in the second war and that this view

1:12:19 > 1:12:21isn't really possible any more.

1:12:25 > 1:12:29Another urban scene that has all but disappeared today was being

1:12:29 > 1:12:34painted by a young student at the Salford School of Art in the 1920s.

1:12:35 > 1:12:40LS Lowry's pictures of the dark satanic mills of his home town

1:12:40 > 1:12:44were a powerfully authentic vision of a vanishing way of life.

1:12:46 > 1:12:54Lowry was always seen, in the '60s and '70s, as something rather quaint

1:12:54 > 1:12:55and outre and northern.

1:12:55 > 1:13:00There are elements of Lowry which are, first of all, social documents.

1:13:00 > 1:13:03I was looking at some old films on the cotton towns

1:13:03 > 1:13:04made in the '50s and '60s

1:13:04 > 1:13:08about the end of the cotton industry in Lancashire,

1:13:08 > 1:13:12and they were extraordinarily accurate paintings in feeling -

1:13:12 > 1:13:17in feeling, not the topography - that Lowry had conjured up.

1:13:17 > 1:13:19He was a very sophisticated artist.

1:13:19 > 1:13:23It is not primitive matchstick men in quaint little hovels

1:13:23 > 1:13:25that the workers are all living in -

1:13:25 > 1:13:29it was a very, very subtle and sophisticated sensibility.

1:13:31 > 1:13:33Lowry was a contradictory figure.

1:13:35 > 1:13:38His idiosyncratic works sold well throughout his career

1:13:38 > 1:13:42but he never gave up his job as a rent collector,

1:13:42 > 1:13:45retiring on his 65th birthday.

1:13:49 > 1:13:52His effective simplification of the urban landscape

1:13:52 > 1:13:55went hand-in-hand with a love of the photo-realism

1:13:55 > 1:13:57of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

1:13:58 > 1:14:02I suppose being a northerner Lowry has always resonated

1:14:02 > 1:14:04and this particular one was on me nan's wall.

1:14:04 > 1:14:09You know, when I go running along a canal in a town like Burnley

1:14:09 > 1:14:13and you see buildings like this that are still unrenovated,

1:14:13 > 1:14:17there's this thing of beauty, of opportunity

1:14:17 > 1:14:21and almost a sadness where you see an industrial town

1:14:21 > 1:14:24that's fallen on more difficult times.

1:14:24 > 1:14:26This was a new urban landscape.

1:14:26 > 1:14:31Some people looked on this and may think, "Oh, was Lowry painting

1:14:31 > 1:14:33"something that was a little bit depressing

1:14:33 > 1:14:36"and capturing something that wasn't very human?"

1:14:36 > 1:14:38But this is capturing something that's very human indeed.

1:14:38 > 1:14:40It's people going to work, earning a living.

1:14:40 > 1:14:42They've all got a spring in their step

1:14:42 > 1:14:45because it was pretty exciting having a job, number one.

1:14:45 > 1:14:48It's a completely celebratory landscape, to me.

1:14:48 > 1:14:53Now it can almost look as quaint as seeing the rural idyll

1:14:53 > 1:14:58with a horse with its cart and hay next to a water wheel

1:14:58 > 1:15:01because that's gone with mechanisation,

1:15:01 > 1:15:03this has gone to China.

1:15:07 > 1:15:12Another unlikely teenage fan of the Pre-Raphaelites was Paul Nash.

1:15:12 > 1:15:14A Londoner from a comfortable middle class family,

1:15:14 > 1:15:19the First World War had brought an abrupt end to his studies.

1:15:19 > 1:15:23Working as an official war artist, he survived the trenches and emerged

1:15:23 > 1:15:27having forged his own unique style and achieved national recognition.

1:15:27 > 1:15:32He managed to combine an enthusiasm for modernism

1:15:32 > 1:15:33with a love of the countryside

1:15:33 > 1:15:39and a dark romantic and mystical notion of Britain's ancient past.

1:15:41 > 1:15:47He painted this chalk cross, cut into a Chiltern hillside, in 1931.

1:15:48 > 1:15:52The fact that nothing is known about its creation or purpose

1:15:52 > 1:15:55was just the sort of thing that appealed to Nash.

1:16:04 > 1:16:08Nash would have been fascinated by this attempt

1:16:08 > 1:16:11to slightly reorder the natural world.

1:16:11 > 1:16:14I mean, what we're looking at here is evidence

1:16:14 > 1:16:17of human beings' early attempts at landscape art.

1:16:19 > 1:16:24I noticed absolutely immediately that the cliff is slightly curved,

1:16:24 > 1:16:27whereas Nash has gone out of his way

1:16:27 > 1:16:30to make it as sharp-edged as possible,

1:16:30 > 1:16:33which gives an artificiality to his painting

1:16:33 > 1:16:37and it's an attempt to distance himself from the empirical reality

1:16:37 > 1:16:41by turning up the unease and the edginess within his painting.

1:16:45 > 1:16:50Nash's physical frailty bred in him a pre-occupation with mortality.

1:16:51 > 1:16:53Convalescing in Oxford after an asthma attack

1:16:53 > 1:16:55that nearly killed him,

1:16:55 > 1:16:57he painted the view looking across the flat landscape

1:16:57 > 1:17:01towards a pair of squat hills surmounted by ancient groves

1:17:01 > 1:17:05of trees that had become iconic in his work,

1:17:05 > 1:17:07the Wittenham Clumps.

1:17:09 > 1:17:12Well, this is the Landscape of the Vernal Equinox

1:17:12 > 1:17:14painted using binoculars to see a view

1:17:14 > 1:17:17that he wasn't any longer able to get to.

1:17:17 > 1:17:21The extraordinary and very effective consequence of that technique

1:17:21 > 1:17:24is this flattening of the picture plain

1:17:24 > 1:17:28so things that were really quite close to the artist

1:17:28 > 1:17:34appear almost on the same plane as the hills that were 15 miles away.

1:17:45 > 1:17:50I was fortunate to grow up about ten miles away from here

1:17:50 > 1:17:53and I used to come up here on a very regular basis

1:17:53 > 1:17:55because it's just a special place.

1:18:00 > 1:18:03At the age of about 10 or 12

1:18:03 > 1:18:06I started to be aware of the paintings of Paul Nash

1:18:06 > 1:18:08and his association with this area.

1:18:10 > 1:18:13And, ever more, this landscape with the two hills

1:18:13 > 1:18:15and the trees on the tops of the hills

1:18:15 > 1:18:20have been very special to me.

1:18:23 > 1:18:26He had an extraordinary ability to bring together

1:18:26 > 1:18:28and create his own visual language.

1:18:28 > 1:18:31He was a modernist, but a mystic.

1:18:31 > 1:18:35He could reconcile abstraction and surrealism

1:18:35 > 1:18:38and he was the most international of artists

1:18:38 > 1:18:40producing the most English of pictures.

1:18:43 > 1:18:46Landscape of the Vernal Equinox was bought by the Queen Mother

1:18:46 > 1:18:49while the paint was still wet,

1:18:49 > 1:18:52prompting her daughter, Princess Margaret, to declare

1:18:52 > 1:18:54"Poor Mummy's gone mad.

1:18:54 > 1:18:56"Look what she's brought back."

1:19:00 > 1:19:06The vernal equinox is that point in the spring when the hours

1:19:06 > 1:19:11of daylight and the hours of night-time are exactly equal.

1:19:11 > 1:19:14The painting is divided into these two facets, these two basic halves.

1:19:14 > 1:19:19On the right-hand side, we have elements representing rationality

1:19:19 > 1:19:22and the left-hand side is the mystical side.

1:19:22 > 1:19:27It's interesting to talk about this picture in this analytical way

1:19:27 > 1:19:31but it's also very dangerous

1:19:31 > 1:19:36because what I thoroughly enjoy about this painting is some strange,

1:19:36 > 1:19:42mystical realm that it creates which defies easy, rational explanation.

1:19:42 > 1:19:44It puts these elements before you

1:19:44 > 1:19:48and then it's up to you to make of them what you can.

1:19:51 > 1:19:54Paul Nash was of that unlucky generation who were of an age

1:19:54 > 1:19:57to serve in both world wars...

1:19:59 > 1:20:01..once again being called up in 1939.

1:20:08 > 1:20:11This time he was attached to the Air Ministry,

1:20:11 > 1:20:16and painted this picture, Battle of Britain, in the dark days of 1941

1:20:16 > 1:20:18when positive war news was in short supply

1:20:18 > 1:20:21and the achievements of The Few represented,

1:20:21 > 1:20:25as Nash said, "our great aerial victory over Germany".

1:20:28 > 1:20:33The sky with a battle in it is quite a strange idea.

1:20:33 > 1:20:37It really does take me back to cycling up to the Downs

1:20:37 > 1:20:40and seeing a dogfight with these aeroplanes.

1:20:40 > 1:20:43I might easily have seen this battle,

1:20:43 > 1:20:49this moment of air warfare. I could've easily been here.

1:20:49 > 1:20:51Maybe I was.

1:20:51 > 1:20:56A couple of times, I saw one break away leaving its vapour trail

1:20:56 > 1:20:59go spiralling down, "bang" into the sea.

1:20:59 > 1:21:02It's over very quickly too, that's the curious thing.

1:21:02 > 1:21:04That's something that's quite strange,

1:21:04 > 1:21:08the vapour trails stay but the actual battle lasts minutes.

1:21:08 > 1:21:09A few minutes.

1:21:13 > 1:21:16For Nash, this was more than a realistic portrayal

1:21:16 > 1:21:19of the events of the dogfight.

1:21:19 > 1:21:22He wanted to highlight the cultural freedoms

1:21:22 > 1:21:24for which he felt we were fighting.

1:21:24 > 1:21:29The defending Spitfires rise from the warm, earthy foreground

1:21:29 > 1:21:33in contrast to the regimental order of the approaching German bombers

1:21:33 > 1:21:37who are broken up into the surreal, swirling forms

1:21:37 > 1:21:39of the lingering vapour trails.

1:21:40 > 1:21:45The power of it, the power is in that section of it,

1:21:45 > 1:21:48that section of the sky littered with a battle.

1:21:48 > 1:21:51It was real but amazing.

1:21:51 > 1:21:53It's terrible to say,

1:21:53 > 1:21:57beautiful painting but it's an extraordinary impression.

1:21:57 > 1:21:59He's caught the sense of it,

1:21:59 > 1:22:03I think he's caught the sense of it marvellously.

1:22:20 > 1:22:25Whilst war artists were felt to stir our patriotic sensibilities

1:22:25 > 1:22:26in an intangible way,

1:22:26 > 1:22:29there was also a more direct appeal for the war effort.

1:22:30 > 1:22:34The talents of commercial poster artists and powerful images

1:22:34 > 1:22:38of the British landscape were combined to spur us on to victory.

1:22:42 > 1:22:44The most enduring of these

1:22:44 > 1:22:47was a series painted by a prolific draughtsman from Bradford,

1:22:47 > 1:22:51Frank Newbould, Your Britain, Fight For It Now.

1:22:52 > 1:22:54In the Second World War,

1:22:54 > 1:22:56we see exactly what we see in the Napoleonic period

1:22:56 > 1:23:00but rather than Turner and Constable, we have the patriotic posters.

1:23:00 > 1:23:03Your Britain, Fight For It Now.

1:23:05 > 1:23:07The desperate attempt to use the British landscape

1:23:07 > 1:23:10to motivate people, whether they be in shell factories

1:23:10 > 1:23:13or fighting in the desert against the Germans

1:23:13 > 1:23:17to mobilise themselves to protect this vision of Britain

1:23:17 > 1:23:18from foreign aggression.

1:23:18 > 1:23:23If you love the South Downs, go and kill Germans.

1:23:24 > 1:23:28What always struck me as so strange about the use of that bucolic imagery

1:23:28 > 1:23:31in the Second World War propaganda is that most of the soldiers

1:23:31 > 1:23:35are teenage kids from urban Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool...

1:23:35 > 1:23:39They've never been to the South Downs and yet there's something embedded

1:23:39 > 1:23:41apparently in the British character

1:23:41 > 1:23:44that responds to those images of landscape.

1:23:47 > 1:23:51Newbould's travel posters were strikingly effective at capturing

1:23:51 > 1:23:53a scene in simple blocks of bold colour

1:23:53 > 1:23:55like this view of Bridlington.

1:23:57 > 1:24:00Today the resort is home to David Hockney.

1:24:01 > 1:24:06Bigger Trees Near Warter, painted in the surrounding Yorkshire Wolds,

1:24:06 > 1:24:10is made of 50 separate canvases, measuring 40 feet across.

1:24:12 > 1:24:15The scene in the context of landscape painting history,

1:24:15 > 1:24:23it's probably the largest painting ever painted entirely outside.

1:24:23 > 1:24:26He used digital photography to keep track all the time

1:24:26 > 1:24:30of what he was doing so that he could relate each painting

1:24:30 > 1:24:32as he was painting it to the ones on either side.

1:24:32 > 1:24:36I'm interested in picture-making technology,

1:24:36 > 1:24:38it's really what I'm keen on.

1:24:38 > 1:24:41Er...and react to it quickly.

1:24:41 > 1:24:46I began drawing on an iPhone and it began as a novelty.

1:24:46 > 1:24:49It's a great drawing instrument,

1:24:49 > 1:24:54marvellous range of marks if you get into it.

1:24:54 > 1:24:57It's something in your pocket, you can always bring it out

1:24:57 > 1:24:58and do a little sketch.

1:24:58 > 1:25:01There's no mess, you don't need a glass of water,

1:25:01 > 1:25:03you don't have to clean up.

1:25:03 > 1:25:10The other great new thing in it is the distribution of the image,

1:25:10 > 1:25:12that is profoundly new.

1:25:12 > 1:25:16I could make a drawing of the sunrise at 6am...

1:25:18 > 1:25:22and at 7am, send it out to 20 people.

1:25:22 > 1:25:27If I'd just had a pencil and paper by my bedside,

1:25:27 > 1:25:29the sunrise wouldn't be that interesting.

1:25:29 > 1:25:32One of the magic things about them

1:25:32 > 1:25:36is that the drawing as it exists on my iPhone is pretty well precisely

1:25:36 > 1:25:40the same on his iPhone so you could say it's the original

1:25:40 > 1:25:43or you could say it undermines the whole idea

1:25:43 > 1:25:44of an original work of art.

1:25:46 > 1:25:49But whatever route technology takes us down in the future,

1:25:49 > 1:25:53the fundamental issues of representing our landscape as art

1:25:53 > 1:25:57haven't changed much since Richard Wilson painted Holt Bridge.

1:25:57 > 1:26:01I've had a go reconstructing Wilson's view

1:26:01 > 1:26:05and he really has exaggerated the elements.

1:26:05 > 1:26:06The key motifs are there.

1:26:06 > 1:26:10But the rocky outcrop is so much smaller in reality

1:26:10 > 1:26:15so I've had to scale it up, probably 10, 15-fold.

1:26:15 > 1:26:20It's just more grandiose, I think, in his interpretation.

1:26:20 > 1:26:24What landscape artists like Richard Wilson and Claude Lorrain

1:26:24 > 1:26:28are trying to do are capture this Arcadian, beautiful landscape,

1:26:28 > 1:26:33that perfect summer afternoon that looks as if it has existed forever.

1:26:33 > 1:26:37And that's when an artist is at its best,

1:26:37 > 1:26:41when he makes that perfect moment for us,

1:26:41 > 1:26:43that we could never see in reality.

1:26:43 > 1:26:47British landscape painting has come a long way in four centuries,

1:26:47 > 1:26:51from distain to deep respect and we cherish these images

1:26:51 > 1:26:55as we cherish the landscape that inspired them.

1:26:55 > 1:26:58Artists bring an agenda to the picture

1:26:58 > 1:27:02and they bring themselves and their history and their hopes and fears.

1:27:02 > 1:27:08That's what either makes the painting very interesting or not.

1:27:08 > 1:27:12My paintings, that we've got the show opening here tonight,

1:27:12 > 1:27:17are pretty transparently about an age of uncertainty.

1:27:17 > 1:27:20It's pretty overt that they're not the paintings of a period

1:27:20 > 1:27:23when people are at peace with themselves particularly,

1:27:23 > 1:27:27they're paintings of the earth disappearing underneath houses

1:27:27 > 1:27:31and trees and wartime structures.

1:27:32 > 1:27:37Landscape art will always represent the way that people live,

1:27:37 > 1:27:38it always has done

1:27:38 > 1:27:44so we'll continue to paint the countryside, the city, the suburbs.

1:27:44 > 1:27:47It's a way of commenting on the lives that we lead.

1:27:54 > 1:27:58Artists spend all their time stating aims,

1:27:58 > 1:28:01it's only the objects that come through.

1:28:02 > 1:28:06Constable had all these aims, Turner had all of these aims

1:28:06 > 1:28:08but you're left when an object.

1:28:08 > 1:28:12The object is so much more important than the person making the object.

1:28:15 > 1:28:18The only aims that are of any interest to us

1:28:18 > 1:28:23are the aims on the canvases which are to do with the landscape.

1:28:49 > 1:28:50Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd