Currently showing until 5 October 2019 at the Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendal, Cumbria, LA9 5AL, is an exhibition called ‘Ruskin, Turner & the Storm Cloud’ which may be of interest to all watercolour enthusiasts
Ruskin (1819-1900) was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, as well as an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, prominent social thinker and philanthropist.
JMW Turner (1775-1881) was a landscape painter, traveller, poet and teacher, and considered by many to be the first modern painter. Ruskin was a lifelong supporter, calling Turner ‘the greatest of the age’.
In 1884 Ruskin wrote about an encroaching ‘Storm Cloud’ – a darkening of the skies that he attributed to the belching chimneys of the modern world. Bringing together Victorian and contemporary works of art, the exhibition demonstrates the unsettling messages underpinning Ruskin’s eye for beauty in the natural world. His anxiety about darkening skies and polluted storm clouds is contrasted with his early interest in Turner’s luminous pictures.
The exhibition contains a substantial display of Turner’s watercolours, demonstrating his evolving style, and his creation of highly-finished sample studies of British and alpine landscapes. For further information please go to: https://www.artfund.org/whats-on/museums-and-galleries/abbot-hall-art-gallery