Inspiring artworks

The Cornfield

Explore locations from the spectacular Gordale Scar in Yorkshire to picturesque Flatford Mill in Suffolk. Discover the connections between landscape, art and identity, which continue to attract artists and visitors today. 

Gordale Scar
Ward increased its grandeur by combining different views and painting a 14-foot canvas, exaggerating its scale and casting a menacing sky over all.

Bamburgh Castle
When Girtin visited, the ruin housed a refuge for shipwrecked mariners and he rejected the familiar view of the castle in favour of a battered fragment of the outer wall.

Thirlmere
Glover exhibited paintings of the Lake District from 1795 onwards and lived there for two years around 1818-1820.

Coniston Old Man
Turner's visit to the North in 1797 included Yorkshire, Lancashire, Durham and Northumberland and the Borders region of Scotland as well as the Lake District.

Salford
Lowry shows Salford in Greater Manchester at the height of industrialism in his typical unique style.

Newcastle
The river Tyne can be seen in this watercolour, with Newcastle on the right bank and Gateshead on the left.

Flatford Mill
Constable's father owned this watermill for grinding corn in Flatford.

Cornard Wood
Thomas Gainsborough was born in Sudbury, Suffolk. While portraiture was his profession he often said landscape painting was his real pleasure.

Seashore Norfolk
John Sell Cotman was a leading figure of the Norwich School of artists.

Mousehold Heath
Crome preferred to show it in its traditional, 'natural' state. Today, Mousehold Heath is a protected nature reserve which is once again open to the public.

Walberswick
Steer painted the beach there many times. His paintings are fluidly painted and concentrate upon effects of atmosphere and light.

Watendlath Farm
This scene was painted by the newly-wed artist during a summer holiday in the area with her husband and their friends.

Porthmeor Beach
Local painter Alfred Wallis painted this picture on the back of a printed advertisement for an exhibition in the town.

Uffington Horse
Eric Ravilious often painted the  downland and coast of southern England and his depiction of the countryside in the rain is familiar.

August Blue Falmouth
Tuke celebrates the youthful ideal in this painting; the title evokes a blissful childhood.

Coalbrookdale
This oil painting shows the Bedlam Furnaces along the River Severn at night.

Lady fishing, Fladbury
The final painting is unfinished and Sargent has not added the long fishing rod.

Creswell Crags
This watercolour features the striking ravine of limestone cliffs which were almost inaccessible to the eighteenth-century traveller.

Barn, Cherington
This late work by William Rothenstein is a painting of a large barn at Cherington and shows the artist’s Impressionist sensibility.

Yachts, Cowes
Wilson Steer trained in France in the 1880s and 1890s and experimented with a range of Impressionist techniques.

Brighton Peirrots
Painted during the early part of the First World War, a party of Vaudeville entertainers perform on the Brighton seafront.

Cornfield, Chalfont Common
John Nash was an official war artist, and this was his first painting that didn’t depict war.

Chain Pier, Brighton
Constable frequently visited Brighton in the mid-1820s making many drawings and sketches, but this is his only large painting of a Brighton subject.

 

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