Popped into the Victoria Art Gallery yesterday, where, on the ground floor, the lower gallery is closed for an exhibition changeover.
It will reopen on May 22nd for ‘The Transience of Light’ – an exhibition celebrating the artist and master printmaker Norman Ackroyd.
But it was the upstairs gallery I was heading for and a ‘pop-up’ display featuring a man who breathed new life into landscape painting and who was born in England 250 years ago this year!
I am talking about John Constable (1776-1837), an English painter best known for his landscapes, which are mostly of the Suffolk countryside where he was born and lived.
Our Victoria Art Gallery only has two examples of his work – open-air sketches he made of Old Sarum in Wiltshire and the Dorset coast at Portland Roads.
However, the display also features works by his contemporaries – including, of course, JMW Turner, featured here with his watercolour of the West Front of Bath Abbey.
