Places of the Mind

The attempts by artists of the Victorian and early Modern period to convey not merely the physical properties of a landscape but also its emotional and spiritual impact - landscape as ''places of the mind'', as the critic Geoffrey Grigson put it - is the focus of this fascinating study of British watercolours produced between 1850 and 1950. Drawing on the British Museum''s impressive collection, this book explores artists'' spiritual quests to capture the essence of landscape and convey a sense of place. Artists of the later 19th and early 20th centuries drew on earlier traditions but developed and extended the genre through their imaginative, personal responses to the artistic, cultural and social upheavals of the time. The book includes works by Samuel Palmer, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, Helen Allingham, John and Paul Nash, Eric Ravilious, Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore and many others, and includes some paintings that have never previously been published.