About the
exhibition

Opulence & Anxiety featured the work of over forty landscape painters, bringing together celebrated masterpieces and rarely seen works from the late 1700s to the present day.

Britain’s industrial and commercial progress in the years leading up to 1800 generated the wealth and global power that gave rise to an age of opulence. With the fall of the British Empire, and, later, with the effects of the First and Second World War, Britain entered an era of extreme anxiety. These conflicting themes were explored in this exhibition.

Opulence & Anxiety included work by: John Constable and JMW Turner; early artists of empire William Hodges and Thomas Daniell; Victorian naturalists Thomas Creswick and Benjamin Williams Leader; Edwardian painters Alfred East and George Clausen; and observers of inter-war Britain including Richard Eurich, LS Lowry, John Nash and Sir Stanley Spencer. The exhibition concluded with recent work by Donald Hamilton Fraser, David Hockney, Barbara Rae and Sir Kyfin Williams.

Curated by Tim Barringer, Paul Mellon Professor, Yale University