Romantics In The Channel Islands

11/01/2008

I have been invited to exhibit in the 'Romantics the in Channel islands" exhibition at the Jersey Museum. 4th March to 7th December 2008. They are showing one of my very earliest "dune" paintings as well as a new thirteen slate boulder painting.

Romantics in the Channel Islands is an exhibition devoted the inspirational environment of the Channel Islands – an environment discovered by artists of the early 19th century and which continues to be celebrated today.

In Jersey, artists John Le Capelain and Sarah Louisa Kilpack and in Guernsey artists, Peter Le Lievre and Paul Jacob Naftel captured their Islands in all their many and varied moods – overwhelming, still, foreboding, terrifying, tranquil, violent, rugged, serene, lush or stormy.

Victor Hugo was a leading member of the French Romantic movement. He spent many of his most productive years in the Channel Islands, finding here an inspirational setting for his literature. With his son, Charles Hugo and family-friend Auguste Vacquerie he instigated an experiment in Romantic photography which culminated in some of the earliest landscape photography of Jersey.

The Romantics’ love and worship of nature is one of its enduring legacies. The landscape and traditions of the Channel Islands have continued to inspire artists in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Contemporary artists represented in the exhibition include Frederick Sands, Robert Tilling and Nicholas Romeril.

The exhibition runs from 4th March – 7 Decmber 2008. It will be shown in Guernsey in 2009.