Art Then! explores the response to a pivotal moment in Modern British Art – Roger Fry’s 1910 exhibition of Post Impressionism, which for the first time properly introduced Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and a number of other avant-garde artists to the British public. Fry’s exhibition was then followed twenty-three years later by the publication of Herbert Read’s seminal book, Art Now, which reviewed how British artists had reacted to this Modernist revolution. Drawing on both Southampton’s collection and The Ingram Collection, this exhibition includes works by many leading British artists of this period, including Paul Nash, Eric Ravilious and Barbara Hepworth, alongside works by several less well known, but no less fascinating, figures.
Gwen John, Mere Poussepin, 1920, oil on canvas, Southampton City Art Gallery
Eric Ravilious, Rye Harbour, 1938, pencil and watercolour. The Ingram Collection
Paul Nash, Landscape of the Malvern Distance, 1943, oil on card, Southampton City Art Gallery
Roger Fry, Fort Saint André, Villeneuve lez Avignon, 1913, oil on canvas, Southampton City Art Gallery
