This exhibition is the last in a series that explores environmental concerns and our obligations to protect the planet we live on. The paintings have been chosen to highlight this changing environment with works displayed in pairs to convey the natural landscape and the landscape unbound; changed by human action and needs since our hunter-gatherer ancestors were superseded by agrarian societies and in turn industrial communities.
To be unbound denotes freedom, enfranchised, manumitted; to set free. In most contexts this would be a positive state of being. Especially from a personal perspective, but when applied to the environment and the Earth’s dwindling natural resources, being unbound may not be the panacea we hoped for.
Header: Alfred Sisley (1839–1899), Avenue of Chestnut Trees at La Celle-Saint-Cloud, 1867, Oil on canvas. Purchased in 1936 through the Chipperfield Bequest Fund © Southampton Cultural Services
Left: Malcolm Drummond (1880–1945), Backs of Houses, Chelsea, 1914, Oil on canvas. Purchased in 1952 through the Frederick William Smith Bequest Fund © Southampton Cultural Services