Page 3____________About The National Gallery of Wiltshire Page 4&5_______Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps Page 6&7_____________Seaport with the Embarkation of Saint Ursula Page 8&9________Woman with a Parasol Page 10&11_______________The Scream Page 12&13______________Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast Page 14&15_____The Andes of Ecuador Page 16&17____________Voyage of Life: Youth Page 18&19______________Ground Swell Page 20________________Exhibition Map Page 21________________Plan Your Visit Page 22______________More Information Page 23_________________Coming Soon
Welcome to The National Gallery of Wiltshire, Britain's oldest, biggest and most astonishing visual art’s gallery. This exhibition explores the main theme of The Sun throughout each individual artwork. From genres including the Romanticism and Baroque, into later styles such as the Impressionism. Featuring the work of nine popular artists, from across the world, this exhibition is excited to offer a range of must-see artworks at this unique, international scene. This guide provides a map of our exhibition, showing each room incorporating two fascinating artworks per room. Audio headsets are available, at the information desk located on the map, as well as, more information about the gallery.
Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps
William Turner
Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps (Room 2)
This painting, by William Turner, depicts the struggle of Hannibal's soldiers to cross the Maritime Alps in 218BC, opposed by the forces of nature and local tribes. A curving black storm cloud dominates the sky, poised to descend on the soldiers in the valley below, with a bright orange-yellow sun attempting to break through the clouds with a white avalanche cascades down the mountain to the right. The artist hasn’t clearly depicted Hannibal himself, but possibly he might be riding the elephant just visible in the distance. Identifying Napoleon and France with Hannibal and Carthage was unusual, as a land power with a relatively weak navy, France was more usually identified with Rome, and the naval power of Britain drew parallels with Carthage. A more typical symbolism, linking the modern naval power of Britain with the ancient power naval of Carthage, can be detected in Turner's later works, Dido Building Carthage, and The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire. The irregular composition, without geometric axes or perspective, breaks traditional rules of composition. It is similar to Turner's 1802 watercolour, Edward I's Army in Wales, painted to illustrate a passage from the poem The Bard by Thomas Gray, in which an army marches diagonally across the painting through a mountain pass.
Seaport with the Embarkation of Saint Ursula
Claude Lorrain
Seaport with the Embarkation of Saint Ursula (Room 1) This is one of Claude's early successful paintings, which depicts a scene from the legendary life of Saint Ursula as narrated by Jacopo da Varagine's Golden Legend. The tale is not accepted as official church doctrine, due to the numerous versions of the story that exist, but the version from the Golden Legend goes like this; Saint Ursula was the daughter of the King of Britain, Donaut of Dumnonia. When Ursula was engaged to the pagan governor, Conan Meriadoc of Armorica, she set sail to meet her future husband with some astounding companions: 11,000 virgins. Like most good Christian martyrs, however, Ursula was devoted to her virginity and loath to marry a pagan man, so to stall for time she declared that she would journey around Europe. After stopping in Rome and explaining her problem to the ecclesiastical authorities, Ursula and her troops headed over to Cologne, which was unfortunately under siege by the Huns at that time. The King of the Huns was mesmerized by Ursula's beauty and was determined to take her as a wife; when she refused, he shot her through the heart with an arrow, along with the virgins who she travelled with. Claude chooses not to depict the most dramatic moment of St. Ursula's life story, namely, the massacre. Instead, Claude chooses to depict the moment when Ursula and her maidens are about to depart Rome for Cologne. The scene is one of utter tranquillity and calm; indeed, it is virtually impossible to identify the subject of the painting without the help of its title. Saint Ursula is identifiable by her yellow dress and flag while some of her maidens are equipped with the bows and arrows that are the symbols of their martyrdom. This is utterly characteristic of Claude's style: his paintings may tend towards the wistful or melancholy in tone, but they never veer into the violent, dramatic or erotic.
Woman with a Parasol
Claude Monet
Woman with a Parasol (Room 2)
Claude Monet painted Woman with a Parasol in 1875. The woman standing on a green hill looking over her shoulder at the artist is his wife, Camille. Their son Jean, 8 years old at the time, stands by her side though further in the distance. Monet does a wonderful job here of creating a sense of a snapshot in time. Though the sitting might have taken a few hours he portrays it in such a way that suggests they were out for a stroll and were briefly interrupted while he captured their image. The brushwork along with the splashes of colour such as the yellow and pink tones on Camille’s dress helps to create the sense of spontaneity. The sway of the wildflowers and the swish of her dress express the motion of the cool wind. The view from below creates a strong upward perspective while silhouetting the figures against the sky and creating a more dramatic effect of the sun and light. Using shades of light and dark Monet creates shadows as well as sunlit areas, a characteristic technique of his style. His use of colours, shadows and brushstrokes create fluidity making the scene most realistic.
The Scream
Edvard Munch
The Scream (Room 1)
Second only to Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Edvard Munch’s The Scream may be the most iconic human figure in the history of Western art. Its androgynous, skull-shaped head, elongated hands, wide eyes, flaring nostrils and ovoid mouth have been engrained in our collective cultural consciousness; the swirling blue landscape and especially the fiery orange and yellow sky have engendered numerous theories regarding the scene that is depicted. For all its notoriety, The Scream is in fact a surprisingly simple work, in which the artist utilized a minimum of forms to achieve maximum expressiveness. It consists of three main areas: the bridge, which extends at a steep angle from the middle distance at the left to fill the foreground; a landscape of shoreline, lake or fjord, and hills; and the sky, which is activated with curving lines in tones of orange, yellow, red, and blue-green. Foreground and background blend into one another, and the lyrical lines of the hills ripple through the sky as well. The human figures are starkly separated from this landscape by the bridge. Its strict linearity provides a contrast with the shapes of the landscape and the sky. The two faceless upright figures in the background belong to the geometric precision of the bridge, while the lines of the foreground figure’s body, hands, and head take up the same curving shapes that dominate the background landscape.
Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast
Albert Bierstadt
Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast (Room 3)
Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast actually pictures parts of the Columbia River, although it remains unclear whether Bierstadt purposely omitted that information in his title or if he simply allowed others to call the canvas by an inaccurate name. Albert Bierstadt’s Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast is a skilful shaping and manipulation of landscape and the history of the western coastal scenery of Puget Sound. Although the artist had never really visited the Pacific Coast himself, his painting lavishly illustrates much factual data and high-quality sense of details of the new part of America. Both the technique and the talent he used seem to convey the powerful visual impact of western space and capture the scale of America’s landscape. The visual elements such as the lights transcending down from the sky seems to illuminate the land making the painting look harmonious, just like how Bierstadt envisioned the American west. This is a huge painting which is the artist’s fictional construct of the Pacific Coast instead of the true topographical report of the place, the canvas can be divided into two faces that evoke the two most contradicting characters of nature. In the left middle ground, the painting seems to evoke the feelings of calmness because of the illuminated beach.
The Andes of Ecuador
Frederic Edwin Church
The Andes of Ecuador (Room 3)
Painted after Frederic Edwin Church’s first trip to Ecuador, The Andes of Ecuador combines the scientific and religious concerns of Church’s time in one grand panorama. The infinite botanical detail, the terrifying depths of the abyss, and the overwhelming sense of unlimited space combine to communicate a powerful sense of the sublime. The painting encourages both distanced and close viewing through a dramatic sweeping vista that contains several small vignettes and seemingly endless details. Two figures in the left foreground pray in front of an archaic stone cross, colourful birds flocking in a palm tree above them. This scene is balanced on the right by cascades of water and a small lake. Snow-capped peaks in the background—Tungurahua on the left and the cone of Cotopaxi on the right—frame the distant view. The white-hot light of a centrally placed sun permeates a warm palette of sienna browns and lush greens. Church depicted various plant and animal species with exactness while imbuing the painting with an explicit Christian iconography, mirroring contemporary thinking about science and religion. Through his overt allusions to Christianity within the Ecuadorian landscape, “Church was intimating that Americans inhabited a new Eden, a new promised land, and in standing before this sublime grandeur one enjoyed the metaphoric presence of Genesis.”
Voyage of Life: Youth
Thomas Cole
Voyage of Life: Youth (Room 4)
Cole's renowned four-part series traces the journey of an archetypal hero along the "River of Life." Confidently assuming control of his destiny and oblivious to the dangers that await him, the voyager boldly strives to reach an aerial castle, emblematic of the daydreams of "Youth" and its aspirations for glory and fame. As the traveller approaches his goal, the ever-more-turbulent stream deviates from its course and relentlessly carries him toward the next picture in the series, where nature's fury, evil demons, and selfdoubt will threaten his very existence. Only prayer, Cole suggests, can save the voyager from a dark and tragic fate. From the innocence of childhood, to the flush of youthful overconfidence, through the trials and tribulations of middle age, to the hero's triumphant salvation, The Voyage of Life seems intrinsically linked to the Christian doctrine of death and resurrection. Cole's intrepid voyager also may be read as a personification of America, itself at an adolescent stage of development. The artist may have been issuing a dire warning to those caught up in the feverish quest for Manifest Destiny: that unbridled westward expansion and industrialization would have tragic consequences for both man and nature.
Ground Swell
Edward Hopper
Ground Swell (Room 4)
In Ground Swell, Hopper depicts a catboat occupied by four young men and a woman facing a growing swell. The artist made numerous studies of boats as a child growing up in Nyack, and his passion for seascapes and nautical subjects is noted throughout his oeuvre. Nevertheless, as with many of his works, this painting goes well beyond its role as seascape. Despite what looks to be a clear day, the dark shape of the bell buoy symbolizes impending doom as does the boat's dramatic dip to a nearly 45-degree angle. This painting was produced in Hopper's Cape Cod studio between August and September of 1939, as war was breaking out in Europe. There is some suggestion that it symbolically represents the loss of innocence in the face of an uncertain, ominous future. Edward Hopper’s lifelong enthusiasm for the sea developed when he was a boy in Nyack, New York, then a prosperous Hudson River port with an active shipyard. Years later, in 1934, he and his wife built a house and studio in South Truro, Massachusetts, where he produced a number of oil paintings and watercolours manifesting his avid interest in nautical subjects. Despite its bright palette and seemingly serene subject, Ground Swell echoes the themes of loneliness and escape typical of Hopper's oeuvre. The blue sky, sun-kissed figures, and vast rolling water strike a calm note in the picture; however, the visible disengagement of the figures from each other and their noticeable preoccupation with the bell buoy placed at the centre of the canvas call into question this initial sense of serenity.
Audio
Information Desk
Entrance
Our gallery is situated on Bath Rd, Swindon (SN1 4BA), for further directions visit our website: www.fineartfoundation.co.uk/planyourvisit Tickets are available on the door at ÂŁ15 per person or 15% when you book online (www.fineartfoundation.co.uk/tickets) Fine Art Members are free
National Gallery of Wiltshire
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