David Inshaw
Thinking the Landscape
David Inshaw
Thinking the Landscape
David Inshaw: Thinking the Landscape
'The
landscape thinks itself in me, and I am its consciousness.' Cézanne
When he first settled in Devizes in 1971, David Inshaw took as his chief subject the ancient landscape of Wiltshire, a subject that surrounded him in the present, while carrying within it clear evidence of the past. Paul Nash wrote of the ‘spiritual personality’ of particular sites, a quality that exists in the gap between man and nature, a gap that artists seek to close. As a painter Inshaw has invested long years in searching out the pattern within the flux of life, the constant flow of visual experiences. Artists have to be tough-minded, both to resist being overwhelmed by that flow (to which they inevitably give closer attention than most of us), and to be able to single out a telling image, isolate it and transform it by bringing it into their art. This process demands a formidable capacity for concentration and synthesis, and the ability to identify a subject fully and make it one's own.
Landmarks, usually considered to be geographical, became in a very real sense biographical for Inshaw, intensely personal markers of his own history. In this way a private need met and fulfilled a universal requirement. Inshaw’s paintings mix the serene with the disquieting to make images layered with memories and personal resonances which help to build an undercurrent discernible by the viewer, even if (because of its essentially private nature) not entirely understood.
He has spent his life collecting and editingvery specific visual information, memorising the face of the land as if it were the beloved. Recording the history and fact of the landscape – its contemporary presence – through a Romantic sensibility, he has made via his art an accommodation with the deep past. Not only has he painted Silbury Hill over and over again, he even went inside it (with David Attenborough in 1968) and explored its archaeological identity when last this man-made edifice was opened up. Good examples of his range of response can be found in the recent painting Silbury Hill Flooded [illus. p. 25], and the earlier etching Silbury Hill Sunset [illus. p. 21]. Inshaw's art partakes equally of geography, geology, topography, archaeology and the formal quantities of painting: shape, depth, pattern, line, colour, texture.
Much of his research has been done through the camera, for since the 1960s Inshaw has enjoyed taking photographs, becoming something of an expert in the medium. Occasionally, he would make a drawing in front of a motif, but he preferred to use his camera, later poring over the results in the studio, and finding a composition (usually square) within the view. Revealingly, he uses photographs but never tries to reproduce their appearance. For him, photos are source material, though he will sometimes adopt the cropping the camera imposes in order to establish the design for a painting. This can lead to an interesting degree of abstraction
in his work, although intriguingly the most abstract paintings here are the studies Inshaw made of the undisciplined sky. Although very distantly inspired by Constable, these are more about shape and colour than atmospheric conditions. They are in effect studies of fading light, and as such are exquisitely poignant. (Look at the series of small canvases, Sky I-V [illus. pp.35,36,38,39,49], and the allied paintings of clouds.)
However, compositions are rarely based on a single photo, being pieced together from more than one photographic source. Inshaw spends much time in his studio looking at and thinking about the photographs he has taken, and how they might work together. These composite images are filtered through memory and imagination in a profoundly personal interpretation in which associations are crucial. Inshaw has become adept at reading the visual language of nature, thinking himself into it and translating its forms into paintings, prints and drawings. He discovers the hidden structures of landscape, just as he discerns the mythic potential of ordinary life.
There are a handful of earlier paintings from the 1990s in this exhibition, of which Bonfire and Gate III [illus. p. 26], Love and Death [illus. p. 8] and Bonfire and Gate II [illus. p. 27] are particularly fine examples. Bonfires and fireworks have long been favourite Inshaw motifs, partly because of the accumulated intensity they incorporate, partly because of the frisson of
danger they offer. Their explosions of energy and movement suggest an outpouring and wildness that is nevertheless pictorially contained and controlled. Inshaw is expert at maintaining that balance. Another major painting from this period is Leaping Cat and Comet [illus. p. 9]. Some artists can draw a convincing cat, some can't, but Inshaw has always been extremely good at depicting felines, which is ironic since he’s allergic to them. You won’t find many dogs in his paintings, but cats regularly make guest appearances.
Recent landscapes include the spacious Wiltshire Monument [illus. p. 14] with its variegated cloud patterns and cast shadows, its interplay of organic shapes with the rectilinear straw bales, and its searching streamer of smoke. All this comes together under the eminence of the stone obelisk known as the Cherhill or Lansdowne Monument, an ‘eyecatcher’ built by the 3rd Marquis of Lansdowne to mark the edge of his Bowood Estate near Avebury. The Vale of Pewsey [illus. p. 45] is another recent work, with its double horizon formed by a band of modulated grey cloud along the top of the painting. Crows, Salisbury Plain (Salisbury Plain II) [illus. p. 12], demonstrates how Inshaw can transform the most ordinary view of a track and fields into a memorable image, in this case partly through the dramatic and rhythmic placing of disturbed birds wheeling about the sky. Birds are one of his favourite and most valued visual interventions, employed in all sorts of ways. In this group of paintings we see a solitary magpie
(one for sorrow) tearing at roadkill, and two rooks in the bare branches of a winter tree, more like a stilllife than a landscape, evoked with sheer Japanese elegance.
Inshaw is various and wide-ranging in mood and content. Notable among the other subjects on view here are the majestic solitary horse without a shadow in the snow, the pair of fighter planes tearing up a Welsh valley, Stowe Barton – a corner of Cornwall with the feel of the sea – a still-life etching of sweet peas, and the large pencil portrait Julia Looking Pleased with Herself [illus. p. 41]. Exhibits even include a rare self-portrait, and a portrait of his mother in her prime transposed to the cliffs above Bridport in Dorset.
There is a certain stylistic relaxing evident in the later work, and the warm, pinky-brown, brushy undercoat that Inshaw favours is frequently to be seen as a crucial element of the finished painting. Of course, the deliberately unfinished is a typical Modernist signature, but it represents for Inshaw a major change. This is an artist who, in his earlier years aimed for precisely the opposite: a high degree of finish. His new lack of finish is hugely but differently effective, a surprising development for one with his track record. In these late works he allows the process – the way he builds his paintings – to be seen. Good examples of the use of underpainting are the two versions of the Devil’s Den, painted in 2023. This dolmen burial chamber on the downs near Marlborough, consisting
of two standing stones and a capstan, is hard to find, all that remains of a huge barrow that was ploughed up and dispersed. This little-known neolithic site is quintessential Wiltshire and thus of great interest to Inshaw.
A landscape reflects the mind of the artist that frames it. The relationship, as indicated in the Cézanne quote at the beginning of this essay, can be an extraordinarily close one. Inshaw, through his love of the Wiltshire landscape, has made contact with the deep magic of the everyday, and has thus been able to realise the transcendent values of the familiar scene. From this high-quality visual and emotional stimulus, he has made paintings of indelibly Romantic humanism. In these works you can see him thinking about the landscape, and the landscape responding. This is an original take on landscape painting, an interpretation that is thoughtprovoking as well as beautifully executed. As the poet C Day-Lewis wrote of Constable: ‘so true / To life, so new to vision.’
Andrew Lambirth
Devizes: February-March 2025
Stowe Barton 2020 Oil on canvas | 50.8 × 50.8 cm
Ladder, Tree, Shed & Moon 2021 Oil on canvas | 50.8 × 61 cm
Love and Death 1999
Oil on canvas | 61 × 61 cm
Leaping Cat and Comet 2001 Oil on canvas | 102 × 102 cm
River Bride 2010
Etching on copper | 15 × 16 cm
Woodborough Hill 1989-92
Etching | 40 × 60 cm
Crows, Salisbury Plain (Salisbury Plain II) 2018
Oil on canvas | 61 × 61 cm
Rooks and Tree 2021 Oil on canvas | 76 × 76 cm
Wiltshire Monument 2018 Oil on canvas | 117 × 117 cm
Lovers 1976
Etching | 14.6 × 14.6 cm
River Thames Near Radcot 2022
Oil on canvas | 61 × 61 cm
Hill 1986-87
Etching with carborundum | 44.6 × 54 cm
Silbury
Marlborough Downs 1989
Etching | 48 × 39.5 cm
Garden 1989
Figure in the
Etching | 29.5 × 40.2 cm
Silbury Hill Sunset 1989
Etching | 30.5 × 36.5 cm
Landscape 2019-20 Oil on canvas | 114.3 × 116.8 cm
Canal 1989-92
Etching | 40.2 × 33.2 cm
Silbury Hill Flooded 2023
Oil on board | 35.8 × 35.6 cm
Bonfire and Gate III 1992-95 Oil on canvas | 91.4 × 91.4 cm
Literature: David Inshaw by Andrew Lambirth, Unicorn Press, 2015 (illus. p.158)
Literature: David Inshaw by Andrew Lambirth, Unicorn Press, 2015 (illus. p.158)
Bonfire and Gate II 1993 Oil on canvas | 91.4 × 91.4 cm
Devil’s Den 2023 Oil on board | 20.3 × 20.3 cm
Devil’s Den II 2023 Oil on board | 20.3 × 20.3 cm
Landscape with Pink Sky and Moon 2023 Oil on board | 30.2 × 30.2 cm
Magpie 2012 Oil on canvas board | 30.4 × 30 cm
Reclining Nude c. 1980s
Graphite on paper | 30.4 × 25.6 cm
Self Portrait 2000
Oil on canvas | 30.5 × 30.5 cm
Mum on the Cliffs at West Bay 2023 Oil on canvas | 90 × 76 cm
with Moon I 2023
Oil on board | 30.2 × 30.2 cm
Landscape
Sky V 2022 Oil on canvas | 30.2 × 30.2 cm
Sky IV 2022
Oil on canvas | 30.2 × 30.2 cm
Landscape with Moon II 2023 Oil on board | 30.2 × 30.2 cm
Sky I 2022
Oil on canvas | 30.2 × 30.2 cm
Sky III 2022
Oil on canvas | 30 × 30 cm
Sharon II 1986
Etching | 16 × 15 cm
Julia 1986
Etching | 22 × 18.5 cm
Sharon 1986
Etching | 17.4 × 16.1 cm
Julia Looking Pleased with Herself 1987
Pencil on paper | 70 × 68 cm
Literature: David Inshaw by Andrew Lambirth, Unicorn Press, 2015 (illus. p.217)
The Road to Tilshead 2015 Oil on canvas | 51 × 51 cm
Cloud I 2017
Oil on canvas | 51 × 51 cm
Cloud II 2017
Oil on canvas | 51 × 51 cm
Vale of Pewsey 2019 Oil on canvas | 51 × 51 cm
The View 2019-20 Oil on canvas | 116.8 × 116.8 cm
Tree (Study) 1996
Oil on board | 26.8 × 24.5 cm
Sky II 2022 Oil on canvas | 30.2 × 30.2 cm
Etching | 16.4 × 13.3 cm
20
Garden 2010
Sweet Pea 1986
Etching |
× 19 cm
Apple Tree 2018 Oil on board | 35.5 × 35.5 cm
Bonfire and Red Gate Study II 2022
Oil on board | 35.7 × 35.7 cm
Still Point 2020 Oil on canvas | 76 × 76 cm
Solo Exhibitions
1969 Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol Dartington Hall, Totnes
1972 Arnolfini Gallery Bristol
1975 Waddington Galleries, London
1976 Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge (photographs)
1977 Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge (paintings and drawings)
1978 Royal Pavilion Art Gallery, Brighton
1980 Park Street Gallery, Bristol (drawings)
Waddington Galleries, London
1984 Waddington Galleries, London
1987 Devizes Museum, Wiltshire (paintings and etchings)
Nishimura Gallery, Tokyo
1989 Waddington Galleries, London
1994 Devizes Museum, Wiltshire
1995 Theo Waddington Fine Art Ltd, London The Old School Gallery, Bleddfa, Powys
1998 Theo Waddington Fine Art Ltd, London Chapel Row Gallery, Bath
2000 Chapel Row Gallery, Bath
2003 Friends and Influences, RWA, Bristol
2004 Agnews, London
2005 Narborough Hall, Norfolk
2007 Sladers’ Yard Gallery, West Bay
2008 The Millinery Works, London
2013 Fine Art Society, London Sladers’ Yard Gallery, West Bay
2015 Fine Art Society, London
2019 David Inshaw: Looking Back, Looking Forward, Saatchi Gallery, London (British Art Fair), curated by Andrew Lambirth, David Inshaw and The Redfern Gallery
A Vision of Landscape, The Redfern Gallery, London
2020 Sladers’ Yard Gallery, West Bay
2022 Naked, Paintings, Works on Paper and Photographs, The Redfern Gallery, London
2025 Thinking the Landscape, The Redfern Gallery, London
Group Exhibitions
1963 Young Contemporaries, London
1966 Young Contemporaries, RBA Galleries, London
1968
1970
1971
1972
1973
Royal Academy of Arts Bicentenary Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London
John Dee, John Howlin, David Inshaw, Barry Martin, Arts Council exhibition, Serpentine Gallery, London
Art Spectrum South, Arts Council touring exhibition
touring to City Art Gallery, Southampton; Folkestone Art Centre, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol
Bath Festival Exhibition, Festival Gallery, Bath
ICA Summer Studios, London
1974 John Moores Liverpool Exhibition, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
An Element of Landscape, Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, Arts Council touring exhibition
Critic’s Choice, Arthur Tooth & Sons London
Peter Blake’s Choice, Festival Gallery, Bath
1974-1975
1975
1976
1977
1979
1980
The Recollections, Cheltenham Art Gallery, South West Arts, Touring Exhibition
Bath Festival Exhibition, Festival Gallery, Bath
Summer Exhibition (Brotherhood of Ruralists first exhibition as a group) Royal Academy of Arts, London
The Brotherhood of Ruralists, Festival Gallery, Bath
The Brotherhood of Ruralists, Charleston Festival, Sussex
The Brotherhood of Ruralists Ophelia Exhibition, Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge
1981 The Brotherhood of Ruralists, Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol touring to Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery; Third Eye Centre, Glasgow; Camden Arts Centre, London
Photographs 1957-1981: Martin Axon, David Inshaw, Graham Ovenden, Plymouth Arts Centre touring to Park Street, Bristol; Sutton Library, Suffolk
1982
1983
1986
1988
The Harveys Collection, ICA London, Arnolfini, Bristol
The Definitive Nude (Peter Blake’s Retrospective with the Ruralists) Tate Gallery, London
Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London
Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London
Mother and Child, Lefevre Gallery, London
1989 Farm Field and Fantasy, Bishop’s Palace, Chichester
The Secret Garden, Bleddfa Trust, Knighton, Wales
1991-2004 Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London
2008 Ancient Landscapes: Pastoral Visions, Southampton
City Art Gallery touring to The Victoria Art Gallery, Bath; Falmouth Art Gallery
2009 Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London
2010 Andrew Lambirth: A Critic’s Choice, Browse & Darby, London
2015 The Landscape in Art 1690 -1998 – British Artists in the Tate Collection, Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil
Wessex Places, Wiltshire Museum
Dream Visions, Sladers’ Yard Gallery, West Bay
2016 The Arborealists, St Barbe Museum & Art Gallery, Lymington
The Romantic Thread in British Art, Southampton
City Art Gallery
2017 A Wessex Scene, Messums Wiltshire
British Art: Ancient Landscapes, The Salisbury Museum
Night and Light and the Half Light, Sladers’ Yard Gallery, West Bay
2019 Fire: Flashes to Ashes in British Art, 1692-2019, Royal West of England Academy
2023 Centenary Exhibition: Part 2, The Redfern Gallery, London
2024 Summer Exhibition 2024, The Redfern Gallery, London
Advent Exhibition 2024, The Redfern Gallery, London
Television Films
1974 Private Landscapes, directed by Keith Sheather, produced by John Carlaw, BBC Bristol
1975 Gallery, produced by ACH Smith, HTV
1977 Summer with the Brotherhood, produced and directed by John Read, BBC (London)
1984 Between Dreaming and Waking, in collaboration with Geoffrey Haydon, BBC Arena
2005 A Picture of Britain, presented by David Dimbleby, BBC
2012 Hidden Pictures, BBC
Public Collections
Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London
Bristol Museum & Art Gallery
British Council
British Museum, London
The Government Art Collection
The Victoria Art Gallery, Bath
Royal West of England Academy, Bristol
Tyne and Wear Museums, Sunderland
Tate
Wiltshire Museum
Publications
Bonjour Mr Inshaw, Poems by Peter Robinson, Paintings by David Inshaw, published 2019 by The Two Rivers Press
David Inshaw by Andrew Lambirth, published 2015 by Unicorn Press
Published to coincide with the exhibition
David Inshaw: Thinking the Landscape 26 March to 25 April 2025
© The artist, the authors and The Redfern Gallery, London
Essay: Andrew Lambirth
Photography: Alex Fox
Pete J Stone
Design: Graham Rees Design
Print: Gomer Press
Published by The Redfern Gallery, London 2025
ISBN: 978-0-948460-93-7
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying recording or any other information storage or retrieval system without prior permission in writing from the gallery.
inside front cover
Sky II 2022 Oil on canvas | 30.2 × 30.2 cm (detail)
page 2
Landscape with Pink Sky and Moon 2023 Oil on board | 30.2 × 30.2 cm (detail)
inside back cover
Marlborough Downs 1989 Etching | 48 × 39.5 cm (detail)
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