Page 90 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - London

88  L ONDON AREA B Y AREA

Exploring Tate Britain 20th-Century British Art
Tate Britain draws its displays from the massive Tate The modern section of Tate
Collection. The variety of works on show, combined with a Britain begins towards the front
rigorous programme of loan exhibitions and career retro­ of the gallery with the early
spectives of British artists, results in a selection to suit 20th century. It includes Jacob
Epstein’s colossal alabaster
all tastes – from Elizabethan portraiture to cutting­edge sculpture of two wrestling
installation. The displays are changed frequently to explore figures, Jacob and the Angel.
many different aspects of the history and art of Britain from Work by other celebrated
1500 to the present day. British sculptors, such as
Barbara Hepworth and Henry
Moore, can also be seen in this
section. Moore is one of the
few artists to have a room
dedicated to his works in Tate
Britain. Paintings by two of the
most famous, and disturbing,
modern British artists are also
on display here: Francis Bacon,
whose Three Studies for Figures
at the Base of a Crucifixion
(c.1944) depicts three mutant
organisms in agony, confined
The Cholmondeley Ladies (c.1600–10), British School in an apparently hostile and
godless world; and Lucian
ideas not only about art, Freud, with his early, unsettling
BP Walk Through but about what it meant to portrait of his first wife, Girl with
British Art (16th to Early be British. a Kitten (1947).
20th Centuries)
The first half of the 19th From the 1960s, Tate’s
The national collection of century saw dramatic funding for the purchase of
British art has been hung in a expansion and change in the works began to increase sub-
continuous chronological arts in Britain. New themes stantially, while artistic activity
display from the 1500s to the began to emerge, and artists continued to pick up speed,
present day. This presentation started working on a much encouraged by public support.
allows viewers to observe a larger scale as they competed As a result, the Tate has a
range of art from any one for attention on the walls of particularly big collection of
historical period, such as the public exhibitions. Monumental work from this period, which
Tudors and Stuarts, and see canvases by John Martin and makes a frequent rotation of
how British art has changed Thomas Lawrence, plus displays necessary. You are,
over the centuries. The walk celebrated works by David however, likely to see iconic
comprises around 500 artworks Wilkie are evidence of this. works of the period by artists
in some 20 galleries. The Storytelling was at the heart such as Sir Peter Blake, Richard
galleries to the left of the main of Victorian art; the Victorians’ Hamilton and the early work of
Duveen Galleries (if entering belief in the power of art to David Hockney.
from the Millbank entrance) convey moral messages The 1980s saw the emerg-
take you from the earliest produced such important ence of provocative artists
paintings through to the 1910s. works as Augustus Egg’s series such as Gilbert & George,
Featured are important Past and Present. known as the Living Sculptures,
works by some of Britain’s Pre-Raphaelite and Idealist whose photo installations, of
great 18th-century painters, pieces are perhaps the most which England is an example,
including portraits and land- popular works at Tate Britain; are often concerned with
scapes by Gainsborough, key examples are John Everett identity, and Richard Long,
dramatic large-scale paintings Millais’s Ophelia, which was who created a whole new
in an idealized style by artists completed in the mid-1880s, approach to the relation ship
such as Benjamin West and and William Holman Hunt’s between art and landscape by
society portraits by Joshua Awakening Conscience. Painting importing the land itself into
Reynolds, the head of the newly and sculpture from the late the gallery.
estab lished Royal Academy. Victorian period includes the The following decade was
Landscape painting lies at American artist John Singer dominated by the so-called
the heart of the revolution in Sargent’s seductive Mrs Carl Young British Artists (YBAs),
British painting during the Meyer and her Children, and who include Damien Hirst,
19th century, when images austere, haunting pieces by perhaps the most notorious,
of the country side changed Gwen John. as well as Tracey Emin and

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