“As soon as I begin looking at a field, an escarpment or an orchard as though in it there were some code to be deciphered, it becomes unfamiliar… the longer you spend with them, the more mysterious all visual images become.” John Berger (‘Painting a landscape’ published in ‘Selected Essays’)
“ To Crome, the only source of aesthetic emotion was the direct experience of the natural world, especially its intangible aspects (light and shade, air and space). The observation of nature in and around Norwich came to be the central activity of his life. Crome directed all his energies toward achieving an exact and objective record of what he saw; at the same time, he evolved methods profoundly expressive of his subjective responses.” Norman Goldberg (note 1).
“ By the early 19th century printmaking in Britain had reached an all time low. “ Liverpool Museums Exhibitions Website 2018
Participating in Phil Garratt’s lifelong learning course in the history of printmaking at Aberystwyth School of Art has opened a door for this writer onto the work of a number of printmaker artists I previously knew little about and whose scope, skill and imaginative gifts I had, to be candid, overlooked. I was aware of the English Romantic artist John Crome’s capacity for the atmospheric manipulation of aerial perspective in oil paint from seeing such impressively distinctive works by him as Marlingford Grove in the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight, Willow Tree with a Horseman and a Woman on a Road in the Castle Museum, Nottingham and The Poringland Oak, now in Tate Britain which is arguably his finest painting. Continue reading
Aberystwyth University School of Art Museum & Galleries 