written by Jane Renouf

WINTER’S flood is just a bad memory now as Ambleside’s refurbished Armitt Museum prepares for a fascinating new art exhibition opening in May, featuring Lakeland landscapes - not as we see them today, but as viewed through time by painters as long ago as two centuries, writes Jane Renouf.

Landscapes, familiar to so many, are looked at through very different eyes in the Armitt’s forthcoming exhibition, Unsuspected Paradise: Lakeland Landscape Watercolours from the 18-20th Century.

It was the poet Thomas Gray who first described the Lakes as an “unsuspected paradise” in his Journal of his Tour in the Lake District (1769), which acted as the area’s first guide book. Drawn to follow in his footsteps came painters unaccustomed to such craggy magnificence and quite unprepared for the unexpected grandeur that met their eyes. Discovering the dramatic so near home also provided a timely alternative to visiting war-torn revolutionary Europe, and a complete contrast to the concept of taming nature into the picturesque, offering instead a raw naturalism which appealed to painters and poets alike.

The exhibition drawn from individual collections promises not only a feast for the eyes, but much else besides. Armitt curator, Deborah Walsh, says the paintings will also provide an environmental snapshot of the changing landscape itself, as well as reflecting shifting styles in art and innovations in painting materials.

“The popularisation of the Lakes started from Gray’s time in the 1760s onwards,” adds Deborah. “These paintings will show how the landscape itself changed so much in little more than the next 50 years, to become a very different place indeed.”

The fascination of this new exhibition lies in revisiting recognisable local landscapes over a broad spectrum of time, each one with a unique and fresh vision. Each work will tell a different tale and illustrate the various techniques artists used as the landscape evolved from remote backwater to lakeshores lined by grand new houses and villages thronged by visitors.

The exhibition will be hung in the Armitt’s library, with minimalist title boards attached to library shelves: “By opening up the library as a more flexible space, we can also hold displays of historic photographs too, and with grant-funded iPads for use in the Armitt and local schools, this will be the Armitt’s route into developing a social history of the area," explains Deborah. "We’re still hoping for a much bigger grant to extend the museum but for the time being we’re maximising use of our space.”

The downstairs gallery portrays notable people in local history, as well as Kurt Schwitters: the Ambleside Legacy and Beatrix Potter - From Image to Reality. Events to mark the 150th anniversary of Beatrix Potter’s birth will include a narrated reading from her Journal in July and the popular family-friendly Hands on History events continue to take place monthly.

For further information visit www.armitt.com or telephone 015394-31212.