Drawn to the Heart of Sussex on at Horsham Museum

By The Newsroom
Published 28th Jul 2013, 16:00 BST
JPCT 140613 S13240762x Horsham museum exhibition. Japanese Cloisonne enamels from the Victoria and Albert Museum -photo by Steve CobbJPCT 140613 S13240762x Horsham museum exhibition. Japanese Cloisonne enamels from the Victoria and Albert Museum -photo by Steve Cobb
JPCT 140613 S13240762x Horsham museum exhibition. Japanese Cloisonne enamels from the Victoria and Albert Museum -photo by Steve Cobb
A colourful and revelatory exhibition that captures the ‘quintessential Englishness’ of Sussex’s countryside is on at Horsham Museum.

The Drawn to the Heart of Sussex selection features the sights unseen by many as captured by artists’ explorations of the Sussex’s landscape.

They came in the late 19th and early 20th century by train, charabanc and bicycle to paint a landscape in transition from a once wealthy region battling the effects of agricultural depression and depopulation with magnificent buildings lying surrounded by unploughed fields, vistas unspoilt by housing, a visual blight that bedevilled the Sussex coastline.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Today we marvel at such rural splendour, but over 100 years ago it showed rural poverty not a culture of ‘back to nature’. With the pressure of housing needs such scenes are to be preserved; they are here at Horsham District Council’s Horsham Museum in oil and watercolour.

Paintings by Gerald Ackermann, Stewart Acton and John Bramham capture iconic images of Chanctonbury Ring from Storrington Downs, while George Goodwin Kilburne painted the gatehouse to Ewhurst Manor and yet another artist an image of Cowfold Church.