Savage Grandeur and Noblest Thoughts
Exhibiting until 12 June, 2011

Here’s your chance to follow in the footsteps of parasol-touting, well-to-do travellers around The Lake District two centuries ago.

A new exhibition in Grasmere highlights ‘Picturesque Tourism’, an escape from mundane life in Britain whilst the Napoleonic Wars raged.

This blip in the fortunes of polite society meant they had to find amusements other than their customary Grand Tour of the Continent.

They endured lengthy journeys. with boulders strewn in their path, and the ever-likely possibility of an overturned carriage, just to reach their destination.

The exhibitions fuse together art and literature from the period 1750-1820 with works by artists, writers, satirists, poets and guidebook writers, all of whom who fed the passionate demand for memoirs of the area.

These creative brains of yore recognised a market for what might now be regarded as the ‘full colour, prestige coffee table book’, a souvenir painting or the equivalent of a BBC Countryfile feature.

Wordsworth’s own tourist publication Guide to the Lakes has been the impetus behind the exhibition, which this year celebrates its 200th anniversary of publication.

Sherbourne, in Savage Grandeur and Noblest Thoughts, Dove Cottage and the Wordsworth Museum, Lake District. Until 12 June 2011.

Etchings, engravings, paintings, print and prose are all on show, alongside examples of how artists skewed their representations of the area in order to sell their works more easily, satisfy the desires of patrons, create satirical comment on visitors to the early Lakes and convey the essence of the ‘in vogue’ area.

The exhibition highlights the popular growth of engravings, aquatint, mezzotint, bodycolour and watercolours – the latter having previously been viewed as a medium suitable only for ladies.

Constable’s Hellvellyn – his only print of the Lake District – is on show alongside works from Laporte, Chubbard, Sunderland, Nicholson, Farington, Walmsley and Gainsborough.

Savage Grandeur and Noblest Thoughts also boasts watercolours by Girtin, who died in his mid 20s, and of whom Turner remarked: “If Girtin had lived, I should have starved.”

Visitors can view works showing scenes from the Lake District and use them as a launch pad from which to explore the featured places and beauty spots.

Locations that are represented include Windermere, Ullswater, Townend, Rydal Falls, Bowness and Furness Abbey, all just a short drive from Grasmere.

This exhibition runs until June 12, 2011, seven days a week. Details.

For accommodation options in Grasmere or the Lakeland area, click here.