The Holburne Museum has made available for pre-order the official catalogue for ‘Ancient Landscape, Modern Times: Eric Ravilious and the Artists of the Chalk Downs’, ahead of the exhibition’s opening on 3 October 2026. The Bath exhibition will run until 10 January 2027.
Containing 75 colour images and 10 in black and white, the publication examines the relationship between the ancient chalk landscapes of southern England and the artists drawn to them during the first half of the twentieth century. It considers how the rolling forms of the downs became sites where history, modernity, identity and belonging met amid growing political tension and war.
Its focus is the South Downs and related chalk landscapes, which inspired artists seeking to reinvent landscape painting for the modern age.
The catalogue further describes the downs as a place where prehistory and modernity could converge. During the politically charged 1930s, it says, images of Britain changed as these landscapes became symbols of wartime vulnerability and resilience; they were also sites of machine-gun emplacements and crashed aeroplanes.
The exhibition was developed by writer and curator James Russell, whom the museum describes as an authority on Ravilious and his circle. Named works include Ravilious’s ‘The Westbury Horse’ (1939) and ‘Beachy Head’ (1939), as well as Nicholson’s oil-on-panel ‘Judd’s Farm’ (1912).
