Image: Pallant House Gallery, Chichester
Pallant House Gallery in Chichester has opened 'British Landscapes: A Sense of Place', a major exhibition running from 30 May to 1 November 2026 that brings together works by more than 60 artists across the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. The display looks at how artists have responded to the landscapes of the British Isles, presenting scenery not simply as view-making material but as a site of memory, identity, emotion and belonging.
The exhibition is framed as a broad historical survey. Pallant House Gallery says it traces a line from Thomas Gainsborough and the golden age of British watercolour through Romanticism, Modernism and postwar abstraction, with works by artists including John Sell Cotman, Samuel Palmer, Spencer Gore, Clare Leighton, Mark Gertler, Paul Nash, Barbara Hepworth, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Ivon Hitchens and John Hubbard. The gallery highlights a range of terrain within the show, from quiet lanes and chalk hills to industrial sites and abstract coastlines.
Several works are singled out on the gallery’s website, including Mark Gertler’s 'Near Swanage' from 1916, Paul Nash’s 'The Bay' from 1922 and John Hubbard’s 'Coastal Landscape, Dorset' from 1967. The gallery also points to works by Spencer Gore, Clare Leighton, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham and Ivon Hitchens among the exhibition highlights. Image credits supplied by Pallant House Gallery further identify John Varley’s 'Snowdon (with Llyn Padarn)' and David Jones’s 'Terrace Overlooking the Sea (Terrace, Portslade, View from No.5)', underscoring the range of media on view, from watercolour and wood engraving to oil on board and sculpture.
The gallery’s published material presents the exhibition as part of a longer account of how British landscape art has shifted over time. It notes that different artists have used landscape to register labour, conflict and imagination, and says the show invites visitors to reflect on how Britain’s landscapes have been lived in, remembered and reimagined. Pallant House Gallery has also issued a new illustrated catalogue written by director Simon Martin, with contributions from contemporary artist Haroun Hayward.
'British Landscapes: A Sense of Place' is accompanied by Hayward’s 'Path through Trees', which runs concurrently from 30 May to 1 November 2026. The gallery describes this as Haroun Hayward’s first solo institutional show and says it presents a new body of work rooted in his experience studying the Sussex landscape. The project brings together references from abstract expressionism, 1990s dance music, rave culture, graffiti and his mother’s South Asian and West African textiles, according to the gallery.
Pallant House Gallery says Hayward’s series was inspired by postwar British art in its collection, including work by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Edward Burra, Ceri Richards, Paul Nash and Graham Sutherland. The gallery adds that the exhibition developed following a joint residency with Pallant House Gallery and West Dean College. Alongside the exhibition, Hayward has also worked with the gallery’s Community Programme on 'Gathered in the Landscape', a large-scale collaborative artwork shown in Room 17.
The gallery has positioned both exhibitions within its wider programme on British art from 1900 to the present. Admission information listed on the exhibition page gives adult tickets at £17, with concessions and free entry for under-18s and Pallant House Gallery Friends. The gallery’s opening hours are Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm, and Sunday and Bank Holidays, 10am to 4pm.
