Talent show

The National Gallery of Art in Washington presented a feast for the eyes this week. Three feasts, in fact. To celebrate Rembrandt year, the NGA organised the largest exhibition of his drawings, etchings and prints ever assembled in the United States. In an adjoining gallery, the NGA has rehung its celebrated Woodner collection of hundreds of master drawings, including three stunning Ingres.

And if that is not enough to tempt you to take your next break in Washington, consider the somewhat more surprising exhibition that has just opened: The Artist’s Vision: Romantic Traditions in Britain. In order to compare differing Romantic ideals and visions, the curator, Stacey Sell, has brought together almost 100 drawings that show the diversity of interests and talents of British artists from the late 18th century to the early 20th century. The majority are from the NGA’s own collection, a few from private sources.

The exhibition’s first section, which the curator has captioned Man and Nature, is drawn from the NGA’s rich collection of British watercolours and drawings, and reflects the love of nature, and especially the countryside, that is, or until recently has been, a major part of the nation’s psyche. Here, we can trace the evolution of the Romantic landscape from 18th-century ideas of the sublime and picturesque through to the later trends of naturalism and a poetic identification with the landscape.

One of the best representatives of this aspect of the British soul is Samuel Palmer’s depiction of ‘A Cascade in Shadow’ (1836). This masterful watercolour, with pen and ink, of a waterfall on the Conwy River near Betws-y-Coed in north Wales uses light and dark, sun and shade to capture the love Palmer felt for nature. So beautiful is this drawing that Palmer kept it in his own collection for nearly 40 years.