True to Nature: Open-Air Painting in Europe 1780-1870
- Submitting institution
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University of Cambridge
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 12970
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- National Gallery of Art in Washington
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first exhibition
- -
- Year of first exhibition
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- Yes
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- The multi-component output of True to Nature would have been presented slightly differently had its display at the Fitzwilliam Museum and at the Fondation Custodia, Paris not been delayed. Additional visual evidence for European display methods would have been provided. Further objects from Cambridge’s science collections would have been included at the Fitzwilliam to expand the narrative in the catalogue. The catalogue was first made available in July 2020 (date removed to allow submission).
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Munro co-curated the exhibition True to Nature, lead output in this multi-component item that includes its catalogue, which she co-authored and co-edited, alongside contextual information enabling the reviewer to visualise the exhibition. This exhibition of over one hundred landscape oil sketches drawn from the Fitzwilliam, the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC and the Fondation Custodia, Paris was shown in Washington in 2020 but COVID-19 delayed its display in France and the UK. In Washington the exhibition followed the same structure as the book. .
Though several exhibitions of landscape oil sketches have been staged since the 1980s, most have been chronological or country-specific. True to Nature instead considers the work of plein air painters in terms of the natural phenomena that most attracted them, requiring in-depth research and analysis of the philosophical writings, scientific enquiry and poetic sentiment that nourished both the deep attachment to nature that developed among artists and what was becoming a core practice. This approach also explores the ways painters collected and stored their first-hand observations, reviewing the practice of open-air painting not least within the context of the natural and earth sciences.
Munro’s chapters explore the techniques and materials of plein air landscape painters and the methods they adopted in their attempts to remain ‘true to nature’. Her essay on trees explores the challenges of painting a motif widely considered the painter’s ‘stumbling block’ in the context of the expanding fields of dendrology and arboriculture. Her essay on volcanoes focuses on representations of Mount Vesuvius, the ‘laboratory of volcanology’ in Europe, and draws out hitherto unexplored networks of artists, volcanologists and mineralogists. The introduction offers an historical overview of the shift from private to institutional collecting over the last half-century.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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