01 May - 25 September, 2022
John Virtue
'NORTH SEA PAINTINGS'
The Exhibition
Houghton Hall was delighted to present North Sea Paintings by John Virtue, an exhibition in collaboration with Albion Barn. The North Sea Paintings emerged as a ritual, produced from weekly walks on Fridays to the sea. Virtue had moved to Norfolk in 2009, and the captivating journey from the beach at Cley Next the Sea towards Blakeney Point became the subject of an expansive series of paintings.
Virtue characterized his artist’s eye in its glances, deliberately keeping his subject impermanent, shadowy. In the most literal sense, he worked with impressions. This glancing technique allowed for the now familiar aspects of the landscape to recede from the eye; the paintings focused on the far more changeable and elemental movements of the coastline. These walks produced a surfeit of sketchbook studies that became the raw material from which the large-scale acrylic works were reconstituted, amalgamating the multiple images upon the singular surface of the canvas. This method of piecing together could be understood as a direct interaction with the grid constructions of his earlier work while releasing the painted environment from the constraints of a rigid form.
The practice of walking, drawing, constructing back in the studio, was one that had followed Virtue throughout his career as he moved from Green Haworth in Northeast Lancashire to the edge of Dartmoor; Exeter; London; Italy; and finally, Norfolk. Virtue had risen to prominence with his pen and ink landscapes assemblages of drawings, capturing Green Haworth on the edge of Pennine Moorland with densely wrought hatching. Gradually, Virtue had moved back to painting and moved increasingly to abstraction – a tonal departure that was best captured by the artist’s relocation from the city to the countryside. The mark making within these North Sea Paintings was explicit: it was a discussion of the brutality and primality of weather upon an environment – a distinctly different effect than the more subtle bleeding and blending that occurred within his cityscapes.
About the Artist
Born in Accrington, Lancashire (1947), John Virtue pursued his artistic education at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1965 to 1969. His notable affiliations include being an Associate Artist at the National Gallery from 2003 to 2005 and an honorary professor of Fine Art at the University of Plymouth from 2003 to 2008. Further, he held the position of an honorary fellow at Yale University from 2006 to 2010.
His impressive body of work is showcased in numerous public collections, including distinguished institutions such as the Tate Gallery, London; British Museum, London; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Arts Council England; Government Art Collection; Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, CT; Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis; Contemporary Art Society, London; London Hospital NHS Trust; Guildhall Museum & Art Gallery, London; Courtauld Gallery Collection of Drawings & Prints, London; Somerset House Trust Collection, London; Towner Art Gallery and Museum, Eastbourne; and The Queensland Museum and Gallery of Modern Art, Australia.
Acknowledgements
With thanks to Albion Barn for curating this exhibition of works by John Virtue at Houghton Hall.
“As you leave behind the coastal marshland and the low Dutch-like villages, all you have is a trajectory to the North Sea, sand going out, a single line for four and a quarter miles to a vanishing point, an event horizon.”
John Virtue
