COMPTON.- British Landscapes will be the theme of this year’s annual selling print exhibition at Watts Gallery – Artists’ Village. The exhibition, which opened on 13 October in Watts Contemporary Gallery, brings together work by 13 contemporary print makers to celebrate the diversity of contemporary practice in this medium.

From the coasts of Norfolk, Northumberland, Sussex and Wales through to the countryside of Yorkshire, Shropshire, Dorset and Devon – as well as local Surrey scenes of Boxhill and Oxshott Heath – this exhibition demonstrates how the landscape is an endless source of fascination for artists. Using wood engraving, linocut, collage, etching, screenprinting and solar plate etching, the exhibition shows the wide range of techniques employed by today’s artists to depict landscape in print.

Featured artists are Kit Boyd, Stuart Brocklehurst, Angela Brookes, Ann Burnham, Louise Davies, Mary Gillett, Anne Gournay, Gloria Holden, Jennifer Jokhoo, Andy Lovell, Howard Phipps, Judith Robertson and Richard Shimell. The exhibition is a collaboration with Gwen Hughes Fine Art.

In Print: British Landscapes continues the Watts Contemporary Gallery exhibition programme which provides a unique opportunity for visitors to see and buy affordable contemporary art and craft that resonate with the Arts and Crafts heritage of Watts Gallery – Artists’ Village. Proceeds from the sale of work directly benefit Watts Gallery Trust's learning and outreach programme which engages over 20,000 participants each year.

Commenting, Alistair Burtenshaw, Director of Watts Gallery Trust, says: “The British landscape has for millennia proved a source of deep and lasting inspiration to artists. Evoking a sense of place, of being rooted in a geography that is permanent yet transient and ever changing, this exhibition beautifully defines the wider landscape that envelops us. I am delighted that Watts Gallery Trust is able to show the work of thirteen superb practising artists whose work perfectly complements the love of landscape that brought GF and Mary Watts to Compton, in the lee of the North Surrey Hills”.

“Our Watts Gallery Contemporary exhibitions demonstrate Watts Gallery Trust’s commitment to showcase recent and current artistic practice and to support artists throughout their careers. Watts Gallery Contemporary exhibitions create access to contemporary art for members of the public, help to fund our wide-reaching Art for All education programme and ensure that current artistic practice continues to thrive at Compton as envisaged by our founding artists.”

George Frederic Watts (1817 – 1904) - who together with his wife, the artist and designer Mary Watts (1849 – 1938), established Watts Gallery – Artists’ Village in the last decade of the 19th century - was himself a great painter of landscape. Initially influenced by visits to Italy in the 1840s, the artist continued to paint landscapes throughout his long life, culminating in a series of emotional pictures from the 1890s depicting the Surrey countryside surrounding the Wattses’ Compton home – now a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

In addition, printmaking is important in the history of Watts Gallery – Artists’ Village. In the years immediately preceding the First World War, Mary Watts collaborated with the great printer Emery Walker to produce a sequence of reproductions of the most famous pictures of G F Watts. These richly coloured, painterly photogravures were made using the latest available technology, and printed at Watts Gallery in what is now the Foyle Pottery Studio. The prints were distributed and sold through London print Dealers. Today, Watts Gallery – Artists’ Village holds a complete set of the prints in its Archive.

In Print: British Landscapes at Watts Contemporary opened on 13 October 2017 (until 7 January). The show coincides with Helen Allingham (Watts Gallery, 21 November – 18 February), the UK’s first major public art gallery exhibition devoted to the artist Helen Allingham RWS.