‘Forests, Woods and Groves’

By Philippa Beale

A stunning collection of artwork from the Arborealists, a group of highly skilled artists who feature trees, forests and woodland as their most vital subjects.

The Arborealists' diverse and influential work highlights protected woodland's history and changing landscapes, as well as illuminating the enchantment of ancient trees. Each member has developed their own artistic language, showcasing manifold applications in everything from scale, medium, style and philosophical approach. Featuring the artwork of Arborealist members including Tim Craven, Jemma Appleby, Alex Faulkner, Ann Blockley, Fiona McIntyre and many more, this beautiful book is a joyful celebration of the natural world. As well as showcasing the diverse work of 36 artists, the book includes:

• An introduction to The Arborealists by Philippa Beale, a founding member.
• Information on some of the site-specific projects undertaken by the collective, written by the President of the Arborealists, Tim Craven.
• An exploration of the woodland at Staverton Park in Suffolk, written by author and woodland ecologist George Peterken.

In the last ten years, The Arborealists’ many successful exhibitions have carved them a strong national profile and widespread critical acclaim. Forests, Woods and Groves is perfect for anyone with an interest in spectacular art or a passion for the natural world.

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Title: Forests, Woods and Groves
Subtitle: Art from the Arborealists
ISBN-10: 1849949786
EAN: 9781849949781
ISBN: 9781849949781
Publisher: Batsford
Format: Hardback
Type: Hardback
Release Date: 07/11/2024
Language: English
Country/Region of Manufacture: GB
Author: Philippa Beale
Height: 276mm
Length: 216mm


‘The Quietness of Feeling’

by Portsmouth Museum and Art Gallery

The Quietness of Feeling: An Exploration of Trees through the Art of Benjamin Haughton and The Arborealists book, published in 2024 by Portsmouth Museum and Art Gallery alongside the exhibition of the same title. The book features reproduction images of participating work by the Arborealists and Benjamin Haughton featured in the exhibition. Available from the museum shop.

Portsmouth Museum & Art Gallery presents a special exhibition to launch the newly refurbished art gallery. This exhibition showcases works from the museum collection by talented landscape artist Benjamin Haughton R.B.A. 1865-1924, as well as contemporary pieces on loan from members of The Arborealists. These explore a fantastic diversity of art practice centred around the unifying subject of the tree.

In 1973 Portsmouth Museums acquired an astonishing collection of 300 paintings by the versatile and talented landscape artist Benjamin Haughton R.B.A. 1865-1924. The paintings were kindly donated by his daughter Miss B. Haughton at a time when the museum was attempting to build its collection of late 19th century fine and decorative art.

Haughton found inspiration from the beauty of trees and in the solitude of the countryside and woodlands. He was an industrious artist who spent much of his life mastering the sensitive capture and interpretation of trees. His preoccupation with the alchemy of light influenced his rich use of colour, tone and scope of subject matter, from the interior twilight of the pine woods to views into valleys.

In the centenary of his death Portsmouth Museum & Art Gallery opens a special exhibition showcasing a carefully curated selection of Haughton’s works, presented alongside contemporary pieces on loan from members of The Arborealists, who each have given trees, forests and woods a special value in their practice.

Title: The Quietness of Feeling
Subtitle: An Exploration of Trees through the Art of Benjamin Haughton and The Arborealists
ISBN: 978139984201
Publisher: Portsmouth Museum and Art Gallery
Format: Paperback
Release Date: 2024
Language: English
Country/Region of Manufacture: GB


‘Trees In Art’

by Charles Watkins

Charles Watkins explores the myth and magic of arboreal art mentioning The Arborealists as modern enthusiasts. Drawing on the author's deep knowledge of the history and ecology of trees, Trees in Art shows that we can learn much about ourselves from the art of trees.

ISBN13:9781780239309


‘Art Meets Ecology: The Arborealists in Lady Park Wood’

‘Art Meets Ecology:
Arborealists in Lady Park Wood’

By George Peterken, Tim Craven, Christiana Payne

  • Features work by The Arborealists – an informal group of professional artists with an interest in painting trees and woodland

  • Both a compendium of original artworks and an explanation of how natural woodland works, linked together in a way that seeks to build a combined  appreciation of part of our natural environment.

This new book features the paintings and drawings created by The Arborealists in Lady Park Wood, an ancient, semi-natural wood on the slopes and cliffs of the Wye Gorge on the borders of England and Wales. Uniquely, the wood, which has been left to grow naturally for up to 150 years, has been studied in detail since 1944 and the fortunes of hundreds of individual trees have been tracked for three-quarters of a century. The artworks are matched with a commentary by George Peterken, who has led the research since the 1980s. Both artists and ecologists observe trees and woods closely, but express their understanding of the wood in totally different forms. The two interests came together to deepen their understanding of each other and their different perspectives in an interest they share and promote a broader interest and understanding of native woodlands generally. Elm disease, the great drought of 1976, storms, snow and now ash disease have taken their toll on the ageing beech, oak, lime, ash, yew, hazel and many other species, many of which now lie prone in great heaps of dead wood and re-growth.

The writers:

Tim Craven is an artist, freelance curator and lecturer. Over the course of a career spanning 37 years at Southampton City Art Gallery (1980–2017), Tim managed and developed the internationally renowned permanent collection centred on historic and modern British art, acquiring over 1,000 works of art. He also curated and co-curated many and various temporary exhibitions at Southampton and elsewhere. These included such subjects as the Euston Road School, the Camden Town Group, British Surrealism, St Ives, the Systems Group, Photorealism, cartoons and contemporary practice, for which he contributed essays and introductions to the accompanying exhibition catalogues.

Christiana Payne is Professor of History of Art at Oxford Brookes University. She has published widely on British landscape painting of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and has curated many exhibitions, including ‘A Walk in the Woods: A Celebration of Trees in British Art’, shown at the Higgins Bedford in 2017–18. Her most recent book, Silent Witnesses: Trees in British Art, 1760–1870, was published by Sansom & Co in 2017.

George Peterken was a forest ecologist with the Nature Conservancy and successor bodies before working independently, partly as a nature conservation consultant for the Forestry Commission. As an official, he was responsible for starting the ancient woodland inventory and negotiating the nature conservation aspects of forestry policy. He has written books on woodland conservation and management, natural woodland, the Wye Valley and Meadows. Since the 1970s he has maintained the long-term ecological study in Lady Park Wood. He lives in the Wye Valley between Offa’s Dyke and the river Wye.

Anne Rainsbury is Monmouthshire’s Community Museums’ Curator. Working across its three museums at Abergavenny, Chepstow and Monmouth, she interprets the collections and communicates Monmouthshire’s many rich stories about its people and places – in displays, special exhibitions and events, working with groups and individuals from the local community and beyond. She also works to add to the rich arts and cultural life of the county, both by showcasing regional talent and by attracting nationally important artists, performers and speakers to come to Monmouthshire, and also through the exhibition of culturally significant objects and artworks from national and major museums and art galleries.

This project has been supported by the Sustainable Development Fund, a Welsh Government Initiative in the Wye Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

128 pages /  270 x 210mm
full colour illustrations
Softback
ISBN: 978-1-911408-68-0

Publication date:  September 2020

Buy here £25


‘The Arborealists: The Art of Trees’

In collaboration with

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Bilingual catalogue English/French
Catalogue bilingue français/anglais


80 pages, full colour illustrations, including works of:
80 pages, illustrées en couleur, incluant des travaux de :

Jemma Appleby, Richard Bavin, Philippa Beale, John Blandy, Karen Bowers, Brandy-Dalschaert, Hannah Brown, Buckmaster-French, Stella Carr, Peter Clossick, Gary Colclough, Tim Craven, Blaze Cyan, Tom Deakins, Michelle Dovey, Jane Eaton, Alex Egan, Paul Finn, Joanna Greenhill, Abi Kremer, Ffiona Lewis, Hannah Maybank, Fiona McIntyre, Wladyslaw Mirecki, Alex Pemberton, Julian Perry, Howard Phipps, Michael Porter, Paul Ridyard, Lesley Slight, Angela Summerfield, Jacqueline Wedlake Hatton, David Wiseman

ISBN 978-0-9555510-5-5

Published by Plato-Beale Productions 2017


‘A Tree Within

by Arborealist Fiona McIntyre

An exhibition to coincide with the publication of Arborealist artist Fiona McIntyre new book 'A Tree Within'.
A monograph with interview by Art Historian Dr. Alan Wilkinson and a foreword by Southampton curator Tim Craven. The book explores Fiona's artistic development from Edinburgh to Scandinavia to the Cotswolds until her recent incarnation as an Arborealist.

http://sansomandcompany.co.uk/shopping/fiona-mcintyre-a-tree-within/

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Exhibition
14th September - 31st October
The Bishop’s Palace
Wells - Somerset - BA5 2PD

Telephone: 01749 988111
Jo.watkinson@bishopspalace.org.uk

https://bishopspalace.org.uk

http://www.fionamcintyre.com/index.aspx?sectionid=1212414

 

‘The Arborealists: The Art of the Tree’

Published in conjunction with an exhibition at St Barbe Gallery, Lymington

23 April – 4 June 2016

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The Arborealists: The Art of the Tree

With essays by Philippa Beale, Dr. Angela Summerfield and Peter Davies

Publication date: April 2016

Price: £25 softback

ISBN 9781908326867

Read review

Trees provide a wonderfully versatile subject for artists, not only in terms of the incredible diversity of form, character and colour they provide, whether individually or collectively, but also in terms of the wealth of association, myth, folklore, religious and symbolic significance which they have come to embody. In Britain they have inspired artists from Gainsborough and Constable through to Paul Nash, the Neo-Romantics and the Ruralists.

The Arborealists grew out of the exhibition Under the Greenwood: Picturing British Trees – Present held in 2013 at St. Barbe Museum & Art Gallery, an exploration of contemporary artists' responses to the tree. Such was the impact of the show and the spirit of camaraderie engendered in a truly diverse group of artists that they took on a more permanent identity. Under the Arborealists' banner a loose association of artists, including such luminaries as David Inshaw, have come together for exhibitions in galleries across the south. The thirty-seven artists who have contributed to this book include Jemma Appleby, Ann and Graham Arnold, Mary Anne Aytoun-Ellis, Buckmaster and French, Tim Craven, Michelle Dovey, Ffiona Lewis, Annie Ovenden, Julian Perry, Howard Phipps, Michael Porter, Wladyslaw Mirecki and Dr. Angela Summerfield.

The work included in this lavishly illustrated book, at turns dramatic and contemplative, demonstrates that trees still have a relevance in contemporary art and retain the power to move us all as a vital element in our landscape and sense of national identity.

  • Essay by former Royal Academy Senior Curator sets out the historical and international background to artists' relationships with trees (inc. Gainsborough, Constable, Van Gogh, Munch, Klimt etc.)

  • The first study on one of the most significant British artist groups to emerge in the 21st century

  • Features previously unpublished images and personal insights into the work of these contemporary painters

  • Will appeal equally to lovers of art, nature and the British countryside

  • Lavishly illustrated throughout

  • ISBN 139781908326867




 

‘Under the Greenwood:

Picturing the British Tree From Constable to Kurt Jackson’

Anne Anderson and others

This celebration of the British Tree features the work of approximately 80 major artists of two centuries from the early 1800s. The twentieth century is strongly represented, as are our contemporary artists.
...


sansomandcompany.co.uk/shopping/under-the-greenwood

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Under the Greenwood, Picturing the British Tree From Constable to Kurt Jackson

Sansom & Company, 2013
ISBN 978-1-908326-30-0
270 x 210 mm
204 pages with 100 mainly colour illustrations
English, Softback