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This room looks at a large area of ancient Britain, forming a triangle between Stonehenge, north Wales and St Ives in Cornwall. Its central theme is that of the mystical landscape of megaliths, burial mounds and Celtic legend.

Stonehenge has fascinated artists and writers since the seventeenth century. Its ancient stones and earthworks create a powerful sense of mystery and wonder. Writers such as the antiquarian William Stukeley believed it was a druidical site and many artists imagined how it might have been used for ancient rituals. Today it is visited by tourists and latter-day druids and is still studied by archaeologists.

Eighteenth century tourists in search of ‘Picturesque’ landscape would have preferred the Wye Valley and ruins such as those at Tintern Abbey. Inspired by the writer William Gilpin, they looked at landscape as one might a picture, seeking pleasing combinations of form and balanced views with nothing too alarming or bleak. A taste for the wilder mountainous landscape of north Wales, however, also became popular at this time. Welsh myths and legends as well as the unspoilt scenery and local customs made places such as Betws-y-Coed popular destinations.

In the twentieth century, in search of further Celtic landscape mysteries, artists such as Graham Sutherland have worked in south Wales, while St Ives in Cornwall was a major artists colony from the 1920s.

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