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The Romantic North
'Man, Nature and Society'
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This room looks at northern England, mainly Cumbria,
Yorkshire and Northumberland. Its themes are the discovery of
nature, and the industrial city.
The north, outside its towns, was long regarded
as forbidding - ''mostly rocks' according to one early traveller.
But changing attitudes to nature and wilderness made it more
fashionable during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
The Lake District became an English Arcadia, reminding ''Picturesque'
tourists of paintings by Claude Lorrain. Wilder scenery, like
Yorkshire's Gordale Scar or the bleak Northumberland coast,
appealed to a taste for the awe-inspiring and 'Sublime'.
Artists like JMW Turner toured the north, filling
exhibitions with views of its landscapes and architectural heritage.
Wordsworth's poems written in the Lake District describe the
moral and religious impact of his sense of harmony with nature.
The Brontës personified the Yorkshire moors in the untamed
emotions of their characters.
In the twentieth century the developing relationship
between the country and the city became both closer and more
tense. Artists often viewed the industrial landscape from the
surrounding countryside or, like LS Lowry, saw it as a parody
of the natural scene, where trees are replaced by forests of
mill chimneys.
The Romantic North - Introduction by David Dimbleby
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