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A Picture of Britain : 15 June  –  4 September 2005
 
  A Picture of Britain
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an exhibition celebrating the British landscape - 16 June - 4 September 2005
 
Transcript: The Romantic North - Introduction

Listen to Audio Guide (MP3 format, 0.7MB)

David Dimbleby:
 
The Lake District was the place where, in the 18th century, travellers first came and were guided round from site to site. There was a Jesuit priest called Thomas West who wrote a sort of guide telling the tourist exactly where they should stand. 'If you stand here, and have the hill opposite and this and that then you'll be looking at the perfect example of the picturesque'. And then there was William Gilpin with a wonderful guide to how you should paint things - for instance if you wanted to have an animal in the foreground it shouldn't be a horse, even though a horse was more noble, it should be a cow, because it had more angles and therefore was more interesting to draw. So 'The Romantic North' as we called it is really the entry point to understanding the relationship between the artist and the landscape.