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Intro |
Points Of View |
North |
South |
Highlands |
Midlands |
East |
West |
Conclusion
Conclusion
In all six regions of Britain we have seen that Heaven
and Hell are nearly always constructs of the mind. We all have the
power to create our own heaven and hell.
One of the most important qualities in landscape is its
power to fuel our imagination, as William Wordsworth explained in
his poem of July 13, 1798, about Tintern Abbey, to which he was
returning after an absence of five years. In the poem he contrasts
the young man he was on his earlier visit with the older, more reflective
person he has become:
For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by,)
To me was all in all. - I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite: a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.
This exhibition contains sustenance for both types of
person described by Wordsworth - the eager, active, younger one,
enthralled by all he sees, and the older, more thoughtful one for
whom images are a springboard for imagination and reflection.
It seems clear that when, in 1794 at the age of nineteen,
Turner drew The Chancel and Crossing of Tintern Abbey, Looking
towards the East Window - four years before Wordsworth's poem
was written - he was not simply recording the appearance of the
ruins. Like Wordsworth, Turner was alive to Tintern Abbey's many
historical, political and emotional associations.
Ideally, like Turner, you will manage to be both types
of people described by Wordsworth; you will enjoy the images for
their own sake as well as thinking about what greater underlying
significance they may have for you.
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View in Tate Collection