Watts Gallery - Artists’ Village Down Lane, Guildford, Surrey GU3 1DQ •1483 810235 www.wattsgallery.org.uk
Art & Action: Making Change in Victorian Britain explores how artists used their work to comment on social problems of the day as well as to actively help to solve them. Poverty, hunger and disease were rife in industrial Britain, and many artists began working in conjunction with social movements at the frontline of reform efforts. Sir Luke Fildes’s celebrated work, Applicants for Admission to a Casual Ward (below) received praise from many in its day, but others took offence at this grim portrait of those forced to seek help from the workhouse. Looking at how and why artists chose to circulate their art across Victorian society, the exhibition also considers how artists such as William Morris encouraged traditional craftsmanship, taking a stand against the dehumanisation enforced by factory labour. A programme of special events will run at the gallery throughout the exhibition. For full details please see the website at www.wattsgallery.org.uk Art & Action: Making Change in Victorian Britain is at Watts Gallery, from November 17 to March 21, 2021.
Thomas Kennington The Pinch of Poverty, 1891, oil on canvas, 66x58½in (167.5x148.5cm)