EQUALITY is front and centre of an art exhibition at Worcester City Art Gallery and Museum celebrating the power couple of British impressionism.
Elizabeth and Stanhope Forbes: A Marriage of Art runs until June 29 and includes intricate portraits and landscapes, many on loan from Penlee House Gallery and Museum and visiting Worcester for the first time.
Also featured is the local favourite by Stanhope Forbes from Worcester’s own collection – Chadding on Mounts Bay.
Elizabeth Forbes achieved international recognition for her idyllic landscape paintings and played a crucial role within the development of British Impressionism.
However, conventional understandings of women artists during this period meant Elizabeth became overshadowed by her male contemporaries – a prejudice that, over time, has obscured her influence within this important history.
The couple are perhaps most famous for their formation of the ‘Newlyn School’ of painting, which brought together like-minded artists and eager students keen to paint en plein air (in the open air) and played a pivotal role in the development of British Impressionism.
This exhibition illustrates Elizabeth’s place within the vanguard of British Impressionism, her relationship of equal partnership with Stanhope Forbes, and her interest as an artist in her own right who drew much praise at a time when it was often the fate of women artists to be remembered as largely an appendage of their more famous husband.
