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A painting of Lake Lucerne surrounded by mountains. A boat with three people in is visible in the centre of the lake. In the foreground, there is a green hill with another figure visible. The mountains dominate the middle third of the image, surrounding the lake on both sides. Snowy mountains are visible in the distance. A painting of Lake Lucerne surrounded by mountains. A boat with three people in is visible in the centre of the lake. In the foreground, there is a green hill with another figure visible. The mountains dominate the middle third of the image, surrounding the lake on both sides. Snowy mountains are visible in the distance.

James Poole, The Head Of Lake Lucerne, Switzerland © Sheffield Museum

James Poole, The Head Of Lake Lucerne, Switzerland © Sheffield Museum

From Sky to Sea: Artists and Water

Thu 24 November 2022 - Sun 12 March 2023

Millennium Gallery

Water is our most precious resource. It shapes, sustains and impacts on our lives in an infinite number of ways.

 

Sheffield is a city that owes its existence to water.Its rivers and streams provided the power that forged the ‘City of Steel’, but they also wrought devastation through the 1832 Cholera Epidemic and the Great Flood of 1864.

From Sky to Sea brought together painting, photography and works on paper to explore artists’ enduring fascination with water and our relationship to it. The displays took visitors on a journey that follows the water cycle – from the rain and snow atop the highest peaks, along the rivers that flow through our towns, cities and countryside, and finally to the sea.

Co-curated by Paul Swales, the exhibition featured work from historic and contemporary artists, including Linda Benedict-Jones, Paul Cézanne, Walker Evans, Fay Godwin,David Hockney, Eric Ravilious, Simon Starling and JMW Turner.

It was also a chance to see Titian’s striking largescale woodcut The Submersion of Pharaoh’s Army in the Red Sea, 1549. Newly conserved for the exhibition, it went on display in Sheffield for the first time since the 1980s.

The exhibition has now closed

Millennium Gallery

Arundel Gate

Sheffield

S1 2PP

A very bright, sunny painting of boats in a harbor. The colourful houses of the town are shown in the background, while the harbor walls and boats fill the middle and foreground. The brush strokes are visible and add to the rippling effect of the water.

Stanley Royle, Mevagissey, Cornwall © The Estate Of Stanley Royle

Exhibition Highlights

  • An image of an adult submerged facedown in a brightly lit pool, with sunshine bouncing off the ripples. It is a calm image.

    David Hockney, John St. Clair Swimming, April 1972 from Twenty Photographic Pictures by David Hockney, 1976

    © David Hockney. Photo credit: Richard Schmidt

  • A painting of a small yellow and orange boat washed up on the shore, with a grey sea in the background. A standing gridlike fence structure fills the right side of the image.

    Eric Ravilious, Drift Boat, 1941

    © Sheffield Museums

  • A very painterly image of Sheffield. A river dominates the foreground, and the painting depicts Sheffield around it, with smoking chimneys filling the landscape. It's mostly painted in shades of brown and grey.

    Stanhope Forbes, Sheffield - River and Smoking Chimneys, 1915

    © Sheffield Museums

  • A photograph of Derrick Greaves 1953 work Venice In The Rain. It is a mostly grey toned image, with small amounts of sepia tones on the left of the image, like the sun is shining in. It depicts a row of Venetian houses along side the water. It is raining and the water looks choppy.

    Derrick Greaves, Venice in the Rain, 1953

    © the Estate of Derrick Greaves. Courtesy of James Hyman Gallery, London

  • A still image, taken from above, of blocks of ice in the ocean. The water is a vibrant blue and the ice seems to be in the process of breaking up.

    Richard Johnson, Melt 2, 2021

    © the artist

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