drawing
- Museum number
- 1924,0209.10
- Description
-
Slag heaps at Leeds Steel Works; with glimpse of chimneys at top l. 1920
Pen and black ink and watercolour
- Production date
- 1920
- Dimensions
-
Height: 355 millimetres
-
Width: 505 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- The following label was written by Kim Sloan for Places of the Mind, 2017:
On his way by train to Liverpool in 1918 to work on the dazzle camouflaging of ships, Wadsworth passed the waste material, slag from the furnaces and smoking chimneys of the ‘Black Country’. He was struck by its potential to represent a new aesthetic that was appropriate to the authentic landscape of modern England. When a group of these works were exhibited in London in 1924 their ‘central visualizing emotion’ was acclaimed as a ‘convincing and satisfactory phenomenon.’ But the steel works were already becoming a symbol of the past, and they closed in 1928.
See also F. Carey, 'Some Versions of Pastoral', in K. Sloan (ed.), Places of the Mind: British watercolour landsapes 1850-1950, (London, 2017), pp.140-171.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1920/1 Dec-Jan, London, New English Art Club, 63rd Exhibition, no. 51 'Slagheap, Leeds Steel Works' (?)
1989/90 Oct-Jan, Bradford, Cartwright Hall, 'Edward Wadsworth', no. 54
1990 March-April, London, Camden Arts Centre, Edward Wadsworth, no.54
2017 23 Feb-27 Aug, London, BM, G90, Places of the Mind: British Landscape watercolours 1850-1950
- Acquisition date
- 1924
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1924,0209.10
