North to South will present selected paintings from Towner Art Gallery's permanent Collection alongside highlights from the Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museum Collection.
Bringing paintings from one of the most northerly galleries in Scotland to Towner, on the most southerly edge of the UK, this collection display will provide an insightful overview of these two significant collections.
Although Aberdeen Art Gallery is currently closed to the public until winter 2017 for large-scale refurbishment and building work, it has still been able to lend a large number of their key paintings to Towner for this collaborative exhibition.
North to South will include works by artists such as George Clausen, Henry La Thangue, Paul Nash, Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden, Duncan Grant, Christopher Wood, and Edward Wadsworth, whose work also features in Towner’s permanent collection.
The exhibition is also providing an opportunity to bring a number of important artists, including Charles Conder, Joan Eardley and Alexander Nasmyth, to Towner for the first time. A number of these artists, while Scottish by birth or living in Scotland, had a connection to or painted the South Coast.
Like Towner, Aberdeen Art Gallery has a long and interesting history, including the creation of its collection and build of a gallery ‘for the benefit of citizens’ – like the original Towner, which opened in 1923 as an ‘art gallery for the people’.
Over the span of five rooms, the display will tell the stories of these two significant collections, starting from the start of the 19th century through to contemporary times, with the Ravilious Room devoted to loans of his work from Aberdeen, shown here for the first time.