Abstract, Issue 32

Earth Matters | Inverleith House Gallery, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 20 March to 1 November

A new exhibition at Inverleith House Gallery in Edinburgh will celebrate the tercentenary of the birth of the Edinburgh-born geologist, writer and farmer, James Hutton (1726-1797). Often described as the ‘father of modern geology’, Hutton is known for his ground-breaking theories into the earth’s creation and his exploration of rock formation.

Inspired by Hutton and subsequent trailblazers who have helped challenge and change our understanding of soil, Earth Matters will explore his important writings and ideas. Included will be the rarely exhibited ‘Lost Drawings’ by his contemporary, the artist and writer John Clerk of Eldin alongside art, craft and design from the 18th century to the present-day.  We are delighted that curator Susanna Beaumont has selected two Barns-Graham works to be part of the exhibition, including this rarely shown Mushroom Series No.6 from 1991.

Making Her Mark: A Celebration of Women in Art | Penlee House Gallery & Museum, 20 April to 27 September

Making Her Mark is a new touring exhibition exploring the role, impact and legacy of women in art, highlighting how women have made huge impacts on the development of British art, while having often been underrepresented, overlooked and undervalued in their fields.

Making Her Mark celebrates notable female artists from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, with works by Tracey Emin, Elizabeth Forbes, Laura Knight, Dod Procter and Caroline Walker amongst many others. Barns-Graham will be represented by two pieces, including Gurnard’s Head No.2  1947, recently acquired for the Penlee House permanent collection.

The exhibition is a unique collaboration between Penlee House Gallery & Museum, Worcester City Art Gallery & Museum and Kirkcaldy Galleries (OnFife), which brings together over 50 works by women artists from their respective collections supported by Going Places, an Art Fund programme made possible with major support from The National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Julia Rausing Trust. Following its showing at Penlee House, the exhibition will tour to Worcester and Kirkcaldy.

Looking Forward | Pallant House Gallery presents | British Landscapes: A Sense of Place and Haroun Hayward: Path through Trees

Later in the year (from 30 May) Pallant House Gallery in Chichester will host two exhibitions, both with Barns-Graham connections. British Landscapes: A Sense of Place will  explore how artists from the 18th to the 20th century have responded to the landscapes of the British Isles. Bringing together works by more than 60 artists, the exhibition reveals landscape not simply as scenery, but as a powerful expression of memory, identity and emotion. Tracing a rich lineage from Thomas Gainsborough and the golden age of British watercolour to the postwar works of Barbara Hepworth, Paul Nash, and Eric Ravilious, also included in the exhibition will be Barns-Graham’s 1957 oil painting Snow at Wharfedale II 1957, which was presented to Pallant House by the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust through the Art Fund in 2015.

Alongside the Landscape exhibition will be Haroun Hayward’s (b.1983) first solo institutional show, Path through Trees. Rooted in his experience studying the Sussex landscape, Hayward combines ideas from abstract expressionism, 90s dance music, rave culture, graffiti, and his mother’s South Asian and West African textiles. This series of new works was particularly inspired by post-war British artists such as Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Edward Burra, Ceri Richards, Paul Nash and Graham Sutherland in the Pallant House collection. Developed following a joint residency with the Gallery and West Dean College, this show will offer a bold, contemporary response to British landscape painting.

Collection in Motion

There will be some fantastic opportunties to see Barns-Graham’s work this year with two major exhibitions coming in summer and autumn. Opening in June, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: Nature in Motion at Museum Belvédère, Heerenveen, will be the first solo presentation of Barns-Graham’s paintings and drawings outside the UK. Closely following this in October, Tate St Ives will present the first career-wide retrospective of her work.

The Trust will be lending 69 artworks to Museum Belvédère and a similar amount to Tate St Ives, plus photographs, documents and studio materials from our archive. As might be expected, this means a lot of work for us behind the scenes to prepare artwork to be displayed. While a small number of works have required conservation to ensure they look at their best for the exhibitions, we have mainly been focussing on improving the framing, revonating or creating new bespoke frames to complement the works they enclose. For [View of St Ives], 1940, shown above, we have added a wider, more substantial frame in a buttery-cream to highlight the soft tones of the harbour and its surrounding buildings. The inner frame has been cleverly constructed to include a protective barrier of anti-reflective glazing.

Coming Soon

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: Nature in Motion
Museum Belvédère, Heerenveen, The Netherlands
20 June to 20 September 2026

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham
Tate St Ives
24 October 2026 to 11 April 2027

New Long Loan to Falmouth Art Gallery

For several years, the Trust has provided a group of Barns-Graham’s works on loan to Falmouth Art Gallery to support their exhibition and education programme. We are delighted to continue this partnership with a new loan of 6 works, which will be shown on a rolling basis in their displays over the next couple of years. The first work from the selection, Hailstorm 2, 1977, is now on display until July.

One of the works selected by Falmouth Art Gallery included Three Stones No.3, 1988, and we were excited to find the three stones depicted in the painting in the Trust’s collection. Barns-Graham kept a collection of interesting stones, presumably gathered from nearby beaches (some paintings from the same period are called “Stones from Gwithian”), in her St Ives studio. These three stones are also now on loan to the Gallery.

Introducing Mattea Gernentz | a SGSAH-supported Research Intern

The Trust recently welcome Mattea Gernentz to the team for a Research Internship orgnanised through the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities (SGSAH). She will be researching Barns-Graham’s exhibiting history in Trust’s and other related archives. She says:

I am delighted to be interning at the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust this year, supported by SGSAH. My project involves investigating current gaps in the Trust’s records of Willie’s exhibition history to enhance the overall understanding of her artistic legacy. In doing so, the endeavour will increase the accessibility of archival information. Necessitating a mixture of deduction from existing materials and imaginative exploration, the project also entails communication with other galleries and archives. I have found this placement so far to be a practical counterbalance to my PhD thesis and an invaluable opportunity to gain hands-on heritage experience amid a dedicated team. Willie’s art and proximity to nature have inspired me personally, and this role feels like a tangible way of affirming her meaningful presence, in the past and today.

Mattea Gernentz is a curator and writer completing a PhD in History of Art at the University of Glasgow. Her research examines the unique connection between women Impressionists and French parks and gardens. Mattea has been selected as a Clydebuilt 16 Poet, Next Generation Young Makar, and Writer-in-Residence at Château de Sacy, Casa Regis, and Château de la Haute Borde. She has also been featured in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Dandelion Festival, and StAnza Festival. Mattea’s writing can be found in Gutter Magazine, Interpret, Gilded Dirt, Ekstasis Magazine, and beyond.

From the Archive | Snapshots of USA

Recent work with the photograph collection in the archive has uncovered a group of slides collected by Barns-Graham, documenting a trip she took to the USA in 1965 with the Contemporary Art Society. While she bought many slides showing the heritage and architecture of San Francisco, Chicago, Washington DC, and New York, she also took her own photos of more touristy spots. The trip was eye opening for Barns-Graham; at fifty-three years old, this was the furthest she had ever travelled. She visited vast public and private art collections, and shared her experiences in an illustrated talk she gave in St Ives on her return. Look closely, and you might be able to pick her out in two of the slides!

Recent Post from our Blog

Stories from the Archive

Student Lív Brownlie traces art movements and aethestics of 20th century British art in our substantial exhibition archive. Lív has recently been on a placement at the Trust continuing to catalogue our exhibition ephemera as part of her undergraduate course at the University of Glasgow.

Where to see Willie

Through loans, gifts and permanent collections at partner museums, there are lots of opportunities to see Barns-Graham works across the country this autumn. Most of the new and upcoming displays of her work have already been highlighted in the newsletter, but there are also lots of museums and galleries that regularly Barns-Graham paintings.

An exhibition highlighting ten pioneers of modern Scottish art continues at The McManus in Dundee includes their Orange, Black and Lilac Squares on Vermilion, 1968. Border Crossings: Ten Scottish Masters of Modern Art is on until 14 Jun 2026.

Works can usually be found on display in galleries such as City Art Centre, Edinburgh, Leeds Art Gallery, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, The Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, Tate St Ives, Penwith Gallery, St Ives and Pier Arts Centre, Stromness.

Picture of the Month

For this newsletter, Mattea Gernentz, who is on a SGSAH supported placement with the Trust has selected Red Table, 1952, as Picture of the Month. She says:

Willie is the most versatile artist I have had the opportunity to research, and sometimes her interiors can be overlooked because of the dazzling nature of her geometric forms and dynamism of her glacial depictions. Red Table (1952) is a deeply compelling piece, although at first it appears to be composed of only simple elements. Willie uses the table as a canvas within the canvas; it becomes an alternate space for creation. Its two objects–a bowl to receive and a jug to give–seem to symbolise the vocation of the artist, and the empty chair waits as if anticipating Willie’s arrival. The work’s composition hearkens to the French tradition and reminds me of Matisse’s revolutionary L’Atelier rouge (1911). The year before Barns-Graham created this piece, she spent time working in Paris and was featured in the Biennale de Peinture de France. In this image, Willie once again reconciles seemingly paradoxical elements: tranquil balance and passion.