Private & Public: Finding the Modern British Garden

This colourful exhibition at the Garden Museum celebrates the abundance of British artists working in the interwar years whose art was inspired by public and private gardens.

The exhibition brings together intimate depictions of private gardens, greenhouses, and favoured specimens by artists including Charles Mahoney, Evelyn Dunbar, Eric Ravilious and Ithell Colquhoun.

The fashion for painting secret courtyards, unexpected green spaces and sprawling, public gardens features too. Particularly prominent is an interest in capturing the modern experience of the outdoors with subjects from fireworks and fairgrounds to picnics and parties capturing this new kind of 'parklife' that defined the era.

The exhibition also explores the flowering of artists and artist communities such as the Great Bardfield group that frequented grand houses and innovative gardens like Garsington and Sissinghurst during the interwar period.