Victorian Dreamers

This small but almost perfectly formed exhibition draws on the Atkinson's own stock of beautifully restored Victorian art.  Mostly 'escapist' in an age of social anxiety, it  looks at the themes of travel,  storytelling, the antique past and nature to show a Victorian love for an idealised past that probably never existed. 

Ceramic  figurines, familiar from  antique shops and stately homes and the paintings of Highland cattle in natural landscapes depict areas of desirable retreat for the wealthy, then as now.

Working people are depicted as respectful , contentedly labouring in picturesque rural landscapes or praying in simple domestic interiors: comforting images in  an increasingly mechanised age. 

My favourite piece is this Wedgewood depiction of a classical scene by Camillo Pacetti, first made in Rome in 1790 : after the fall of Troy, Priam appeals to Achilles for  the return of  his son Hector's Body .

Victorian artists were restricted to  classical or biblical themes in their depiction of nude figures,  as in Ernest Normand's striking 1986 portrait of Pygmalion and Galatea at the moment when the statue comes to life and  John Collier's 1892  painting of a snake-entwined Lilith  as she plots to depose her rival, Eve,  in the Garden of Eden.

If the gilt frames and chocolate-box images have an air of unreality,  they had a lasting effect on  the national sensibility. Present-day politicians who retreat to  country mansions  after advocating hard work and thrift to  the working population,  our daily dose of The Archers on BBC radio and the justifying  of social inequality are all  part of the Victorian legacy,  as this exhibition reminds us.