Sargent to Freud

This exhibition of over 50 paintings by such luminaries of British Modernism as Lucian Freud, Ivon Hitchens, Wyndham Lewis, Paul Nash, Stephen Lowry, Ben Nicholson, John Piper, John Singer Sargent, Walter Sickert, Stanley Spencer, Graham Sutherland and Christopher Wood, as well as early drawings by Barbara Hepworth, Augustus John, and Henry Moore, has been selected from the permanent collection of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery by Ian Lumsden, the gallery's Director. Lord Beaverbrook, who originated the collection, preferred figuration to abstraction, and acquired still lifes, landscapes, portraits, nudes, religious paintings and genre scenes from these artists, often quite early in their careers, as they were striving towards the goals of abstraction, expressionism or surrealism, and thus, provides us with a fascinating look at the roots of British Modernism.