exhibition microsite e-learning resources

Intro | Points Of View | North | South | Highlands | Midlands | East | West | Conclusion

The Heart Of England  (The Midlands)

Industrial Heaven and Hell | In Focus: Berndt And Hilla Becher | In Focus: JR Herbert

Joseph Wright of Derby An Iron Forge 1772 View in Tate Collection Oil on canvas, support: 1213 x 1320 mm © Tate 2005 Purchased with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the National Art Collections Fund and the Friends of the Tate Gallery 1992

Industrial Heaven and Hell

In this section heaven and hell are centred on industry. Again, there is no simple way of categorising where they are to be found. In the late eighteenth century at the beginning of the industrial revolution, many artists were optimistic about the improvements brought about by science. So the ironmaster seen in Joseph Wright of Derby's An Iron Forge 1772 seems delighted at the improved standard of living that his family enjoys, thanks to the water powered tilt hammer which shapes the molten metal, thus sparing human exertion. In Wright of Derby's similar painting Iron Forge 1772, belonging to the Hermitage in St Petersburg and on loan to the Picture of Britain exhibition, the scene is set in romantic moonlight and carries a feeling of religious wonderment.

Before Darwin's Origin of Species was published in 1859, science and religious belief were not seen as being in conflict. It was only later on when factories employed large numbers of people working in harsh conditions that attitudes changed towards industry. Religious men like John Ruskin worried that the findings of geology could cast doubt on the Bible story of creation.

Philip James De Loutherbourg Coalbrookdale by Night  1801 Oil on canvas, 680 x 1067 mm © Science Museum, London

In his famous Science Museum painting Coalbrookdale by Night of 1801, P.J. De Loutherbourg presented the iron foundry as a vision of Hell - and he was not alone in thinking of it in this way. The furnace was known as Bedlam, the name given to an infamous hospital, to which patients suffering from mental illness were consigned, and where they were left to live out their lives in miserable conditions. By painting the sky illuminated by bright red and yellow flames De Loutherbourg has conditioned our response to the industrial site at Coalbrookdale.

In Focus:

• Berndt And Hilla Becher
• JR Herbert