All sorts of art at Compton Verney

GAINSBOROUGH, Impressionism, tapestry and flight and are the focus of exhibitions at Compton Verney Art Gallery this year.

Into the light: French and British painting from Impressionism to the early 1920s runs from March 31 to June 10.

The era marks a decisive period in the history of European art. This exhibition surveys the production of paintings on both sides of the Channel from the 1870s to the early 1920s, revealing connections, allowing a comparison of the artist’s work and seeing how their more spontaneous approach to painting produced stunning depictions of the shifting of light over the landscape.

The exhibition features 54 paintings and drawings by artists including Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Walter Sickert, Alfred Sisley, and Vanessa Bell.

Gainsborough’s landscapes: Themes and variations runs from March 31 to June 10.

This exhibition is the first exhibition solely devoted to the landscapes of Thomas Gainsborough. It brings together paintings and drawings from public and private collections spanning his whole career.

If painting portraits was Gainsborough’s business then painting landscapes was his pleasure. These works reveal, the mind of the great artist at work and play.

Flight and the artistic imagination runs from June 29 to September 30.

The exhibition explores the instinctive human desire to fly from Icarus centuries before the modern era, when man could only imagine defying the limitations of gravity, to The Wright Brothers and Yuri Gagarin, when powered flight is an everyday occurrence.

Through a combination of paintings, sculpture, photographs, drawings, prints and video, including work by Leonardo de Vinci, Francisco Goya , Paul Nash, Peter Lanyon and Hiraki Sawa, the exhibition will provide a unique overview of artists’ creative responses to flight, from the earliest imaginings to an era in which space travel has allowed us to glimpse other worlds.

Tapestry: Weaving the Century at Dovecot Studios 1912 - 2012 runs from October 20 to December 16.

This exhibition brings together world-class textiles of the 20th and early 21st centuries which are the result of a special working relationship with the weavers of Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh, who collaborated with well-known artists to create hand woven tapestries and rugs.

The exhibition features original works and designs by artists David Hockney, Graham Sutherland, and Sir Eduardo Paolozzi among others, on loan from major museums and private collections in America and Britain.

They chart the fascinating story of how Dovecot Studios evolved over a century from 1912 to the present day as an active tapestry studio.

Visit www.comptonverney.org.uk for full details.

Buy photos» Gainsborough’s landscapes: Themes and variations runs from March 31 to June 10. (s) Buy photos» Into the light: French and British painting from Impressionism to the early 1920s runs from March 31 to June 10. (s) Buy photos» Flight and the artistic imagination runs from June 29 to September 30. (s)