Weighing Down the Landscape: The Quarry as a Site of Rural Modernity

Abstract

This chapter argues that late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century artists seem to have been especially attracted by quarries, treating them as a means of exploring modernity through the lens of rural romanticism. Quarries regularly appear in paintings in many of the artists associated with rural modernity: William Rothenstein, Edward Wadsworth, Walter Bell, Roger Fry, and J. D. Fergusson, among them. Appreciating that there is no single way of categorising and representing quarries, this chapter (the first ever study of this important subject) explores many of the common themes to be found in paintings of quarries in the first half of the twentieth century. It considers a wide range of artists and art-works — the majority of which are owned by rural art galleries — in close relation to the history of rural industries in such regions as Cornwall, West Yorkshire, and Edinburgh.