Persuasion and Jane Austen’s love of the sea at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery
A new exhibition in Dorchester celebrates the coastal landscapes in Jane Austen’s final novel...
By
Adam Wells
June 17, 2025
“All must linger and gaze on a first return to the sea, who ever deserve to look on it at all”, writes Jane Austen in her final novel, Persuasion. The coast - more specifically, the South-West coast of England - serves as the site of the story’s key moments, from Louisa’s famous, near-fatal fall from a sea wall to the dashing Captain Wentworth’s lovesick appreciation of heroine Anne Elliot as the pair walk along the seafront. The importance of this setting to Jane Austen’s work informs Down to the Sea, the newly opened exhibition at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery in Dorchester, one of many nationwide celebrations of the author to mark the 250th anniversary of her birth.
Curated in collaboration with students from Arts University Bournemouth, the exhibition delves primarily into the author's biographical details and socio-historical contexts. While an exhibition structured in such a manner runs the risk of tipping over into hagiography, Down to the Sea focuses on how these facets of Austen’s life and surroundings informed the themes - and our understanding - of her writing. While depicting the naval careers of her brothers Charles and Frank, for instance, visitors are invited to consider how this knowledge may have contributed to her depiction of military seafarers, offering a sense of verisimilitude that informed her lightly satirical approach.
Utilising loans from the Bodleian, the Fashion Museum in Bath and the Jane Austen House itself, the exhibition offers a focused snapshot of a specific moment in British social history; in particular, Robert Pollard’s 1801 etching A North West View of the Jetty at Yarmouth practically demands visitors to stop to admire its detail, from the aristocrats walking in the foreground to the bustling pier of holidaymakers behind them. The exhibition also showcases some of Austen’s more complex feelings surrounding the sea towards the end of her life. In her - ultimately unfinished - novel Sanditon, Austen offers a harsh critique of the ‘new’ seaside towns that had begun to spring up, particularly targeting the hypochondriacs who visited them for their supposed restorative properties.
However, the exhibition arguably comes into its own when contextualised by the surrounding permanent collection of Dorset Museum & Art Gallery. On the upper floor, a triptych of oil sketches by Elizabeth Muntz - Landscape, Children by the Shore, and Figure on a Beach - prioritise form and movement over detail, depicting the coastal landscape as the rough, untamed edge of the world it would have served as in Austen’s lifetime. Elsewhere, the hyper-detailed etching of Pollard is counterbalanced by the evocatively naïve coastal paintings of Alfred Wallis, in which colossal ships are hastily daubed onto found materials such as cardboard boxes.
Elsewhere, other literary figures give context to Austen’s work; a series of rooms are dedicated to Dorchester’s most famous figure, Thomas Hardy, a writer of the generation after Austen whose works similarly critiqued contemporary English society, albeit from the differing perspective of social realism. Meanwhile, the floor above gives focus to literary couple Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland, whose 1934 joint poetry collection, Whether a Dove or a Seagull, was groundbreaking for its depiction of lesbian love, and could represent an evolution of the female-centred romance stories found throughout Jane Austen’s work.
Ultimately, however, Down to the Sea is enhanced most by its proximity to the locations found in Persuasion, the novel which serves as the key focus of the exhibition. An unknown artist's landscape of the Lyme Regis coast is accompanied by a quote from the novel, that “a very strange stranger it must be, who does not see charms in the immediate environs of Lyme”. While arguably a little twee (the constant overfamiliar references to ‘Jane’ throughout can be a little cloying), the exhibition exists in symbiosis with the surrounding area, encouraging exploration outside the museum's walls and an appreciation of the surrounding coastal landscape.
Jane Austen: Down to the Sea is showing at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery until 14 September.
“All must linger and gaze on a first return to the sea, who ever deserve to look on it at all”, writes Jane Austen in her final novel, Persuasion. The coast - more specifically, the South-West coast of England - serves as the site of the story’s key moments, from Louisa’s famous, near-fatal fall from a sea wall to the dashing Captain Wentworth’s lovesick appreciation of heroine Anne Elliot as the pair walk along the seafront. The importance of this setting to Jane Austen’s work informs Down to the Sea, the newly opened exhibition at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery in Dorchester, one of many nationwide celebrations of the author to mark the 250th anniversary of her birth.
Curated in collaboration with students from Arts University Bournemouth, the exhibition delves primarily into the author's biographical details and socio-historical contexts. While an exhibition structured in such a manner runs the risk of tipping over into hagiography, Down to the Sea focuses on how these facets of Austen’s life and surroundings informed the themes - and our understanding - of her writing. While depicting the naval careers of her brothers Charles and Frank, for instance, visitors are invited to consider how this knowledge may have contributed to her depiction of military seafarers, offering a sense of verisimilitude that informed her lightly satirical approach.
Utilising loans from the Bodleian, the Fashion Museum in Bath and the Jane Austen House itself, the exhibition offers a focused snapshot of a specific moment in British social history; in particular, Robert Pollard’s 1801 etching A North West View of the Jetty at Yarmouth practically demands visitors to stop to admire its detail, from the aristocrats walking in the foreground to the bustling pier of holidaymakers behind them. The exhibition also showcases some of Austen’s more complex feelings surrounding the sea towards the end of her life. In her - ultimately unfinished - novel Sanditon, Austen offers a harsh critique of the ‘new’ seaside towns that had begun to spring up, particularly targeting the hypochondriacs who visited them for their supposed restorative properties.
However, the exhibition arguably comes into its own when contextualised by the surrounding permanent collection of Dorset Museum & Art Gallery. On the upper floor, a triptych of oil sketches by Elizabeth Muntz - Landscape, Children by the Shore, and Figure on a Beach - prioritise form and movement over detail, depicting the coastal landscape as the rough, untamed edge of the world it would have served as in Austen’s lifetime. Elsewhere, the hyper-detailed etching of Pollard is counterbalanced by the evocatively naïve coastal paintings of Alfred Wallis, in which colossal ships are hastily daubed onto found materials such as cardboard boxes.
Elsewhere, other literary figures give context to Austen’s work; a series of rooms are dedicated to Dorchester’s most famous figure, Thomas Hardy, a writer of the generation after Austen whose works similarly critiqued contemporary English society, albeit from the differing perspective of social realism. Meanwhile, the floor above gives focus to literary couple Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland, whose 1934 joint poetry collection, Whether a Dove or a Seagull, was groundbreaking for its depiction of lesbian love, and could represent an evolution of the female-centred romance stories found throughout Jane Austen’s work.
Ultimately, however, Down to the Sea is enhanced most by its proximity to the locations found in Persuasion, the novel which serves as the key focus of the exhibition. An unknown artist's landscape of the Lyme Regis coast is accompanied by a quote from the novel, that “a very strange stranger it must be, who does not see charms in the immediate environs of Lyme”. While arguably a little twee (the constant overfamiliar references to ‘Jane’ throughout can be a little cloying), the exhibition exists in symbiosis with the surrounding area, encouraging exploration outside the museum's walls and an appreciation of the surrounding coastal landscape.
Jane Austen: Down to the Sea is showing at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery until 14 September.
“All must linger and gaze on a first return to the sea, who ever deserve to look on it at all”, writes Jane Austen in her final novel, Persuasion. The coast - more specifically, the South-West coast of England - serves as the site of the story’s key moments, from Louisa’s famous, near-fatal fall from a sea wall to the dashing Captain Wentworth’s lovesick appreciation of heroine Anne Elliot as the pair walk along the seafront. The importance of this setting to Jane Austen’s work informs Down to the Sea, the newly opened exhibition at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery in Dorchester, one of many nationwide celebrations of the author to mark the 250th anniversary of her birth.
Curated in collaboration with students from Arts University Bournemouth, the exhibition delves primarily into the author's biographical details and socio-historical contexts. While an exhibition structured in such a manner runs the risk of tipping over into hagiography, Down to the Sea focuses on how these facets of Austen’s life and surroundings informed the themes - and our understanding - of her writing. While depicting the naval careers of her brothers Charles and Frank, for instance, visitors are invited to consider how this knowledge may have contributed to her depiction of military seafarers, offering a sense of verisimilitude that informed her lightly satirical approach.
Utilising loans from the Bodleian, the Fashion Museum in Bath and the Jane Austen House itself, the exhibition offers a focused snapshot of a specific moment in British social history; in particular, Robert Pollard’s 1801 etching A North West View of the Jetty at Yarmouth practically demands visitors to stop to admire its detail, from the aristocrats walking in the foreground to the bustling pier of holidaymakers behind them. The exhibition also showcases some of Austen’s more complex feelings surrounding the sea towards the end of her life. In her - ultimately unfinished - novel Sanditon, Austen offers a harsh critique of the ‘new’ seaside towns that had begun to spring up, particularly targeting the hypochondriacs who visited them for their supposed restorative properties.
However, the exhibition arguably comes into its own when contextualised by the surrounding permanent collection of Dorset Museum & Art Gallery. On the upper floor, a triptych of oil sketches by Elizabeth Muntz - Landscape, Children by the Shore, and Figure on a Beach - prioritise form and movement over detail, depicting the coastal landscape as the rough, untamed edge of the world it would have served as in Austen’s lifetime. Elsewhere, the hyper-detailed etching of Pollard is counterbalanced by the evocatively naïve coastal paintings of Alfred Wallis, in which colossal ships are hastily daubed onto found materials such as cardboard boxes.
Elsewhere, other literary figures give context to Austen’s work; a series of rooms are dedicated to Dorchester’s most famous figure, Thomas Hardy, a writer of the generation after Austen whose works similarly critiqued contemporary English society, albeit from the differing perspective of social realism. Meanwhile, the floor above gives focus to literary couple Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland, whose 1934 joint poetry collection, Whether a Dove or a Seagull, was groundbreaking for its depiction of lesbian love, and could represent an evolution of the female-centred romance stories found throughout Jane Austen’s work.
Ultimately, however, Down to the Sea is enhanced most by its proximity to the locations found in Persuasion, the novel which serves as the key focus of the exhibition. An unknown artist's landscape of the Lyme Regis coast is accompanied by a quote from the novel, that “a very strange stranger it must be, who does not see charms in the immediate environs of Lyme”. While arguably a little twee (the constant overfamiliar references to ‘Jane’ throughout can be a little cloying), the exhibition exists in symbiosis with the surrounding area, encouraging exploration outside the museum's walls and an appreciation of the surrounding coastal landscape.
Jane Austen: Down to the Sea is showing at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery until 14 September.
“All must linger and gaze on a first return to the sea, who ever deserve to look on it at all”, writes Jane Austen in her final novel, Persuasion. The coast - more specifically, the South-West coast of England - serves as the site of the story’s key moments, from Louisa’s famous, near-fatal fall from a sea wall to the dashing Captain Wentworth’s lovesick appreciation of heroine Anne Elliot as the pair walk along the seafront. The importance of this setting to Jane Austen’s work informs Down to the Sea, the newly opened exhibition at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery in Dorchester, one of many nationwide celebrations of the author to mark the 250th anniversary of her birth.
Curated in collaboration with students from Arts University Bournemouth, the exhibition delves primarily into the author's biographical details and socio-historical contexts. While an exhibition structured in such a manner runs the risk of tipping over into hagiography, Down to the Sea focuses on how these facets of Austen’s life and surroundings informed the themes - and our understanding - of her writing. While depicting the naval careers of her brothers Charles and Frank, for instance, visitors are invited to consider how this knowledge may have contributed to her depiction of military seafarers, offering a sense of verisimilitude that informed her lightly satirical approach.
Utilising loans from the Bodleian, the Fashion Museum in Bath and the Jane Austen House itself, the exhibition offers a focused snapshot of a specific moment in British social history; in particular, Robert Pollard’s 1801 etching A North West View of the Jetty at Yarmouth practically demands visitors to stop to admire its detail, from the aristocrats walking in the foreground to the bustling pier of holidaymakers behind them. The exhibition also showcases some of Austen’s more complex feelings surrounding the sea towards the end of her life. In her - ultimately unfinished - novel Sanditon, Austen offers a harsh critique of the ‘new’ seaside towns that had begun to spring up, particularly targeting the hypochondriacs who visited them for their supposed restorative properties.
However, the exhibition arguably comes into its own when contextualised by the surrounding permanent collection of Dorset Museum & Art Gallery. On the upper floor, a triptych of oil sketches by Elizabeth Muntz - Landscape, Children by the Shore, and Figure on a Beach - prioritise form and movement over detail, depicting the coastal landscape as the rough, untamed edge of the world it would have served as in Austen’s lifetime. Elsewhere, the hyper-detailed etching of Pollard is counterbalanced by the evocatively naïve coastal paintings of Alfred Wallis, in which colossal ships are hastily daubed onto found materials such as cardboard boxes.
Elsewhere, other literary figures give context to Austen’s work; a series of rooms are dedicated to Dorchester’s most famous figure, Thomas Hardy, a writer of the generation after Austen whose works similarly critiqued contemporary English society, albeit from the differing perspective of social realism. Meanwhile, the floor above gives focus to literary couple Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland, whose 1934 joint poetry collection, Whether a Dove or a Seagull, was groundbreaking for its depiction of lesbian love, and could represent an evolution of the female-centred romance stories found throughout Jane Austen’s work.
Ultimately, however, Down to the Sea is enhanced most by its proximity to the locations found in Persuasion, the novel which serves as the key focus of the exhibition. An unknown artist's landscape of the Lyme Regis coast is accompanied by a quote from the novel, that “a very strange stranger it must be, who does not see charms in the immediate environs of Lyme”. While arguably a little twee (the constant overfamiliar references to ‘Jane’ throughout can be a little cloying), the exhibition exists in symbiosis with the surrounding area, encouraging exploration outside the museum's walls and an appreciation of the surrounding coastal landscape.
Jane Austen: Down to the Sea is showing at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery until 14 September.
“All must linger and gaze on a first return to the sea, who ever deserve to look on it at all”, writes Jane Austen in her final novel, Persuasion. The coast - more specifically, the South-West coast of England - serves as the site of the story’s key moments, from Louisa’s famous, near-fatal fall from a sea wall to the dashing Captain Wentworth’s lovesick appreciation of heroine Anne Elliot as the pair walk along the seafront. The importance of this setting to Jane Austen’s work informs Down to the Sea, the newly opened exhibition at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery in Dorchester, one of many nationwide celebrations of the author to mark the 250th anniversary of her birth.
Curated in collaboration with students from Arts University Bournemouth, the exhibition delves primarily into the author's biographical details and socio-historical contexts. While an exhibition structured in such a manner runs the risk of tipping over into hagiography, Down to the Sea focuses on how these facets of Austen’s life and surroundings informed the themes - and our understanding - of her writing. While depicting the naval careers of her brothers Charles and Frank, for instance, visitors are invited to consider how this knowledge may have contributed to her depiction of military seafarers, offering a sense of verisimilitude that informed her lightly satirical approach.
Utilising loans from the Bodleian, the Fashion Museum in Bath and the Jane Austen House itself, the exhibition offers a focused snapshot of a specific moment in British social history; in particular, Robert Pollard’s 1801 etching A North West View of the Jetty at Yarmouth practically demands visitors to stop to admire its detail, from the aristocrats walking in the foreground to the bustling pier of holidaymakers behind them. The exhibition also showcases some of Austen’s more complex feelings surrounding the sea towards the end of her life. In her - ultimately unfinished - novel Sanditon, Austen offers a harsh critique of the ‘new’ seaside towns that had begun to spring up, particularly targeting the hypochondriacs who visited them for their supposed restorative properties.
However, the exhibition arguably comes into its own when contextualised by the surrounding permanent collection of Dorset Museum & Art Gallery. On the upper floor, a triptych of oil sketches by Elizabeth Muntz - Landscape, Children by the Shore, and Figure on a Beach - prioritise form and movement over detail, depicting the coastal landscape as the rough, untamed edge of the world it would have served as in Austen’s lifetime. Elsewhere, the hyper-detailed etching of Pollard is counterbalanced by the evocatively naïve coastal paintings of Alfred Wallis, in which colossal ships are hastily daubed onto found materials such as cardboard boxes.
Elsewhere, other literary figures give context to Austen’s work; a series of rooms are dedicated to Dorchester’s most famous figure, Thomas Hardy, a writer of the generation after Austen whose works similarly critiqued contemporary English society, albeit from the differing perspective of social realism. Meanwhile, the floor above gives focus to literary couple Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland, whose 1934 joint poetry collection, Whether a Dove or a Seagull, was groundbreaking for its depiction of lesbian love, and could represent an evolution of the female-centred romance stories found throughout Jane Austen’s work.
Ultimately, however, Down to the Sea is enhanced most by its proximity to the locations found in Persuasion, the novel which serves as the key focus of the exhibition. An unknown artist's landscape of the Lyme Regis coast is accompanied by a quote from the novel, that “a very strange stranger it must be, who does not see charms in the immediate environs of Lyme”. While arguably a little twee (the constant overfamiliar references to ‘Jane’ throughout can be a little cloying), the exhibition exists in symbiosis with the surrounding area, encouraging exploration outside the museum's walls and an appreciation of the surrounding coastal landscape.
Jane Austen: Down to the Sea is showing at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery until 14 September.
“All must linger and gaze on a first return to the sea, who ever deserve to look on it at all”, writes Jane Austen in her final novel, Persuasion. The coast - more specifically, the South-West coast of England - serves as the site of the story’s key moments, from Louisa’s famous, near-fatal fall from a sea wall to the dashing Captain Wentworth’s lovesick appreciation of heroine Anne Elliot as the pair walk along the seafront. The importance of this setting to Jane Austen’s work informs Down to the Sea, the newly opened exhibition at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery in Dorchester, one of many nationwide celebrations of the author to mark the 250th anniversary of her birth.
Curated in collaboration with students from Arts University Bournemouth, the exhibition delves primarily into the author's biographical details and socio-historical contexts. While an exhibition structured in such a manner runs the risk of tipping over into hagiography, Down to the Sea focuses on how these facets of Austen’s life and surroundings informed the themes - and our understanding - of her writing. While depicting the naval careers of her brothers Charles and Frank, for instance, visitors are invited to consider how this knowledge may have contributed to her depiction of military seafarers, offering a sense of verisimilitude that informed her lightly satirical approach.
Utilising loans from the Bodleian, the Fashion Museum in Bath and the Jane Austen House itself, the exhibition offers a focused snapshot of a specific moment in British social history; in particular, Robert Pollard’s 1801 etching A North West View of the Jetty at Yarmouth practically demands visitors to stop to admire its detail, from the aristocrats walking in the foreground to the bustling pier of holidaymakers behind them. The exhibition also showcases some of Austen’s more complex feelings surrounding the sea towards the end of her life. In her - ultimately unfinished - novel Sanditon, Austen offers a harsh critique of the ‘new’ seaside towns that had begun to spring up, particularly targeting the hypochondriacs who visited them for their supposed restorative properties.
However, the exhibition arguably comes into its own when contextualised by the surrounding permanent collection of Dorset Museum & Art Gallery. On the upper floor, a triptych of oil sketches by Elizabeth Muntz - Landscape, Children by the Shore, and Figure on a Beach - prioritise form and movement over detail, depicting the coastal landscape as the rough, untamed edge of the world it would have served as in Austen’s lifetime. Elsewhere, the hyper-detailed etching of Pollard is counterbalanced by the evocatively naïve coastal paintings of Alfred Wallis, in which colossal ships are hastily daubed onto found materials such as cardboard boxes.
Elsewhere, other literary figures give context to Austen’s work; a series of rooms are dedicated to Dorchester’s most famous figure, Thomas Hardy, a writer of the generation after Austen whose works similarly critiqued contemporary English society, albeit from the differing perspective of social realism. Meanwhile, the floor above gives focus to literary couple Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland, whose 1934 joint poetry collection, Whether a Dove or a Seagull, was groundbreaking for its depiction of lesbian love, and could represent an evolution of the female-centred romance stories found throughout Jane Austen’s work.
Ultimately, however, Down to the Sea is enhanced most by its proximity to the locations found in Persuasion, the novel which serves as the key focus of the exhibition. An unknown artist's landscape of the Lyme Regis coast is accompanied by a quote from the novel, that “a very strange stranger it must be, who does not see charms in the immediate environs of Lyme”. While arguably a little twee (the constant overfamiliar references to ‘Jane’ throughout can be a little cloying), the exhibition exists in symbiosis with the surrounding area, encouraging exploration outside the museum's walls and an appreciation of the surrounding coastal landscape.
Jane Austen: Down to the Sea is showing at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery until 14 September.
“All must linger and gaze on a first return to the sea, who ever deserve to look on it at all”, writes Jane Austen in her final novel, Persuasion. The coast - more specifically, the South-West coast of England - serves as the site of the story’s key moments, from Louisa’s famous, near-fatal fall from a sea wall to the dashing Captain Wentworth’s lovesick appreciation of heroine Anne Elliot as the pair walk along the seafront. The importance of this setting to Jane Austen’s work informs Down to the Sea, the newly opened exhibition at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery in Dorchester, one of many nationwide celebrations of the author to mark the 250th anniversary of her birth.
Curated in collaboration with students from Arts University Bournemouth, the exhibition delves primarily into the author's biographical details and socio-historical contexts. While an exhibition structured in such a manner runs the risk of tipping over into hagiography, Down to the Sea focuses on how these facets of Austen’s life and surroundings informed the themes - and our understanding - of her writing. While depicting the naval careers of her brothers Charles and Frank, for instance, visitors are invited to consider how this knowledge may have contributed to her depiction of military seafarers, offering a sense of verisimilitude that informed her lightly satirical approach.
Utilising loans from the Bodleian, the Fashion Museum in Bath and the Jane Austen House itself, the exhibition offers a focused snapshot of a specific moment in British social history; in particular, Robert Pollard’s 1801 etching A North West View of the Jetty at Yarmouth practically demands visitors to stop to admire its detail, from the aristocrats walking in the foreground to the bustling pier of holidaymakers behind them. The exhibition also showcases some of Austen’s more complex feelings surrounding the sea towards the end of her life. In her - ultimately unfinished - novel Sanditon, Austen offers a harsh critique of the ‘new’ seaside towns that had begun to spring up, particularly targeting the hypochondriacs who visited them for their supposed restorative properties.
However, the exhibition arguably comes into its own when contextualised by the surrounding permanent collection of Dorset Museum & Art Gallery. On the upper floor, a triptych of oil sketches by Elizabeth Muntz - Landscape, Children by the Shore, and Figure on a Beach - prioritise form and movement over detail, depicting the coastal landscape as the rough, untamed edge of the world it would have served as in Austen’s lifetime. Elsewhere, the hyper-detailed etching of Pollard is counterbalanced by the evocatively naïve coastal paintings of Alfred Wallis, in which colossal ships are hastily daubed onto found materials such as cardboard boxes.
Elsewhere, other literary figures give context to Austen’s work; a series of rooms are dedicated to Dorchester’s most famous figure, Thomas Hardy, a writer of the generation after Austen whose works similarly critiqued contemporary English society, albeit from the differing perspective of social realism. Meanwhile, the floor above gives focus to literary couple Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland, whose 1934 joint poetry collection, Whether a Dove or a Seagull, was groundbreaking for its depiction of lesbian love, and could represent an evolution of the female-centred romance stories found throughout Jane Austen’s work.
Ultimately, however, Down to the Sea is enhanced most by its proximity to the locations found in Persuasion, the novel which serves as the key focus of the exhibition. An unknown artist's landscape of the Lyme Regis coast is accompanied by a quote from the novel, that “a very strange stranger it must be, who does not see charms in the immediate environs of Lyme”. While arguably a little twee (the constant overfamiliar references to ‘Jane’ throughout can be a little cloying), the exhibition exists in symbiosis with the surrounding area, encouraging exploration outside the museum's walls and an appreciation of the surrounding coastal landscape.
Jane Austen: Down to the Sea is showing at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery until 14 September.
“All must linger and gaze on a first return to the sea, who ever deserve to look on it at all”, writes Jane Austen in her final novel, Persuasion. The coast - more specifically, the South-West coast of England - serves as the site of the story’s key moments, from Louisa’s famous, near-fatal fall from a sea wall to the dashing Captain Wentworth’s lovesick appreciation of heroine Anne Elliot as the pair walk along the seafront. The importance of this setting to Jane Austen’s work informs Down to the Sea, the newly opened exhibition at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery in Dorchester, one of many nationwide celebrations of the author to mark the 250th anniversary of her birth.
Curated in collaboration with students from Arts University Bournemouth, the exhibition delves primarily into the author's biographical details and socio-historical contexts. While an exhibition structured in such a manner runs the risk of tipping over into hagiography, Down to the Sea focuses on how these facets of Austen’s life and surroundings informed the themes - and our understanding - of her writing. While depicting the naval careers of her brothers Charles and Frank, for instance, visitors are invited to consider how this knowledge may have contributed to her depiction of military seafarers, offering a sense of verisimilitude that informed her lightly satirical approach.
Utilising loans from the Bodleian, the Fashion Museum in Bath and the Jane Austen House itself, the exhibition offers a focused snapshot of a specific moment in British social history; in particular, Robert Pollard’s 1801 etching A North West View of the Jetty at Yarmouth practically demands visitors to stop to admire its detail, from the aristocrats walking in the foreground to the bustling pier of holidaymakers behind them. The exhibition also showcases some of Austen’s more complex feelings surrounding the sea towards the end of her life. In her - ultimately unfinished - novel Sanditon, Austen offers a harsh critique of the ‘new’ seaside towns that had begun to spring up, particularly targeting the hypochondriacs who visited them for their supposed restorative properties.
However, the exhibition arguably comes into its own when contextualised by the surrounding permanent collection of Dorset Museum & Art Gallery. On the upper floor, a triptych of oil sketches by Elizabeth Muntz - Landscape, Children by the Shore, and Figure on a Beach - prioritise form and movement over detail, depicting the coastal landscape as the rough, untamed edge of the world it would have served as in Austen’s lifetime. Elsewhere, the hyper-detailed etching of Pollard is counterbalanced by the evocatively naïve coastal paintings of Alfred Wallis, in which colossal ships are hastily daubed onto found materials such as cardboard boxes.
Elsewhere, other literary figures give context to Austen’s work; a series of rooms are dedicated to Dorchester’s most famous figure, Thomas Hardy, a writer of the generation after Austen whose works similarly critiqued contemporary English society, albeit from the differing perspective of social realism. Meanwhile, the floor above gives focus to literary couple Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland, whose 1934 joint poetry collection, Whether a Dove or a Seagull, was groundbreaking for its depiction of lesbian love, and could represent an evolution of the female-centred romance stories found throughout Jane Austen’s work.
Ultimately, however, Down to the Sea is enhanced most by its proximity to the locations found in Persuasion, the novel which serves as the key focus of the exhibition. An unknown artist's landscape of the Lyme Regis coast is accompanied by a quote from the novel, that “a very strange stranger it must be, who does not see charms in the immediate environs of Lyme”. While arguably a little twee (the constant overfamiliar references to ‘Jane’ throughout can be a little cloying), the exhibition exists in symbiosis with the surrounding area, encouraging exploration outside the museum's walls and an appreciation of the surrounding coastal landscape.
Jane Austen: Down to the Sea is showing at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery until 14 September.
“All must linger and gaze on a first return to the sea, who ever deserve to look on it at all”, writes Jane Austen in her final novel, Persuasion. The coast - more specifically, the South-West coast of England - serves as the site of the story’s key moments, from Louisa’s famous, near-fatal fall from a sea wall to the dashing Captain Wentworth’s lovesick appreciation of heroine Anne Elliot as the pair walk along the seafront. The importance of this setting to Jane Austen’s work informs Down to the Sea, the newly opened exhibition at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery in Dorchester, one of many nationwide celebrations of the author to mark the 250th anniversary of her birth.
Curated in collaboration with students from Arts University Bournemouth, the exhibition delves primarily into the author's biographical details and socio-historical contexts. While an exhibition structured in such a manner runs the risk of tipping over into hagiography, Down to the Sea focuses on how these facets of Austen’s life and surroundings informed the themes - and our understanding - of her writing. While depicting the naval careers of her brothers Charles and Frank, for instance, visitors are invited to consider how this knowledge may have contributed to her depiction of military seafarers, offering a sense of verisimilitude that informed her lightly satirical approach.
Utilising loans from the Bodleian, the Fashion Museum in Bath and the Jane Austen House itself, the exhibition offers a focused snapshot of a specific moment in British social history; in particular, Robert Pollard’s 1801 etching A North West View of the Jetty at Yarmouth practically demands visitors to stop to admire its detail, from the aristocrats walking in the foreground to the bustling pier of holidaymakers behind them. The exhibition also showcases some of Austen’s more complex feelings surrounding the sea towards the end of her life. In her - ultimately unfinished - novel Sanditon, Austen offers a harsh critique of the ‘new’ seaside towns that had begun to spring up, particularly targeting the hypochondriacs who visited them for their supposed restorative properties.
However, the exhibition arguably comes into its own when contextualised by the surrounding permanent collection of Dorset Museum & Art Gallery. On the upper floor, a triptych of oil sketches by Elizabeth Muntz - Landscape, Children by the Shore, and Figure on a Beach - prioritise form and movement over detail, depicting the coastal landscape as the rough, untamed edge of the world it would have served as in Austen’s lifetime. Elsewhere, the hyper-detailed etching of Pollard is counterbalanced by the evocatively naïve coastal paintings of Alfred Wallis, in which colossal ships are hastily daubed onto found materials such as cardboard boxes.
Elsewhere, other literary figures give context to Austen’s work; a series of rooms are dedicated to Dorchester’s most famous figure, Thomas Hardy, a writer of the generation after Austen whose works similarly critiqued contemporary English society, albeit from the differing perspective of social realism. Meanwhile, the floor above gives focus to literary couple Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland, whose 1934 joint poetry collection, Whether a Dove or a Seagull, was groundbreaking for its depiction of lesbian love, and could represent an evolution of the female-centred romance stories found throughout Jane Austen’s work.
Ultimately, however, Down to the Sea is enhanced most by its proximity to the locations found in Persuasion, the novel which serves as the key focus of the exhibition. An unknown artist's landscape of the Lyme Regis coast is accompanied by a quote from the novel, that “a very strange stranger it must be, who does not see charms in the immediate environs of Lyme”. While arguably a little twee (the constant overfamiliar references to ‘Jane’ throughout can be a little cloying), the exhibition exists in symbiosis with the surrounding area, encouraging exploration outside the museum's walls and an appreciation of the surrounding coastal landscape.
Jane Austen: Down to the Sea is showing at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery until 14 September.
“All must linger and gaze on a first return to the sea, who ever deserve to look on it at all”, writes Jane Austen in her final novel, Persuasion. The coast - more specifically, the South-West coast of England - serves as the site of the story’s key moments, from Louisa’s famous, near-fatal fall from a sea wall to the dashing Captain Wentworth’s lovesick appreciation of heroine Anne Elliot as the pair walk along the seafront. The importance of this setting to Jane Austen’s work informs Down to the Sea, the newly opened exhibition at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery in Dorchester, one of many nationwide celebrations of the author to mark the 250th anniversary of her birth.
Curated in collaboration with students from Arts University Bournemouth, the exhibition delves primarily into the author's biographical details and socio-historical contexts. While an exhibition structured in such a manner runs the risk of tipping over into hagiography, Down to the Sea focuses on how these facets of Austen’s life and surroundings informed the themes - and our understanding - of her writing. While depicting the naval careers of her brothers Charles and Frank, for instance, visitors are invited to consider how this knowledge may have contributed to her depiction of military seafarers, offering a sense of verisimilitude that informed her lightly satirical approach.
Utilising loans from the Bodleian, the Fashion Museum in Bath and the Jane Austen House itself, the exhibition offers a focused snapshot of a specific moment in British social history; in particular, Robert Pollard’s 1801 etching A North West View of the Jetty at Yarmouth practically demands visitors to stop to admire its detail, from the aristocrats walking in the foreground to the bustling pier of holidaymakers behind them. The exhibition also showcases some of Austen’s more complex feelings surrounding the sea towards the end of her life. In her - ultimately unfinished - novel Sanditon, Austen offers a harsh critique of the ‘new’ seaside towns that had begun to spring up, particularly targeting the hypochondriacs who visited them for their supposed restorative properties.
However, the exhibition arguably comes into its own when contextualised by the surrounding permanent collection of Dorset Museum & Art Gallery. On the upper floor, a triptych of oil sketches by Elizabeth Muntz - Landscape, Children by the Shore, and Figure on a Beach - prioritise form and movement over detail, depicting the coastal landscape as the rough, untamed edge of the world it would have served as in Austen’s lifetime. Elsewhere, the hyper-detailed etching of Pollard is counterbalanced by the evocatively naïve coastal paintings of Alfred Wallis, in which colossal ships are hastily daubed onto found materials such as cardboard boxes.
Elsewhere, other literary figures give context to Austen’s work; a series of rooms are dedicated to Dorchester’s most famous figure, Thomas Hardy, a writer of the generation after Austen whose works similarly critiqued contemporary English society, albeit from the differing perspective of social realism. Meanwhile, the floor above gives focus to literary couple Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland, whose 1934 joint poetry collection, Whether a Dove or a Seagull, was groundbreaking for its depiction of lesbian love, and could represent an evolution of the female-centred romance stories found throughout Jane Austen’s work.
Ultimately, however, Down to the Sea is enhanced most by its proximity to the locations found in Persuasion, the novel which serves as the key focus of the exhibition. An unknown artist's landscape of the Lyme Regis coast is accompanied by a quote from the novel, that “a very strange stranger it must be, who does not see charms in the immediate environs of Lyme”. While arguably a little twee (the constant overfamiliar references to ‘Jane’ throughout can be a little cloying), the exhibition exists in symbiosis with the surrounding area, encouraging exploration outside the museum's walls and an appreciation of the surrounding coastal landscape.
Jane Austen: Down to the Sea is showing at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery until 14 September.
“All must linger and gaze on a first return to the sea, who ever deserve to look on it at all”, writes Jane Austen in her final novel, Persuasion. The coast - more specifically, the South-West coast of England - serves as the site of the story’s key moments, from Louisa’s famous, near-fatal fall from a sea wall to the dashing Captain Wentworth’s lovesick appreciation of heroine Anne Elliot as the pair walk along the seafront. The importance of this setting to Jane Austen’s work informs Down to the Sea, the newly opened exhibition at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery in Dorchester, one of many nationwide celebrations of the author to mark the 250th anniversary of her birth.
Curated in collaboration with students from Arts University Bournemouth, the exhibition delves primarily into the author's biographical details and socio-historical contexts. While an exhibition structured in such a manner runs the risk of tipping over into hagiography, Down to the Sea focuses on how these facets of Austen’s life and surroundings informed the themes - and our understanding - of her writing. While depicting the naval careers of her brothers Charles and Frank, for instance, visitors are invited to consider how this knowledge may have contributed to her depiction of military seafarers, offering a sense of verisimilitude that informed her lightly satirical approach.
Utilising loans from the Bodleian, the Fashion Museum in Bath and the Jane Austen House itself, the exhibition offers a focused snapshot of a specific moment in British social history; in particular, Robert Pollard’s 1801 etching A North West View of the Jetty at Yarmouth practically demands visitors to stop to admire its detail, from the aristocrats walking in the foreground to the bustling pier of holidaymakers behind them. The exhibition also showcases some of Austen’s more complex feelings surrounding the sea towards the end of her life. In her - ultimately unfinished - novel Sanditon, Austen offers a harsh critique of the ‘new’ seaside towns that had begun to spring up, particularly targeting the hypochondriacs who visited them for their supposed restorative properties.
However, the exhibition arguably comes into its own when contextualised by the surrounding permanent collection of Dorset Museum & Art Gallery. On the upper floor, a triptych of oil sketches by Elizabeth Muntz - Landscape, Children by the Shore, and Figure on a Beach - prioritise form and movement over detail, depicting the coastal landscape as the rough, untamed edge of the world it would have served as in Austen’s lifetime. Elsewhere, the hyper-detailed etching of Pollard is counterbalanced by the evocatively naïve coastal paintings of Alfred Wallis, in which colossal ships are hastily daubed onto found materials such as cardboard boxes.
Elsewhere, other literary figures give context to Austen’s work; a series of rooms are dedicated to Dorchester’s most famous figure, Thomas Hardy, a writer of the generation after Austen whose works similarly critiqued contemporary English society, albeit from the differing perspective of social realism. Meanwhile, the floor above gives focus to literary couple Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland, whose 1934 joint poetry collection, Whether a Dove or a Seagull, was groundbreaking for its depiction of lesbian love, and could represent an evolution of the female-centred romance stories found throughout Jane Austen’s work.
Ultimately, however, Down to the Sea is enhanced most by its proximity to the locations found in Persuasion, the novel which serves as the key focus of the exhibition. An unknown artist's landscape of the Lyme Regis coast is accompanied by a quote from the novel, that “a very strange stranger it must be, who does not see charms in the immediate environs of Lyme”. While arguably a little twee (the constant overfamiliar references to ‘Jane’ throughout can be a little cloying), the exhibition exists in symbiosis with the surrounding area, encouraging exploration outside the museum's walls and an appreciation of the surrounding coastal landscape.
Jane Austen: Down to the Sea is showing at Dorset Museum & Art Gallery until 14 September.
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