Selected from the remarkable collections of Amgueddfa Cymru–National Museum Wales by Tim Barringer, Paul Mellon Professor of the History of Art at Yale University, and Oliver Fairclough, Keeper of Art at National Museum Wales, Pastures Green & Dark Satanic Mills: The British Passion for Landscape offers audiences in the U.S. a rare opportunity to follow, in a single span, the rise of landscape painting in Britain. The exhibition unfolds a story that runs from the Industrial Revolution, through the eras that saw the emergence of Romanticism, Impressionism, and modernism, to the postmodern and postindustrial present. While showcasing masterpieces from the museum’s collection, the exhibition also offers new insights into the development of landscape painting in Wales as well as into British art and culture more broadly.

Loosely chronological, the exhibition is divided into six thematic sections, allowing for surprising and thought-provoking juxtapositions. Major oil paintings are seen alongside works on paper drawn from the museum’s exceptional holdings of drawings, photographs, and watercolors. Pastures Green & Dark Satanic Mills includes a diverse selection of works by artists who found inspiration in the British landscape, including John Constable, Thomas Gainsborough, Oskar Kokoschka, Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, J. M. W. Turner, and Joseph Wright of Derby.