Looking to Sea : Britain Through the Eyes of its Artists

By Lily Le Brun (Author)
Format: Hardback 320 pages
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Imprint: Sceptre
ISBN: 9781529309218
Published: 3 Nov 2022
Weight:680g
Dimensions:165 x 224 x 27 (mm)

'Looking to Sea is a remarkable and compelling book... I loved it.' Edmund de Waal

'In her first, transporting book, Lily Le Brun sweeps the beaches of the past century of British art, collecting treasures from sea, shingle and shore... A book to pack in your picnic basket for shivering dips, heatwave day trips and ice-cream Sundays' The Times

Looking to Sea considers ten pivotal artworks, from Vanessa Bell's Studland Beach, one of the first modernist paintings in Britain, to Paul Nash's work bearing the scars of his experience in the trenches and Martin Parr's photographs of seaside resorts in the 1980s, which raised controversial questions of class. Each of the startlingly different pieces, created between 1912 and 2015, opens a window onto big ideas, from modernism and the sublime, the impact of the world wars and colonialism, to issues crucial to our world today like the environment and nationhood. In this astonishingly perceptive portrait of the twentieth century, art critic Lily Le Brun brings a fresh eye to a vast idea, offering readers an imaginative new way of seeing our island nation.