From the 19th to the 21st century, the paintings featured in this exhibition represent a wide range of images depicting the ‘Old World’. Following the closure in 2022 of Aesthete Gallery in Hamilton, this exhibition continues the close collaboration between the Welcome Swallow Gallery and Fine Art Society New Zealand.

From the middle of the 16th century but more particularly, beginning the early part of the 19th century, the idea of the European ‘Grand Tour’ was to widen one’s understanding and appreciation of the world at a time when the vast majority of the population could not realistically visit foreign places. In this sense the artists who undertook the Grand Tour produced work that provided an educative function. For example, the great British artist, JMW Turner would label his initial sketches and graphite depictions with the names of the places that he was portraying so observers would know that the Pantheon or even the Coloseo, were actually in Roma.

Initially, these tours were usually undertaken by young adults from upper class families, both from the UK as well as other European countries, often accompanied by tutors or chaperones. After the second world war, when travel became more widely available, the initial purpose of the Grand Tour became diluted in favour of sun-breaks and holidays as opposed to learning opportunities alongside broader cultural exposure. And the role of the artist became subsequently, less important.

Nevertheless, New Zealand, in developing its own tradition of the big ‘OE’, has a similar aim of widening life experience of young people before they settle into long-term careers. The Grand Tour exhibition is a reminder of what such adventurers might have encountered many generations earlier.

Perhaps out of nostalgia, images of the ‘Old World’ have always had an appeal to those living in the ‘New World’ as they represent an important part of our own heritage and identity. The paintings in this exhibition also offer insights into the history of art. Many of the pieces straddle the period of the first impressionists in 1874. So, in the Grand Tour we get to see not only what was being represented in these paintings, but how compositional content was captured. Moreover, by the mid19thcentury quality photography was becoming widely accessible. This alone encouraged artists who made the Grand Tour to establish their own novel forms of representation of subject matter.

The Grand Tour exhibition is a time capsule that entices full immersion into a world that has long since passed.