The Global Picturesque: Jane Austen and JMW Turner in British Sign Language (BSL)

Описание: Just as the picturesque altered how people in Britain viewed the land close to home, it also influenced how colonised spaces were depicted by artists, mapmakers, settlers and travellers. In the representation of plantation landscapes, the picturesque became another export, another tool that could be used to impose a British colonial perspective on other places.

The picturesque style tended towards the romantic. In Turner’s views of the Harewood estate, labourers are shown working in harmony with the land, overseen by the watchful presence of the Lascelles family’s country seat.

The global picturesque mirrors this impulse by minimising the presence of enslaved workers on British-owned plantations and denying the brutality of colonial life.

This echoes numerous written and visual accounts of militarised harbours and colonised Caribbean landscapes, some written by Austen’s brothers during their naval careers. Together, text and image work to erase the enslaved people and plantation economy that continued to fund genteel Regency life abroad and at home.

Austen & Turner: A Country House Encounter
Exhibition open daily, 10.30am - 4pm
2 May - 19 October 2025
https://harewood.org/events/austen-an...

Made in collaboration with Topp Language Solutions.

Topp Language Solutions provides British Sign Language (BSL) interpretation and access services, helping to make arts, heritage, education, and public spaces more inclusive for Deaf audiences. They work with NHS Trusts, councils, schools, museums, galleries, and charities across the UK.