RAMM: Exeter's Fine Arts Gallery, Highlights from the Collection

This exhibition runs until the 9th August 2026.

This one room changes regularly to give an insight in to the fine art collection.  This is a pretty impossible task as the collection contains over 7000 pieces including paintings, prints, drawings, watercolours, miniatures and sculptures.  The current display includes only around 30 pieces, so highlights is definitely a good term for this display.

Looking around the room, the pieces are split in to a few different categories, beginning with portraits.  One portrait is called a Man in a Red Suit and shows a man of colour wearing a red suit.  The artist is unknown and it dates from around 1740 to 1780.  A huge amount of research has been conducted on this painting and yet there are still no clear answers.  It has been credited to Sir Joshua Reynolds and I can see why but it may also be by Allan Ramsay.  Nobody knows who the sitter is either, even though attempts have been made to link to two different freed people, but it isn't a good likeness to other sources depicting these people.  The mystery of it has clearly intrigued people and it is definitely very well painted.

An incredible painting that dominates one end of the room is In Sight - Lord Dundonald's Dash on Ladysmith by Lucy Kemp-Welsh from 1901.  This is a huge painting and depicts a moment from the Boer War includes Winston Churchill.  Lucy was particularly known for her paintings of horses during the first world war.  The horses in this painting are stunningly beautiful.

Another fascinating part of the display were the early pictures of Exeter.  These pictures capture lost views, moments in time now gone.  They include lost buildings and interiors.  They give us a tiny window in to history and life that we don't get from written accounts.  I always find them interesting, even when I do not appreciate the artists sense of beauty or their technique!  Of course, with so many to choose from, all the examples here were a delight.

I loved seeing Barbara Hepworth's Preparation.  She is an artist I am quite familiar with as the Barbara Hepworth Garden and Museum in St Ives is one of my favourite places.  Normally the pieces shown concentrate on her geometric and sculptural work.  This piece  has a very different subject, as for a time she was fascinated by the skills of surgeons.  She would have a sterilised notebook and pencil and go in to surgery to watch.  She made around 80 sketches and then produced larger pieces in her studio.  I found this picture fascinating, it contrasted clean lines and form with an interesting texture.  If I was a surgeon, I would have been delighted to have this piece on my wall.

This is only a selection of the pictures included.  I am sure if I visited on a different day, my favourites would shift and change!

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