“And the winner is….”

Art UK recently ran a competition with Railway 200 to celebrate the best artistic depictions of the railway. They scoured the resources at the NRM and provincial art galleries nationwide to come up with their top two hundred entries. These were then whittled down to a top 20 by public vote and subsequently the winners were announced after further voting from the shortlist. The winner was Train Landscape by Eric Ravilious. Second was Rain Steam and Speed by JMW Turner and in third place was David Shepherd’s Service by Night.

Art UK do a great job in bringing a vast array of original artwork to the public view via their website and many artists have given permission their work to be included there. However, in this instance its worth mentioning that a lot of extremely good railway artwork was presumably excluded from the process because it is not on public display or owned by galleries around the country. Consequently, contemporary work of high order by Barry Price, Don Breckon, Rob Rowland and Barry Freeman does not feature, and even some reputable historical figures like James Tissot have been overlooked.   

Nevertheless, I enjoyed sifting through the list and finding artists who were new to me and some attractive paintings that I would otherwise be unlikely to have come across. As for the winner, the back story is fascinating and can be followed online. If you want to see the real thing you need to go to Aberdeen Art Gallery, where, UK Art added on their web page, “it has now been placed on public display”, suggesting that maybe it had been languishing in a vault somewhere until the spotlight had suddenly descended on the Granite City - but perhaps I’m doing them a dis-service here.