Barnett Freedman / Gilbert White review, Pallant House: Full of life and fervour

What is modern Britain? Barnett Freedman’s Designs for Modern Britain, at Pallant House Gallery, is art of the everyday, for every one. Freedman’s cohort Ravillious is found in the Print Room below, in a particularly curious exploration of the natural world, and how Gilbert White’s The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne has inspired generations of writers, artists and naturalists. Ravillious, whose 1938 engravings feature in the exhibition, illustrated one of the 300-or-so editions, and asserted, “It is quite the best book I’ve ever been given to do and I love doing it.” This intimate exploration leaves you surrounded at all angles by grasshopper larks, starlings, beehives, tree-tunnels, snakes, owls, particularly feisty carp, and the heavy petulance of rain. In one 1789 letter, White writes, “That fire, following the roots, consumes the very ground; so that for hundreds of acres nothing is to be seen but smother and desolation, the whole circuit round looking like the cinders of a volcano; and the soil being quite exhausted, no traces of vegetation to be found for years.” Still poignant today, White’s exploration and adoration of nature is a reminder to pause, and appreciate natural beauty, and protect it at all costs.