Wild Woman of Exmoor

 

Foto bron: https://elensentier.com/hope-bourne/

"Life of Exmoor nature writer Hope Bourne recognised with exhibition"

THE GARDIAN

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/26/life-of-exmoor-nature-writer-hope-bourne-recognised-with-exhibition

Views of forward-thinking artist and writer who lived off land in national park celebrated at museum in GlastonburyDe tentoonstelling 'A Life Outside: Hope Bourne on Exmoor' is gemaakt in samenwerking met de Exmoor Society, die de Hope L. Bourne Collectie beheert. De tentoonstelling loopt van 27 september tot en met 10 januari 2026. 

Hudstons boek 'A Life Outside: Hope Bourne on Exmoor' verschijnt volgend jaar.

By John Burgess (Author), Caroline Tonson-Rye (Author), Hope L. Bourne (Illustrator)

Hope Bourne's Exmoor: Eloquence in Art

Hope Bourne has been described as one of the finest writers about the British countryside in the twentieth century. Her prose delineated Exmoor, its character and its characters, at its finest. In beautifully measured terms, she described the daily round of a life lived close to nature and to the land. Her work published in her lifetime invariably included some supporting line drawings – sharply memorable vignettes – and full-colour works for the covers of her books, for she was an extremely skilled artist. Yet although she left over 2000 artworks at her death, and many others in private hands, there has hitherto not been a volume that focuses on her painting and drawing. Now for the first time, the publication of a collection of her works of art gives the opportunity to remedy this omission and to view Hope Bourne and her achievements through the media of her paint-box and her pencil. The sweep of the moorland, the colour of the hounds and huntsmen, the delicacy of the soaring bird, the haven of the farmhouse, the nobility of the stag, all were captured by Hope Bourne on paper to give an immediate and graphic expression to her love of Exmoor. With a carefully selected text, some of it drawn from her unpublished writing, and an expert commentary from John Burgess, with Caroline Tonson-Rye, Hope Bourne’s Exmoor redresses the balance in our appreciation of this remarkable figure. It allows us to savour just how eloquent Hope Bourne could be in her visual record as well as in her prose. Her sketches, with pencilled comments, show her acute observation of colour and light through the seasons. She had, too, a gift for capturing the essence of a moment, from the drama of storm clouds and rain over moorland, to the glory of a river bank in summer. As the remarkable pictures in this book show, she understood Exmoor in all its moods and her work is imbued utterly with the spirit of the place.