J. M. W. Turner, Tintern Abbey: The Crossing and Chancel, Looking towards the East Window, 1794; Tate
“Ruin lust” is the name given to that pleasure people gain from contemplating the remains of past buildings, the feeling which has called into existence the vast tourist industries of Egypt and Cambodia, Wales, Yucatán and Peru. Ruin lust has also inspired many British artists from the eighteenth century onwards.
The eighteenth-century British painters of ruins, whether at home or abroad, may well have been influenced by the works of the Italian Giovanni Piranesi, one of the first to draw the remains of ancient Rome not just as sources of artistic and architectural inspiration but as a meditation on time and decay. In Britain, J. M. W. Turner was particularly conscious of living through a period of unprecedented social and economic changes when the old order was passing away, yielding place to new. The eighteenth century also saw an exodus of British tourists from their prosperous but crowded, noisy, and often smoke-filled cities in search of the sublime and the picturesque within their own country, which often meant trips to the ruins of medieval castles and abbeys. Ruins needed guide books and, before photography, guide books necessarily employed artists as illustrators. In the exhibition are Turner’s Tintern, the Crossing and Chancel, Looking towards the East Window (1794) and John Constable’s Sketch for Hadleigh Castle(1827–29), both pictures catering to a sense of romantic nostalgia, much as did the novels