NASHVILLE, TENN.- The Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery announced the opening of Four Hundred Years of British Art: Highlights from the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery Collection.

British art constitutes an important part of the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery’s collections. This comprehensive survey will be the first of its kind in over two decades to draw on the nearly 300 British objects held by the Gallery. Four Hundred Years of British Art will include examples of eighteenth-century English portraiture by such noted artists as Benjamin Wilson and George Romney, along with a work attributed to the school of Sir Thomas Lawrence; a selection of engravings by the pictorial satirist and social critic William Hogarth; two biting satires of the English upper class by Thomas Rowlandson; early nineteenth-century prints by Joseph Mallord William Turner, and the master mezzotint printmaker Richard Earlom; paintings from the founder of the Norwich School of landscape painting, John Chrome; several examples of works by artists associated with the late-nineteenth-century etching revival such as Richard Samuel Chattock, Sir Francis Seymour Haden, Alphonse Legros, Samuel Palmer, and William Strang; selections from the Gallery’s large collection of etchings by one of the premier portraitists of the early twentieth century, Gerald Brockhurst; and modern and contemporary works by noted artists such as Patrick Caulfield, Bernard Cohen, Michael Craig-Martin, Lesley Foxcroft, Elisabeth Frink, Mona Hatoum, David Hockney, Henry Moore, and Roland Penrose.

Four Hundred Years of British Art is organized by the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery and curated by Joseph Mella, director.

The exhibition will be on view from March 13, 2013 through June 15, 2013. A reception will be held in celebration of this exhibition on Wednesday, March 13, 2013 from 5 to 7 p.m. The Fine Arts Gallery is located in Cohen Memorial Hall, 1220 21st Avenue South, on the western edge of the Peabody College campus. All events are free and open to the public. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday 12-4 p.m.; Thursdays until 8 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday 1-5 p.m. Beginning May 5, the Gallery will assume summer hours: Tuesday through Friday 12-4 p.m.; Saturday 1-5 p.m.; closed Sunday and Monday.