The Ruins of Rievaulx Abbey, Yorkshire 1753

George Lambert painted ‘The Ruins of Rievaulx Abbey, Yorkshire’ in England, sometime in the mid-18th century. Lambert was known for landscape paintings that often featured classical ruins. In this case, though, he turns his eye to a ruined monastery destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century, when Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Church. The painting suggests a certain nostalgia for a lost English past, and also an idea of Britain as a place with its own distinctive history, natural beauty, and pictorial traditions. This was the era of the Grand Tour, when wealthy elites toured Europe in search of classical art. To understand this painting better, one could examine tourist literature and estate records from the period to discover how places like Rievaulx Abbey were presented to contemporary audiences. Art always reflects the social and institutional context in which it was made and to which it speaks.