Members' preview day

As a Member you can be the first to see 'Edwin Austin Abbey: By the Dawn’s Early Light' before it opens to the public. Book your preferred time to visit and experience the exhibition before the crowds.

A friend of John Singer Sargent, Royal Academician, successful artist and illustrator – Abbey, born 1852 in Philadelphia, left the US in 1878 for the UK, where he would live for the rest of his life. He produced ‘The Hours’ in his Gloucestershire studio, then the largest art studio in Europe, from where both the study and mural were shipped to the US.

Abbey’s career spanned an age of renewal in America, one of national expression, optimism and ambition that drove new, grand public architectural commissions like the State Capitol building and inspired literature and the arts.

In the painting’s harmonious composition, allegorical female ‘hour’ figures flow in a circle against a starry sky of graduating shades of blue that mark the shift from day to night with the sun and moon at either side.

A known and celebrated artist in his day, Abbey’s ‘The Hours’ returns for us to enjoy again this, largely forgotten, giant of American art.