WILLIAM KENT AND THE GRAND TOUR

AN EXCLUSIVE PRINT ROOM VISIT FOR MEMBERS

Thu 7 May 2026, 10:15am-11:15am OR 11:30am-12:30pm
At the Museum
Exclusively for Members

An Exclusive Event for Members of the Ashmolean

Tickets are £25 each, or £55 each when combined with the afternoon Coach trip to Rousham House & Gardens

Choose between two morning visits to the Western Art Print Room

Booking is essential. Tickets coming soon

With Anna Steven, Gallery Guide and lecturer at the Ashmolean Museum

Join Anna for this special opportunity to view original prints and drawings by the English architect, painter and designer William Kent (1684-1748) and his contemporaries. 

Kent's time in Italy was crucial for his development as an artist, and the landscape gardens he designed at Rousham are filled with multi-layered references to the Grand Tour. He believed that landscape should be viewed as a painting, by leaping the fence and seeing all nature as a garden.

During this visit to the Western Art Print Room we will reveal the layers, through rarely seen images, that reflect the design process of William Kent, who is known as a pioneer of the New English style of landscape, or the informal English garden.
  

Black and white print portrait of William Kent, wearing a turban and loose shirt and overshirt, set in a highly decorative cartouche with details of ribbons, fern leaves and painter's tools

Portrait of William Kent, John William Cook after William Aikman, 1827, stipple on wove paper, WAHP44493.1

Drawing in brown and blue tones of a Roman ruin, a white marble statue on a centrally placed stand, several people with working on the left, a gentleman with dog on the right talking to a seated man, and more people and white buildings in the background

A ruin caprice with Roman antiquities, Marco Ricci, 1710-1725, bodycolour on laid paper, WA1951.131

Pen and ink print of the exterior of a two-storey country house, with double sided stair leading up to the entrance and three statues on top of the façade

Elevation of a country house, probably Devonshire House, William Kent, 1726, pen and ink with grey wash over indications in graphite, WA1943.128

BOOKING

Tickets are £25 each, or £55 each when combined with the afternoon Coach trip to Rousham House & Gardens

Tickets are only available to Members of the Ashmolean

Bags and coats can be stored within the Western Art Print Room during this visit

Tickets coming soon

Find out more about Ashmolean Membership: Become a Member