A Scene of Inspiration: The Romantic Artists' at Kirkstall Abbey
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During the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the ruins of the abbey attracted the attention of a small number of historians and artists, but the growing Romantic Movement, with its great interest in picturesque antiquities, soon established Kirkstall as the most significant of all gothic ruins.
From the seventeen forties the Abbey was painted by an impressive sequence of artists including Samuel Buck, Thomas Girtin, John Cotman, J. M. W. Turner, Abraham Pether, C. H. Schwanfelder, and Joseph Rhodes.
Poets and writers also found inspiration here, Horace Walpole, Thomas Gray and Robert Southey all relishing the prospect of 'the abbey, shattered by the encroachments of the ivy and surmounted by many a sturdy tree whose twisted roots break thro' the fret of the vaulting and hang streaming from the roofs.
The gloom of these ancient cells, the shade and verdure of the landscape, the glittering and murmur of the stream, the lofty towers and long perspective of the Church in the midst of a clear, bright day' providing them with 'the truest subjects for their glass'.