From Watford and Bushey to the towns of Europe and the Middle East, Bushey artists have been busy painting townscapes on their travels all over the world and a new exhibition displaying these opens at Bushey Museum.

We often take a real townscape for granted, but the countryside with its vistas of rolling hills, mountains, valleys and plains set against a backdrop of sky is something we stop to admire.

Towns and villages, however, are places where the majority of us live in the everyday, and we tend to focus on practical things like going shopping or to the bank or theatre, often concentrating so much on things at ground level that we miss out by not looking up at buildings or around at the general plan or appearance of the town.

Artists, on the other hand, may have the ability to perceive and portray the interest, atmosphere, colour, shape and beauty or ugliness of the urban setting and to record the way it changes, which encourages us to look again and reassess the essence of our location.

In this exhibition of works from the museum’s collection, you will be able to see some of these aspects of towns and villages. Paintings and drawings of Bushey and Watford, from the late 18th to the late 20th Centuries, show the extent of the changes that have taken place in our own communities. Growth from village to town, small town to large town, increasing modernity, changes in architectural style, expanding modern transport links and the growth of industry and commerce for a rising population are all here, as well as paintings done when artists have travelled from Bushey to other parts of Britain or to other countries.

  • Townscapes is at Bushey Museum, Rudolph Road, Bushey from Saturday, January 18 to Sunday, June 22, Thursday to Sunday, 11am to 4pm. Details: 020 8420 4057, busheymuseum.org