An exhibition of John Louis Petit’s East Midlands paintings

Rutland County Museum, Oakham, August 23rd to October 4th, 2025

During his career Petit painted many thousands of pictures, but his work was never sold, and after his death in 1868, they were passed on to relatives. A century later they were discovered in an attic in Surrey, dumped in auctions and were widely scattered. Only now is their artistic merit and historical value being recognised. The art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon the greatest re-discovery in British Art for a generation, and the first book about his art, by the chairman of the Petit Society, describes him as Britain’s lost pre-impressionist. Petit’s art of the East Midlands is part of this re-discovery. Close to his home base in Lichfield, Petit visited and painted across the region many times. Often, he paints locations and subjects no other historical artist touched. Some 40 of these pictures were gathered together to be shown to the public for the first time ever at an exhibition held in Rutland County Museum between August and October 2025.

In this blog post we gather together a range of material related to the exhibition – the advertising material and display boards; photographs of the exhibition area itself; and the exhibition catalogues and slideshow that was shown on the screen in the exhibition area.

Exhibition flyer and display boards

The flyer formed the basis of advertising the exhibition and was widely distributed by email and Social Media, with a small number of hard copies distributed locally around Oakham. There were five display boards – a general introduction (A1) and four others relating to the four geographical sections of the exhibition – Leicestershire and Rutland, Northampton and Peterborough, Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire and Further Afield (A2).

The Exhibition

Catalogue and slide presentation

The simply produced catalogue contained brief details and a small photos of all the pictures that were planned to be exhibited. In the event a small number were not hung due to space limitations. These were shown as a slide presentation on a screen in the exhibition area, together with pages from an 1830 Album (see catalogue for description) and a selection of other East Midlands paintings.

Acknowledgements

The contributions of the following groups of people to the success of the exhibition need to be mentioned – the sponsors who provided much needed financial support; those friends of the organisers who helped with transport, mounting pictures and catering at the opening event; those who loaned paintings that were shown (identified in the catalogue); and most importantly the staff at Rutland County Museum for making the exhibition space available and constructing the exhibition. The help of all of them is very gratefully acknowledged.

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