ONE of Hampshire’s oldest historic houses is opening |a spacious new |art gallery.

Five rooms on the first floor of Mottisfont Abbey near Romsey, previously used as offices, have been transformed into a light and spacious gallery with fine views across the grounds.

The gallery will showcase existing works of art at Mottisfont, as well as offering a new venue for loaned and newly commissioned art in a series of exhibitions.

The first exhibition, New Connections: Modern British Art, will include selected works from Mottisfont’s Derek Hill Collection.

There will also be significant loans from Modern British art specialists Austin Desmond Fine Art, London, a selection of which will be for sale.

The exhibition explores the personal and professional connections between Hill and his contemporaries, and identifies some of the key themes of this period of Modernism in Britain.

It also includes such artists as James Dixon, Naum Gabo, Ben Nicholson, Adrian Stokes, Margaret Mellis and Peter Lanyon.

There will also be some post-war painters too, with works by Graham Sutherland, John Piper and Michael Rothenstein on show.

Lotte Inch, Mottisfont’s exhibitions programmer, said: “Mottisfont is one of a very small handful of historic properties with such an interesting Modern art collection on display to the public. This fantastic new art gallery space will allow us |the opportunity to exhibit the collection properly and to |its best potential, in a |museum-standard environment.”

New Connections: Modern British Art runs from Saturday, April 16 to Sunday, June 19, from 11am to 5pm with last entry at 4.30pm.

It will be followed by Enchanted Garden: Flower Fairies and Dark Tales, which starts on Saturday, July 2.

For more details, call the Abbey on 01794 340757.