Following the hell of the First World War British artists were confused as to how to react. The art of this island during this period cannot be pigeonholed into any movement or -ism although Paul Nash and John Banting painted in the Surrealist style and Wyndham Lewis was an exponent of Vorticism. Stanley Spencer and Winifred Knights, who studied at the Slade, gave the religious iconography of the Italian Renaissance new meaning, in some cases with apocalyptic undertones. John Piper and Cedric Morris dabbled with Cubism. Ben Nicholson adopted Abstraction.

The English art establishment still remained largely traditional in outlook and dismissive of Picasso and other modern European artists. There was a renewed interest in Constable and Turner and early 19th century watercolourist John Sell Cotman. Richard Morphet, Keeper of the Modern Collection at the Tate Gallery in the 1980s and a supporter of interwar British artists when many were very unfashionable, noted that permanence of a settled harmonious world was a strong theme. 

In The Real and the Romantic, Frances Spalding, the esteemed biographer of Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and John Minton, addresses various strands of British art between the two world wars — not in terms of technique but more as a metaphysical response. Real she writes “is a term used by artist to describe something more genuine and authentic and not merely imitative or artificial”. She quotes art critic Roger Fry as saying, “for art to succeed it must go deeper than a mere visual record.” Romantic, she posits, seeks “a convergence between the outer world of fact and the inner world of feeling and self-identity”. 

Spalding shows how artists were interpreting the landscape for 20th century viewers. A chapter “Landscapes and Places of Mind” is illustrated by Ben Nicholson and Paul Nash’s pictures of the empty and haunting beach at Dymchurch shortly after the end of the war. By the 1930s, with the horrors of the battlefield receding but new threats of political upheaval in Europe, British artists were keen to show a stable ordered society. The painting the Outskirts of Cheltenham by Algernon Newton, known as the Canaletto of Canals, is an example. On the other hand, Tristram Hillier’s The Lighthouse has a surreal feel.

British artists were keen to show a stable ordered society

In 1934 Grace Oscroft of the East London Group was painting the working class of London. The mostly left-leaning art and art associations wanted to make art accessible to all classes, an example being the Arts League of Service set up in 1919.

Over 350 pages, including many illustrations, Spalding shows her expansive knowledge not only of methods of painting but also biography. Biographical details interspersed through the book are engaging and illuminating. The book is a perfect aid to those interested in the influences, painting methods and lives of well-known artists, but also anyone who wishes to discover less famous artists working in a variety of styles — women such as Frances Hodgkins and Evelyn Dunbar, and men like Joseph Southall and Frank Dobson amongst others.