What do you think?
Rate this book
The Real and the Romantic: English Art Between Two World Wars
The twenty-first century has seen a surge of interest in English art from the interwar years, and the value of work by artists such as Stanley Spencer and Eric Ravilious has soared in value. New critical attention focuses on other artists, often women, who were previously overlooked, such as Winifred Knights and Evelyn Dunbar, while encouraging a more nuanced understanding of the cultural landscape of the 1920s and ’30s. With these new perspectives in mind, The Real and the Romantic takes a fresh look at this richly diverse period in English art.
Bookended by the intensity of commemoration that followed World War I and by a darkening of mood brought about by the foreshadowing of World War II, the decades between the wars saw the growing influence of modernism across British art and design. But as modernism reached a peak in the mid-1930s, artists were simultaneously reviving native traditions in modern terms and working with a renewed concern for place, memory, history, and particularity.
In The Real and the Romantic, Frances Spalding’s thematic approach emphasizes the networks of connection between British artists, illuminating the intriguing alliances and shifts in artistic sensibility that fed into the creativity of these years. Throughout the period, an emphasis on the “real” and the authentic remained dominant, even as romantic feeling played an important role in shaping artists’ responses to their subjects. Spalding considers the fluidity of the relationship between these two concepts and uses them as guiding themes in this beautifully produced, illustrated volume.
Bookended by the intensity of commemoration that followed World War I and by a darkening of mood brought about by the foreshadowing of World War II, the decades between the wars saw the growing influence of modernism across British art and design. But as modernism reached a peak in the mid-1930s, artists were simultaneously reviving native traditions in modern terms and working with a renewed concern for place, memory, history, and particularity.
In The Real and the Romantic, Frances Spalding’s thematic approach emphasizes the networks of connection between British artists, illuminating the intriguing alliances and shifts in artistic sensibility that fed into the creativity of these years. Throughout the period, an emphasis on the “real” and the authentic remained dominant, even as romantic feeling played an important role in shaping artists’ responses to their subjects. Spalding considers the fluidity of the relationship between these two concepts and uses them as guiding themes in this beautifully produced, illustrated volume.
384 pages, Hardcover
Published May 26, 2022
3 people are currently reading
162 people want to read
About the author
Frances Spalding
70 books16 followersFrances Spalding CBE, FRSL (née Crabtree) is a British art historian, writer and a former editor of The Burlington Magazine.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 30, 2022
I was drawn to this book originally by the painting on the cover which is by Eric Ravilious, one of my favourite artists. I was slightly disappointed to find that he merited very few pages in the text but given the scope and depth of this book, Frances Spalding could be forgiven for that and in these pages I met many artists whose work was new to me. She is an excellent biographer, very insightful, and very good at linking her insights to those of other biographers, not just quoting them but offering an argument or different interpretation in a constructive way. She is also immensely knowledgeable about art but does not labour this: the artists she writes about are deftly brought to life as she traces their relationships and reciprocal influences. The book is also beautifully produced, a pleasure to read.
August 20, 2022
A really interesting overview outlining trends and movements in English art , but with a “jerky” style, as if sections about particular artists or works have been “dropped” into the more unified narrative.
After a brief introduction, setting out Spurling’s vision of the plurality of British visual art in the inter-war period, she sets out trends and movements in twelve chapters.
First are the war memorials and paintings of the Great War created by official war artists, with most of these paintings now being displayed in the Imperial War Museum in south London. These memorialise, not glamourise, the horror of industrial war, with bleak landscapes with small human figures of John Nash and Paul Nash. For me, this section summarised the British artistic response to the war shown in the 2018 Tate Britain exhibition, Aftermath, which better illustrated the broadly realistic response of British artists. The most emotive work for me is John Singer Sargent’s Gassed (1919), which monumentalises the soldiers (the canvas is about seven foot by twenty foot), and shows the “pity of war”, even if not the horror of some of the other paintings.
Chapter 2 looks at the British art establishment in the war years and 1920’s, principally the Royal Academy, but also explaining the small influence of the Tate gallery at this time. Illustrations of various artists are included, including Jacob Epstein’s now iconic Rock Drill, Vanessa Bell and Charles Sims (previously unknown to me).
Chapter 3 looks at movement in art, mentioning Sybil Andrews and Cyril Power, whose excellent joint biography by Jenny Uglow I have recently read. There is also mention of Ravilious and significant discussion of Cedric Morris and Frances Hodgkins.
Chapter 4 concentrates on landscapes and places of mind (genius loci, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius_...) including discussion of Ben Nicholson, Eric Ravilious, Paul Nash and John Nash (liked the works of this brother):
More than any other artist, Paul Nash reinvigorated the English landscape tradition in modern terms. (Page 127)
Chapter 5 explores the movement towards more abstract modern art, looking at Work by Wyndham Lewis, Winifred Nicholson and then Ben Nicholson’s slow move from realist to more abstract art. Winifred Knights The Deluge is mentioned here, but just this single work by this artist.
Chapter 6 looks at the art of Stanley Spencer, in particular his work at Sandham Memorial Chapel.
Chapter 7 discusses sculpture and carving, the influences of “primitive”sculpture and “truth to materials”, which started with Gaudier-Brzeska and Brancusi before the First World War, carried on by Epstein, and Hepworth and most importantly Henry Moore after the war.
Chapter 8 discusses the aspiration to “make it new” and real. Spalding does this by citing Ezra Pound’s essays, published in 1934, that evoke “precisely the kind of aesthetic ... a looking backwards, not in a form of yearning for the past, but so as to fortify the next forward move.”
To illustrate this she uses the example of Evelyn Dunbar’s paintings, Winter Garden (1929-37), and A Land Girl and the Bail Bull (1945). Spalding then discusses F L Grigg, whose work seems positively nostalgic for a medieval Catholic past (and so doesn’t appear to be a convincing exemplar). However, she then turns to a number of artists who painted in a more “still” fashion, for me either veering towards a classical revival (Tristram Hillier’s The Lighthouse (1939)) or hyper-realism (Gerald Brockhurst’s By the Hills (1939)). There is then discussion of Gwen John’s portraits of female sitters in the 1920’s. The “primitive” influence of St Ives painter, Alfred Wallis upon Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood is discussed with a couple of illustrations, emphasising the “painterly lyricism, real feeling and a romantic kick”.
Finally the influence of Cézanne is considered on a number of British artists, with Roger Fry having appreciated in 1906 an artist “whose work fully satisfied his demand for an architectonic sense of underlying design.”
Chapter 9 considers Revivalism quoting Laurence Binyon from 1913 “We cannot discard the past ... we must remould it in the fires of our necessities, we must make it new and our own.”
Algernon Newton took technical inspiration from Canaletto, with works illustrated from 1929 and 1932 that “override time and movement, evoking something similar to T S Eliot’s ‘still point of the turning world’, a place‘where past and future are gathered’.”
Rex Whistler’s mural for the Tate and Eric Ravilious’s watercolours are also discussed.
Chapter 10 is about “Modern Art in a Philistine World”, talking first of a lack of recognition for Picasso’s art from British Museums and the art buying public. It then looks at Christopher Wood’s art, before moving to the Axis magazine which promoted non-figurative art pursued by Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and, for a time, John Piper.
Chapter 11 looks at how the art movements of abstraction and surrealism were presented to the British public in publications and exhibitions during the 1930’s, together with an appreciation of Herbert Read, Jack & Molly Pritchard, and Roland Penrose.
Chapter 12 reviews political engagement in art in the 1930’s, especially following the Spanish Civil War, including an exhibition of Picasso’s Guernica and the art of Edward Burra. There is also discussion of Walter Sickert’s paintings from the 1930’s based upon photographs in the press.
As is inevitable in an overview of a period such as this, I kept feeling that the analysis of artist’s work was too fleeting, and it was also sometimes difficult to follow an artist’s inclusion in a particular chapter rather than another. This made it an engaging read, and renewed my intention of reading monographs on more of the artists discussed, so I am glad to have read this book. However, although more limited in scope, I found both Sybil Cyril: Cyril Power and Sybil Andrews, Artists Together, 1920–1943 by Jenny Uglow and Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper by Alexandra Harris more satisfying reads.
One of the reasons I find this period fascinating is undoubtedly my not quite conscious, casual familiarity with many of the paintings from wandering around the Tate (now Tate Britain) when younger.
After a brief introduction, setting out Spurling’s vision of the plurality of British visual art in the inter-war period, she sets out trends and movements in twelve chapters.
First are the war memorials and paintings of the Great War created by official war artists, with most of these paintings now being displayed in the Imperial War Museum in south London. These memorialise, not glamourise, the horror of industrial war, with bleak landscapes with small human figures of John Nash and Paul Nash. For me, this section summarised the British artistic response to the war shown in the 2018 Tate Britain exhibition, Aftermath, which better illustrated the broadly realistic response of British artists. The most emotive work for me is John Singer Sargent’s Gassed (1919), which monumentalises the soldiers (the canvas is about seven foot by twenty foot), and shows the “pity of war”, even if not the horror of some of the other paintings.
Chapter 2 looks at the British art establishment in the war years and 1920’s, principally the Royal Academy, but also explaining the small influence of the Tate gallery at this time. Illustrations of various artists are included, including Jacob Epstein’s now iconic Rock Drill, Vanessa Bell and Charles Sims (previously unknown to me).
Chapter 3 looks at movement in art, mentioning Sybil Andrews and Cyril Power, whose excellent joint biography by Jenny Uglow I have recently read. There is also mention of Ravilious and significant discussion of Cedric Morris and Frances Hodgkins.
Chapter 4 concentrates on landscapes and places of mind (genius loci, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius_...) including discussion of Ben Nicholson, Eric Ravilious, Paul Nash and John Nash (liked the works of this brother):
More than any other artist, Paul Nash reinvigorated the English landscape tradition in modern terms. (Page 127)
Chapter 5 explores the movement towards more abstract modern art, looking at Work by Wyndham Lewis, Winifred Nicholson and then Ben Nicholson’s slow move from realist to more abstract art. Winifred Knights The Deluge is mentioned here, but just this single work by this artist.
Chapter 6 looks at the art of Stanley Spencer, in particular his work at Sandham Memorial Chapel.
Chapter 7 discusses sculpture and carving, the influences of “primitive”sculpture and “truth to materials”, which started with Gaudier-Brzeska and Brancusi before the First World War, carried on by Epstein, and Hepworth and most importantly Henry Moore after the war.
Chapter 8 discusses the aspiration to “make it new” and real. Spalding does this by citing Ezra Pound’s essays, published in 1934, that evoke “precisely the kind of aesthetic ... a looking backwards, not in a form of yearning for the past, but so as to fortify the next forward move.”
To illustrate this she uses the example of Evelyn Dunbar’s paintings, Winter Garden (1929-37), and A Land Girl and the Bail Bull (1945). Spalding then discusses F L Grigg, whose work seems positively nostalgic for a medieval Catholic past (and so doesn’t appear to be a convincing exemplar). However, she then turns to a number of artists who painted in a more “still” fashion, for me either veering towards a classical revival (Tristram Hillier’s The Lighthouse (1939)) or hyper-realism (Gerald Brockhurst’s By the Hills (1939)). There is then discussion of Gwen John’s portraits of female sitters in the 1920’s. The “primitive” influence of St Ives painter, Alfred Wallis upon Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood is discussed with a couple of illustrations, emphasising the “painterly lyricism, real feeling and a romantic kick”.
Finally the influence of Cézanne is considered on a number of British artists, with Roger Fry having appreciated in 1906 an artist “whose work fully satisfied his demand for an architectonic sense of underlying design.”
Chapter 9 considers Revivalism quoting Laurence Binyon from 1913 “We cannot discard the past ... we must remould it in the fires of our necessities, we must make it new and our own.”
Algernon Newton took technical inspiration from Canaletto, with works illustrated from 1929 and 1932 that “override time and movement, evoking something similar to T S Eliot’s ‘still point of the turning world’, a place‘where past and future are gathered’.”
Rex Whistler’s mural for the Tate and Eric Ravilious’s watercolours are also discussed.
Chapter 10 is about “Modern Art in a Philistine World”, talking first of a lack of recognition for Picasso’s art from British Museums and the art buying public. It then looks at Christopher Wood’s art, before moving to the Axis magazine which promoted non-figurative art pursued by Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and, for a time, John Piper.
Chapter 11 looks at how the art movements of abstraction and surrealism were presented to the British public in publications and exhibitions during the 1930’s, together with an appreciation of Herbert Read, Jack & Molly Pritchard, and Roland Penrose.
Chapter 12 reviews political engagement in art in the 1930’s, especially following the Spanish Civil War, including an exhibition of Picasso’s Guernica and the art of Edward Burra. There is also discussion of Walter Sickert’s paintings from the 1930’s based upon photographs in the press.
As is inevitable in an overview of a period such as this, I kept feeling that the analysis of artist’s work was too fleeting, and it was also sometimes difficult to follow an artist’s inclusion in a particular chapter rather than another. This made it an engaging read, and renewed my intention of reading monographs on more of the artists discussed, so I am glad to have read this book. However, although more limited in scope, I found both Sybil Cyril: Cyril Power and Sybil Andrews, Artists Together, 1920–1943 by Jenny Uglow and Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper by Alexandra Harris more satisfying reads.
One of the reasons I find this period fascinating is undoubtedly my not quite conscious, casual familiarity with many of the paintings from wandering around the Tate (now Tate Britain) when younger.
June 12, 2022
A scholarly yet always readable and fascinating account of the major trends in art between the two world wars. Spalding takes us from Lutyens and war memorials to abstraction and the eve of the Second World War.
She covers movements, revivals, trends and individual artists from Stanley Spencer to Paul Nash, from the shunning of Picasso by the English art scene to Ben Nicholson's move to abstraction. She provides as much as she can on women artists, who were often overlooked; Sybil Andrews, Dora Carrington, Gwen John and Winifred Nicholson feature here.
She also gives context and historical depth to the various movements and this creates a rich narrative where you can see the art as a response to wider issues in the world.
This has some fantastic illustrations and a strong selection of colour plates at a decent size so you can actually see what the author is talking about.
She covers movements, revivals, trends and individual artists from Stanley Spencer to Paul Nash, from the shunning of Picasso by the English art scene to Ben Nicholson's move to abstraction. She provides as much as she can on women artists, who were often overlooked; Sybil Andrews, Dora Carrington, Gwen John and Winifred Nicholson feature here.
She also gives context and historical depth to the various movements and this creates a rich narrative where you can see the art as a response to wider issues in the world.
This has some fantastic illustrations and a strong selection of colour plates at a decent size so you can actually see what the author is talking about.
July 2, 2023
'The Real and the Romantic' is a valuable if somewhat impressionistic review of British art between the two world wars with a decent selection of illustrations and an easy style that makes it a pleasure to read.
If there is a flaw it lies in the author being primarily a biographer of art (Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell, John Minton, Duncan Grant, Gwen Raverat and the Pipers have all been covered by her in the past) so the image of the era is 'coloured' by an anecdotal approach which does not always enlighten.
This is a slight frustration because, when she does look more deeply into the relationship between art and culture (as in the effect of war and immediate post-war depression and, more cursorily, the turn to politics in the late 1930s), she is very good indeed.
She is also consistently fair-minded. She manages to avoid the current tendency to over-privilege the minor artist to suit the obsessive need for diversity whilst still opening the doors of perception to some neglected artists and, of course, in a balanced way, to the female contribution.
This book confirms, however, that if Europe is often a matter of conscious movements and ideologies, the English do not take easily to them or to any committed step away from individual responses to materials and environment. Gayford on post-second world war art showed us much the same.
There is a rather creepy attempt to drive abstraction in an authoritarian way in the 1930s by the Nicholsons but even that lacks dogmatic conviction. John Piper's polite resistance and the pragmatism of Myfanwy Evans (Piper in 1937) put paid to that.
A book worth reading if we take it for what it is ... a general overview of aspects of British interwar art that is informative, educational and a relaxing read ... but the 'real and romantic' theme is not fully elucidated perhaps because it cannot be in any truly coherent way.
January 6, 2025
It’s hard for any given art book to have a big impact on the reader yet Spalding has very much inspired me, partly because this book is well written and so clearly a labour of love and partly because this period of art in England is so rarely discussed. Some of these works are up there with the best of 20th century painting. In particular, the post war commissions are outstanding. If you have a chance make sure to see them in the Imperial War Museum.
September 27, 2023
Dudn't expect to enjoy this so much - I borrowed it for the illustrations - but found a wonderful introduction to the art of a frantically innovative time. Clear prose, sharp insight and breadth of knowledge bring the time and its artists to the fore.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews