Force of nature

Andrew Lambirth

Wednesday, 17th September 2008

Ancient Landscapes — Pastoral Visions: Samuel Palmer to the Ruralists
Victoria Art Gallery, Bath, until 19 October

Meanwhile, Part 2 presents Ruralist treasures. The Brotherhood was born at a dinner party on David Inshaw’s birthday in 1975, and was about escaping the modern urban world for something more expansive and Victorian. Peter Blake, the most famous Ruralist and in some respects its flag-waver, described their aims as: ‘The continuation of a certain kind of English painting; we admire Samuel Palmer, Stanley Spencer, Thomas Hardy, Elgar, cricket, English landscape, the Pre-Raphaelites… our aims are to paint about love, beauty, joy, sentiment and magic. We still believe in painting with oil on canvas, putting the picture in a frame and, hopefully, that someone will like it, buy it and hang it on their wall to enjoy.’

That’s a useful definition of the Romantic current in English art — the ability to recognise and convey the magic of a place. Although Peter Nahum, in an afterword to the catalogue, makes a strong argument for Graham Ovenden being the giant of late 20th-century English landscape painting, rightful successor to Paul Nash, I would disagree. For my money, David Inshaw is the artist who emerges as the strongest and most inventive of the Ruralists. He is a landscape painter of real evocative power — look at his depictions of the strangeness that is Silbury — whose best work seems to unite the qualities of Nash and Stanley Spencer. It’s his pictures that stand out in this exhibition.