The Invention of British Art

You have to try really hard, it seems, to like British art. Even its admirers appear to believe it has contributed little to world art history. In 1771, the art historian Horace Walpole wondered why, despite being a country ‘so profusely beautified with the amenities of nature’, Britain had ‘produced so few good painters of landscape’.

Tate, the closest thing we have to a gallery of British art, assigns less than a quarter of its display space to works made before 1900. Outside Britain, only one gallery in the whole world is dedicated to British art, in Yale. Few people visit it. Why is British art so overlooked? Is it because Britain itself has never been enthusiastic about art, and indeed is still at ill at ease with it today? Is it, quite simply, bad? Or has British art suffered an injustice, its impact on the world unjustly disregarded?

None of these questions can be answered without a frank reassessment of the history of British art, those who made it, and who it was made for. Leading art historian Bendor Grosvenor is taking on that challenge. Beautifully illustrated throughout, The Invention of British Art is a provocative and captivating survey of British art from c. 4000 BCE to the 19th century.

Looking at key moments, objects, and individuals from each era, it explores how they were shaped by the world in which the artists lived, and why – above all – it took so long for the art from these isles to actually become ‘British’. From folk art to the role of female artists, from the influences of invaders to the territories of the British Empire, the story of British art is just as much a story of Britain’s place in the world, and its impact upon it, as the art and artists themselves.