Author(s): Frances Spalding

Art | England

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.

'Superb .... Spalding also uses her persuasive narrative to highlight the role of women artists in the period. As the biographer of a cluster of Bloomsbury figures, she unsurprisingly gives Dora Carrington and Vanessa Bell full measure, but also lesser-known figures such as the single-minded New Zealander Frances Hodgkins, Evelyn Dunbar and Winifred Knights' - Michael Prodger, Sunday Times
'Spalding's prose is as clear as a Ravilious greenhouse, her thoughts as orderly as a Ben Nicholson white relief. No art-world waffle whatsoever. Hurrah. This book deserves to go into many editions' - Laura Freeman, The Times
'Veteran biographer Frances Spalding, known for her insightful books on the early British Modernists Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Roger Fry, turns her penetrating gaze on the interwar years' - Christie's
'[Spalding] unravels the complexities of English art between the wars with clarity and confidence, moving back and forth in time, and between artists, writers, critics, curators and collectors ... Throughout, she illuminates what she neatly describes as "the recurrent tension in this period between a precarious stasis on the one hand and, on the other, a yearning for rapid change" ... The period between the wars was a varied and important stage in the development of British art. Spalding shows us how and why' - Literary Review
'The writing is thorough and the arguments convincing, with plenty of examples, analyses and histories. The book is also generously illustrated, and Thames & Hudson again pull off their trick of getting good colour reproduction on book paper' - Artbookreview
'Enjoyable ... There's much to be learnt from Spalding's engaging study of a complex period' - Andrew Lambirth, The Spectator
'The author has compressed a deluge of material into 384 critically lucid and crucially well illustrated pages. She is expert in discerning trends and connections between hundreds of human strands ... all this perceptive linkage seems only to emphasise the fundamental individuality of some of the most interesting English artists between the wars' - Country Life
'A great page-turner, then, but also a fine reference book, which will, undoubtedly, be frequently pulled off the shelf for information and inspiration about that variegated array of artists - real and romantic - whose imagination lit up what is nowadays routinely considered to be the richest period in British art history' - British Art Fair News
'Frances Spalding's beautifully illustrated history reveals the hidden undercurrents that electrified the work of 1920s and 1930s artists ... The author combines the august and measured commentary of the distinguished art historian with a gumshoe's curiosity ... This is a weighty and beautifully illustrated addition to the scholarship of its period' - Stephen Smith, Financial Times
'Delectable ... the joy and intense interest of this book will come courtesy of the attention given by its scholarly but always readable author to less well-known names' - Rachel Cooke, Guardian
'Paul Nash, Gwen John, Henry Moore, Eric Ravilious, Ben Nicholson and Stanley Spencer all feature in this fresh and enlightening new look at English art between 1918 and 1939, which travels from modernism to English pastoral and embraces a host of lesser male and female figures in its broad and highly assured sweep' - Sunday Times
'This amply illustrated volume is a gripping read whether for new collectors looking for tips, art lover or expert' - Rachel Billington, The Tablet
'Figures such as Ravilious, Knights, Dunbar, Nash and Spencer re-interpreted Britain and its landscape for a new world, and this thoughtful and generously illustrated book charts their progress as well as the environment and society they sought to represent' - The Artist
'Spalding brings new insights to familiar names ... a layering and interweaving of ideas bring increasing depth and nuance to our understanding ... alongside the revision and expansion of art historical narratives of the period, precisely what you expect from a writer of Spalding's calibre, come nuggets of fascinating detail' - Studio International
'A revealing survey of how British artists reacted to the shock of the First World War ... Frances Spalding meticulously and stylishly uncovers a range of vibrant [artistic] responses, from the modern pastorals of Eric Ravilious to Henry Moore's radical experiments' - New Statesman

Contents: Introduction
1. Pitiless Realism
2. Resistance and Innovation
3. On the Move
4. Landscape and Places of the Mind
5. Beginning Again
6. What ho, Giotto
7. Expanding the Western European Tradition
8. Make It Real
9. Revivalism
10. Modern Art in a Philistine World
11. The Austere, the Violent or the Strange
12. The Spanish Civil War and Mondrian in London

Author Biography: Frances Spalding is an art historian, critic and leading authority on 20th-century British art. Her books include acclaimed biographies of Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell, John Minton, Duncan Grant, Gwen Raverat and John and Myfanwy Piper, as well as a biography of the poet Stevie Smith. She is Emeritus Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art. In 2005 she was made a CBE for Services to Literature.