Ruralists

The Ruralists, or the Brotherhood of Ruralists, were a group of British artists founded in 1975 that sought to revive the painting of figurative subjects set against idyllic rural landscapes. The association came into being after Peter Blake, one of the founders of British Pop art, moved with his then wife Jann Haworth from London to Wellow, near Bath in Somerset; the group concentrated on the themes of nature, childhood, English folklore and the pastoral. The brotherhood included Peter Blake, his wife Jann Haworth, Graham and Ann Arnold, Graham and Annie Ovenden and David Inshaw. Consciously invoking the example of the nineteenth-century Pre-Raphaelites, the Ruralists championed a return to meticulous, narrative, Romantic figurative painting and drew inspiration from English literature, in particular fairy tales, poetry and works such as Alice in Wonderland. Their art was distinguished by a nostalgic, at times sentimental mood, a love of detail and an idealised vision of rural England. The Brotherhood of Ruralists became a notable phenomenon of British art in the 1970s and a kind of reaction against the dominance of abstraction and conceptualism, asserting the value of traditional figurative painting.