What Makes British Art ‘British’?
JJ Charlesworth | ArtReview | 20th February 2025
“Explaining” British art is complicated and as much a story about culture as about art. Over its long history it has been swayed by “invasion, migration and exchange”, as well as the “hatred of image making” during the Protestant Reformation. Local artists endured patrons with a long-standing preference for their continental European rivals. Once religious conflict subsided an authentically British art emerged around 1800 with the landscape painting of Constable and others.