A Different Light: British Neo-Romanticism

During the long, culturally isolated years of the Second World War, these artists drew inspiration from a romantic spirit found within British art, from earlier visionaries such as William Blake and Samuel Palmer. John Piper described it as ‘a vision that can see in these things something significant beyond ordinary significance.’

A resurgence of a romantic and wistful sensibility found expression in many aspects of British culture including the theatre, ballet, poetry and the visual arts. Nash, Piper, Sutherland and Henry Moore became leading figures in the Neo-Romantic style at this time, especially through the work they produced for the War Artists Advisory Committee (WAAC) of landscapes, workers and bomb damaged buildings. Their innovative techniques and clarity of vision provided a point of departure in the early to mid-1940s for a younger generation of painters.

By the mid-1950s the inward-looking nostalgia of Neo-Romanticism no longer reflected the values and concerns of the post-war world. A new cultural climate, influenced by the Cold War and the rise of consumerism, was reflected by the international movements of Pop Art and American Abstract-Expressionism.