Until recently most people lived in the country. But even though Christ was born in a manger, farms, barns and peasants’ cottages were not much appreciated by painters before the seventeenth century. Then, the focus of Dutch and Flemish painters on scenes of everyday life and picturesque peasantry began to make rural life a more popular subject.
The artistic appeal of the countryside was established in the late eighteenth century by the rules of the ‘picturesque’, which valued rough texture and irregular features over smooth beauty.
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As the population became urbanised, this appeal increased and some villages became artists’ colonies. The patriotism of the Second World War helped create the view of an English rural paradise that many aspire to today.
Artworks
The Old Mill, SurreyWilliam Teulon Blandford Fletcher (1858–1936)
Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds Museums and Galleries
Landscape with a CottageCornelis van Swieten (c.1626–1673)
Temple Newsam House, Leeds Museums and Galleries
LandscapeLucas van Uden (1595–1672)
Temple Newsam House, Leeds Museums and Galleries
Beauty and the BeastCharles Burton Barber (1845–1894)
Reading Museum & Town Hall
Boulter's Lock and Ray Mill House, Maidenhead, BerkshireEdmund John Niemann (1813–1876)