A fresh look at a period of English art that has surged in interest and popularity in recent years, authored by one of Britain’s leading art historians and critics.

The twenty-first century has seen a surge of interest in English art of the interwar years. High-profile exhibitions have attracted record-breaking visitor numbers and challenged received opinion. In The Real and the Romantic, Frances Spalding takes a fresh and timely look at this rich period in English art.

The devastation of World War I left the art world decentered and directionless. This book is about its recovery. Spalding explores how exciting new ideas coexisted with a desire for continuity and a renewed interest in the past. We see the challenge to English artists represented by Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso, and the role played by museums and galleries in this period. Women artists, writers, and curators contributed to the emergence of a new avant-garde. The English landscape was revisited in modern terms. Hardcover, 384 pages.