Artists' colonies were a decidedly modern feature of European artistic practice from the 1870s and into the early twentieth century. Many artists left urban studios to live and work in communal settings, co-existing with their rural “host” communities. Rapidly expanding railways meant that these sites became more accessible and paved the way, too, for modern tourism. Across Europe, the growing nostalgia for rural simplicity attracted to these colonies a broad range of artists from Josef Israëls, Peder Severin Krøyer, Marianne Stokes and Anna Ancher to Winslow Homer, Stanhope Forbes, Laura Knight and Henry Scott Tuke.
Like the Impressionists, the rural naturalists painted scenes from everyday life, often out of doors, experimenting with the effects of natural light on their subjects. The development of photography influenced their representations of rural labour, traditions and communities – and vice versa. We will look at artists' colonies from the moment of their "discovery" to the artists’ interactions with the local communities supplying their models. We will also discuss wider social and political forces driving the flight to countryside and coast in order to locate works in their contemporary contexts.
From Brittany to Cornwall and from the North Sea coast to the tip of Denmark, this course invites you to explore a fascinating array of images produced at Europe's peripheries.