10 Facts About English art

Medieval English art painting, mainly religious, had a strong national tradition and was influential in Europe.

Interest in English art landscape painting had begun to develop by the time of the 1707 Act of Union.

Substantive definitions of English art have been attempted by, among others, art scholar Nikolaus Pevsner, art historian Roy Strong and critic Peter Ackroyd .

Especially in Northumbria, the Insular English art style shared across the British Isles produced the finest work being produced in Europe, until the Viking raids and invasions largely suppressed the movement; the Book of Lindisfarne is one example certainly produced in Northumbria.

Anglo-Saxon English art developed a very sophisticated variation on contemporary Continental styles, seen especially in metalwork and illuminated manuscripts such as the Benedictional of St Æthelwold.

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The so-called Bayeux Tapestry - the large, English art-made, embroidered cloth depicting events leading up to the Norman conquest - dates to the late 11th century.

Portraits were in England, as in Europe, the easiest and most profitable way for an artist to make a living, and the English tradition continued to show the relaxed elegance of the portrait-style traceable to Van Dyck.

English art was among the most important landscape artists of the first half of the twentieth century, and the artworks he produced during World War I are among the most iconic images of the conflict.

English art co-founded the Vorticist movement in art, and after becoming better known for his writing than his painting in the 1920s and early 1930s he returned to more concentrated work on visual art, with paintings from the 1930s and 1940s constituting some of his best-known work.

English art developed a distinctive style of painting and is best known for his urban landscapes peopled with human figures often referred to as "matchstick men".