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Talk: The Invention of British Art – Chelsea History Festival
September 27, 2025 @ 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM
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You have to try really hard, it seems, to like British art. Even its admirers concede it has contributed little to world art history. Tate, the closest thing we have to a gallery of British art, assigns less than a quarter of its display space to works made before 1900. Outside Britain, only one gallery in the whole world is dedicated to British art, in Yale. Few people visit it.
Why is British art so overlooked? Is it because Britain itself has never been enthusiastic about art, and indeed remains ill at ease with it today? Is it, quite simply, bad? Or has British art suffered an injustice, its impact on the world unfairly disregarded?
None of these questions can be answered without a frank reassessment of the history of British art, those who made it, and those it was made for. Now, leading art historian Bendor Grosvenor is taking on that challenge. Looking at key moments, objects and individuals from every era, he explores how they were shaped by their environment, and why – above all – it took so long for the art from theses isles to actually become ‘British’.
From folk art to the role of female artists, from the influences of invaders to the territories of the British Empire, the story of British art is just as much a story of Britain’s place in the world, and its impact upon it, as the art and artists themselves.
Bendor Grosvenor is an art historian specialising in Old Masters and British art. Best known from the BBC series ‘Britain’s Lost Masterpieces’ and ‘Fake or Fortune?’, he has discovered a number of important paintings by prominent artists including Van Dyck, Rubens, Titian, Gainsborough, Beale and Lawrence.
