Idyllic school

The Idyllic school (also known as the Idyllists) was a loose and informal group of British artists – not quite an art movement – in Victorian painting from about the early 1860s to the mid-1870s. Watercolour was typically their main medium, though several also painted in oils, and several also worked as illustrators in line drawings, which had an important bearing on their styles; their paintings were also often reproduced as prints. The indispensable core members of the group were Frederick Walker, John William North ARA RWS, and George John Pinwell RWS, all in their early twenties by 1864, but other artists are brought into discussions of the group, in a rather inconsistent fashion.

In 1871 a critic wrote in The Times "Mr. North and Mr. Macbeth both belong to the school of which in this country Mason and F. Walker are the chiefs, and Mr. Pinwell the lieutenant – the school which aims at making pictorial idylls out of the unpromising materials of lowly life in town and country".

By 1875 Walker, Pinwell, Mason and Houghton were all dead and the sense of a coherent group largely gone, after little more than a decade.

Characteristics

Their subjects usually included figures, more prominently than in traditional British watercolour landscape painting, and are generally set in relatively restricted spaces, whether outside or in interiors. The wide panoramic views typical of many Victorian watercolourists of the day are rarely seen; many outdoor subjects are set in a garden with high walls; this can be seen as a reflection of their training as illustrators.