Radical Modernism: British Art and Literature from the Pre-Raphaelites to the Bloomsbury Group

From the late 19th into the 20th century, British artists and academics set out to radically transform art, literature, and society. Originating alongside the Oxford Movement, the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood believed in a new medievalism, which infused their paintings, poetry, and way of life. Emerging in the wake of the Romantics and Impressionists, artists like Edward Burne-Jones, Williams Morris, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rosetti and William Holman Hunt, produced extraordinary artworks rooted in new ways of seeing truth and beauty. They received the support of Oxford thinkers like John Ruskin, who championed their vision and wrote highly influential art criticism. Their radical legacy continued with Slade artists like David Bomberg, Paul Nash, and Stanley Spencer, who embraced Surrealism and Cubism while confronting the horrors of war. The Bloomsbury Group, with writers like Virginia Woolf and Roger Fry, and painters like Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, celebrated 'art for art's sake' and rejected bourgeois, conventional expectations.

In this very special course, students benefit from access to and engagement with the extraordinary collection in the Ashmolean and other local sites, learning from direct encounters with treasures of modern British art. With lectures will be delivered by Oxford academics and field-leading experts, you will examine the art and literature of the period and take part in unique site visits. You also have the opportunity to visit auction houses and galleries to learn from specialists about the art world today and the place of British modernism in the contemporary market. 

By the end of this course, you will:

• Possess a rich knowledge base in modern British art, literature, and criticism.
• Be able to evaluate the relationship between the developmentof historical and cultural contexts across the period.
• Understand and critically assess the key art historical, historiographical, and literary approaches to modern Britian art  and its future direction.
• Develop essential critical thinking skills for analysing and evaluatuating modern British and literature, both for its historical and, in the case of the art market, its contemporary appeal.

This course would suit students of the Humanities, especially those with an interest in Art, Art History, Literature, Literary Criticism, the Art Market and auction houses, and History. The course would be of particular relevance to those with an interest in working and networking in the art world.

Available as a Residential course on the following dates:

Session 3: 10th August - 28th August 2026