The most sought-after paintings by English artists working today are those that verge on abstraction

I'm standing in front of the exuberant, comedic and muscular paintings of nonagenarian Rose Wylie (b. 1934) at the Royal Academy of Arts (RA), thinking about what makes an artist and their work quintessentially English. Is it humour, scale, technique or none of these things?

The RA first opened its doors in 1768 and its president, Sir Joshua Reynolds, spent the next 21 years orating what English art could and should be in his annual Discourses.

As at all European academies, history painting was held in the highest regard, with portraiture, landscape and still life fighting for the lower rungs of art’s hierarchical ladder. Reynolds talked at length of a national school, at the same time as urging English artists to emulate their European neighbours. Yet, today, in our global society, should we still attempt to define art by geographical borders?

Many artists now often study, work and live in different countries to where they were born. To consider ‘English’ artists, we must first define them as those who live and work in England for sustained periods (rather than necessarily being born here). That said, how do we begin to corral all the disparate work these artists produce? Is there any coherence at all?

Despite ongoing financial difficulties for England’s museums and galleries, the recent closure of several major commercial galleries and continued cuts to art-school funding, the country has managed to maintain a thriving art community.

Many overseas artists choose England as their base and English-born artists successfully run studios in metropolitan centres and rural locations. Even if their work often sells in international auctions and art fairs and they exhibit all over the world, it is England that all these artists call home.

Here, too, there are a number of areas of particular interest to contemporary painters right now.

If we follow the lead of auction houses, some of the most sought-after paintings by English artists working today are those that verge on abstraction. Many are being produced by women artists born in the 1990s — Rachel Jones (b. 1991), Jadé Fadojutimi (b. 1993) and Flora Yukhnovich (b. 1990).

Jones only graduated from the RA Schools in 2019, but two years later she was included in the landmark contemporary painting exhibition ‘Mixing it Up: Painting Today’ at the Hayward Gallery, London. Her vivid oil-pastel painting, lick your teeth, they so clutch (2021), is some 23-feet (more than seven yards) long. Viewing it is an immersive experience, as the chewy colours sizzle, pop and shimmer, turning the giant teeth into cosmic landscapes and saturated skies.

Yukhnovich has gone one step further. Her canvases have been exhibited at the Wallace Collection, London, but, in 2025, she created a giant wrap-around mural for the newly restored Frick Collection in New York.

Her exuberant, abstracted florals often take inspiration from Rococo artists, such as François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and they now command seven-figure sums at auction.

Her latest work, conceived in dialogue with site-specific wall paintings and exploring how myths and stories change over time, was on show at the Victoria Miro gallery in Venice this summer.

Collectors similarly scrabble to acquire the latest paintings by Fadojutimi. Her sweeping abstracts come from deep within. They are vast meditations on life, exploring the characters, spaces and personas we create for ourselves.

Today’s abstract artists are ambitious and emotive and their work offers viewers glimpses of imagined spaces and psychic states. They all build on a long tradition of abstract painting in England, by the likes of Bridget Riley (b. 1931), Ian McKeever (b. 1946) and Fiona Rae (b. 1963).

This is part one of our five-part series on the new school of English painting. They will be published every Thursday afternoon throughout September.