What would Turner think? Meet Britain’s new landscape painters
In the fourth feature of a five-part series of the new school of English painting, Charlotte Mullins meets the landscape artists.
In Reynolds’s time, English landscape painting was thought of as less erudite and important than history painting, but the sheer power of J. M. W. Turner’s sublime views and John Constable’s Suffolk scenes enabled the genre to be taken seriously for the first time.
David Hockney (b. 1937-2026) continued to draw inspiration from the landscape that surrounded him up until his death earlier this year. Throughout his career, he painted the hot hillsides of California and Yorkshire’s cool leafy lanes. In 2020–21, during lockdown, he closely studied the seasons in Normandy. A giant digital frieze of the fields, trees and orchards surrounding his French farmhouse spent the summer on display at London’s Serpentine North.
He would've turned 90 next year, but worked every day up until his death, scrutinising nature with all his might, as well as pushing the boundaries of painting, utilising modern technology to animate his thinking.
The peripatetic Peter Doig (b. 1959) is also drawn to landscape. He was born in Edinburgh and raised in Trinidad and Canada before studying painting in England. Today, he is known for his 1990s Canadian cabins and lakes, as well as moonlit Caribbean beaches. However, he now lives and works in London again and his dreamlike paintings increasingly feature views of the capital.
Both Doig and Hockney have looked beyond our shores for inspiration, but George Shaw (b. 1966) prefers to take his cue from the Midlands, where he grew up. His meticulous paintings in enamel on board depict terraced streets, waste land, graffiti and fly tipping. Yet, through their glowing orange skies and reflective puddles, he manages to give these everyday scenes a quiet beauty of their own.
This is part four of our five-part series on the new school of English painting. They will be published every Thursday afternoon throughout September.
Click here to read part one on the new abstract painters, part two on the new figurative painters, and part three on historical painters.
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Charlotte Mullins is an art critic, writer and broadcaster. Her latest book, The Art Isles: A 15,000 year story of art in the British Isles, was published by Yale University Press in October 2025.