A Simpler, Fresher, More Innocent World?
It's very easy to look back into the past and imagine that somehow life was better then. I believe we have a strong tendency to do this with life in England before the industrial revolution. It was a much simpler life and much more innocent world, we imagine - living in a rural village, in an agrarian society. Perhaps this vision is fed by idealistic images of what the countryside would have looked like, and how people would have spent their time. For those who visit the Folk Art Collection at Compton Verney, Warwickshire, certainly we can feel like this. Within the folk art galleries we find a fantastic collection of art created by people who had no formal training whatsoever. They used their native skills, and all their art had a purpose, often a practical one. Their style of art is known as the naive style of art. Within the villages that were home to these "naive artists", art was commissioned, just as it may be today. Only in their community, perhaps a ...