HE SHORT, CONCENTRATED PERIOD that separates the two world wars spans only two decades, yet its art is multifarious and arresting. It is also richly contrary. Staunch conservatism jostles with energetic revivalism; allusions to the classical past or the early Italian Renaissance align themselves with the pulse of the new; the pursuit of the modern and international is unexpectedly trumped by a return to native traditions and to the local and vernacular. While major cities on the continent continued to act as incubators of modernism, London both attracted and repelled, releasing a whole cohort of students from the Royal College of Art in the mid-1920s who abandoned the city in favour of rural life and habits, including the making of gardens. At the same time, the English countryside takes on a distinctive character in the public mind, encouraging artists to seek fresh and original responses
