The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition opens next week and it got me wondering who is Britain's greatest fine artist?

So many to choose from...John Constable, Thomas Gainsborough, William Turner, William Blake, Peter Blake, John Piper, Edward Landseer, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Anthony Caro, Bridget Riley, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, David Hockney, Gillian Wearing, Banksy, Ben Nicholson, John Nash, Anish Kapoor, Stanley Spencer, Joshua Reynolds, Walter Sickert, Richard Long, Andy Goldsworthy, LS Lowry, Paula Rego, Anthony Frost, Elisabeth Frink, Terry Frost, Alfred Wallis, Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, .....and so many more.

So who is the greatest? Alternatively, which is your favourite British artist?

Peter Stott

Banksy lol...

Think you'll find Paula Rego is as Portuguese as they come. She did study in and has lived and worked in the UK, also married a Brit but she is most definitely Pork'ncheese

JMW Turner...

As a quizzer I’m stunned how many of the list I’ve never heard of.

randomclaret2 wrote:Banksy lol...

I'm not a fan but he's a lot better than some of that list. While his 'message' is often beyond trite, his composition (to my untrained eye) is competent - genuinely pleasant things to look at. What is funny is how while his banal agenda is fêted, Jack Vettriano's equally clichéd offerings are ridiculed.

John Everett Millais.

UTB, Peter Stott is only the world's no.1 exponent of 'transcendental imaging' as evidenced on Bing, Google and Yahoo and whilst he may be up there with Plato and Michael Fried when it comes to art theory, having created a theoretical model of advanced picturing, he only came to that because he had the humility to know that he doesn't have absolute facility but he worked out that something like that could be, by the very nature of his limitation and having watched Jerry off 'Tom and Jerry' paint complete pictures straight out of a can.

Still, his 'Black Trapezoid' image as evidenced on saatchiart.com, is every bit as iconic as Malevich's 'Black Square' and may even be the picture of the 21C, as a pointer to the greater art of what could be, but such a work doesn't even begin to compare with the magnificent paintings of Turner, for example, or all the genius technicians who book illustrate paint etc. although he was drawing in perspective at junior school.


Of course Burnley has produced much more famous and successful artists such as Keith Coventry and Noel leaver, David Wild etc. and he is relatively unsuccessful in the world of art and not very well known.

He likes military aviation illustrated books whose images far outstrip most of LCP's list in terms of facility and grand intent and also the Sc-fi illustrator Chris Foss and would recommend to put on any Christmas list for anyone aged 3-90 his book 'Hardware, the definitive SF works of Chris Foss.' It's AWESOME. It's one of the greatest PICTURE BOOKS there is.

Most fine art is a sham compared to the illustrators, most of whom are totally anonymous.

CGI is now facilitating art that blows LCP's list out of the water, the 21C will produce the greatest talent IF those emerging artists have the time and the patience and the financial backing and the technical training and not a destroyed mind from using too much Internet and drugs etc.

Meanwhile... JULIAN SCHNABEL, claimed to be USA's greatest living artist, is having a show at the PACE GALLERY in London, of his INTERVENTIONS. These do not compare to Peter Stott's work of that type and Schnabel doesn't have such geometry-based theories to back up his works, although very adroit at charming the media with how he goes about what he does.

rolf harris

Neil Buchanan

Harris spent too much time 'rolfing' to be included among the greats, but MASSIVE in the 60's as THE artist on TV. That was what artists did, to the general folk of who I knew in Burnley apart from paintings from the 'olden days' in Towneley Hall.

I meant to add Keith Coventry to my list. I’ve followed his career since our time together at St Teds and Burnley College. Think he ranks above Hirst and Emin although they are very good at self publicity.

Personally, I’d choose Francis Bacon or possibly Lucian Freud as greatest painters. Moore or Frink as best sculptors.

Augustus Egg is better than Francis Bacon.

I like the sculptures of Bill Woodrow because he makes something out of something else, but makes that the subject of the sculptures in an inter-connective fashion. A crow is fashioned out of an umbrella but they are conjoined to emphasize that creative lineage. He's far more inventive than most sculptors in the UK.

They don't have the gravitas of Moore, but gravitas is not the only value in sculpture.

Who is the best? A very difficult and subjective question to answer - certainly a lot on the OP's list would have a shout. Who is my favourite? again very difficult to answer, there are many fantastic British artists from the last century. Two of my favourites are Alan Davie and William Gear. I have been lucky enough to own works by most of the artists mentioned. Problem is, never enough wall space

I used to like Alan Davie but they've tired with age and now look like visual mincemeat over patterns etc. Must have spilled his dinner whilst stoned on to the 50's tablecloth.

I think most of the 20C art is perverted now, especially the German painters and the Taschen cultural machine promoting them. I call them the 'disaster comedians.'

Just to put UK art in context, there is nobody working in the UK like Fabian Marcaccio in New York and his massive digital monstrosities.

Can't believe nobody has mentioned Jack Russell ,he wasn't the greatest but in terms of connecting with the general public Lowry gets my vote.

Pstotto wrote:I used to like Alan Davie but they've tired with age and now look like visual mincemeat.

His earlier work is much better than his latter years. Same could be said for most artists though IMO.

I think if you're young you've got the ambition and the staying power combined with the intent to have the patience to create and also the ideas are fresh. The only way is down from then on.

A well known English contemporary artist called Gerard Hemsworth has come up with a strategy. Start off with the ridiculous and then go from there to the sublime. A lecturer once told me that after months of agonizing, he took the picture to the bottom of the garden to have a look from a greater distance and his wife pointed out to him that it looked like Mickey Mouse. Hemsworth starts from that position of bathos and then proceeds to pathos.

that bloke that did the Dyche mural.

Stephen Lennon another Burnley born artist is a good artist ....as was James Taylor from cliviger ..

Joseph Mallord William Turner

Francis Bacon for me.

Pstotto wrote:Augustus Egg is better than Francis Bacon.

Seriously? I’ve never even heard of Egg but have just looked up his work. I don’t know how you can even compare him to Bacon. Bacon is a huge international artist and I think his work will prove timeless.

Turner and Goldsworthy for me

Wile E Coyote wrote:rolf harris

Have a day off , the world is full of idiots .

JMW Turner for me, too.

You forgot JW Waterhouse. Not the best British painter but the creator of my favourite painting, Destiny, which is/was hanging in Towneley Hall

http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/jw ... lor12.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I have a copy of it at home

Egg is far better than Bacon.

Bacon is all about rage and vileness and his contemporary style was a utilization of a minimal talent.

That's not to denigrate making use of what one can, in fact I do it.

However, Egg touches on a more profound cosmological mysticism than a mere fixation on horror.

This profound cosmology is intrinsic not only to his subject matter, but also via his brilliant draughtsman-ship and outstanding use of oil paints.

Whilst horror and vileness may be all the rage, Bacon's portraits are poorly executed according to a superficial graphic formula that will wane in better times.

His triptych of Freud is a ludicrous incomprehension of cubism and perhaps the worst ever made and whoever paid £100 million for it, I better not insult to the level they deserve, but it might go along to the tune of the Worzels and 'You got a bacon freud.'

If it is was made as a sick joke as a parody, that doesn't excuse it and its general witlessness leads me to think it wasn't satirical as a parody.

The very talented Tony Hancock

Hancock was a paid government agent, used to decry the railways in advance of the Beeching Cuts. With that knowledge in mind, look at who is successful in the arts and media and look at how much of it looks like art simulation.

Pstotto wrote:Hancock was a paid government agent, used to decry the railways in advance of the Beeching Cuts. With that knowledge in mind, look at who is successful in the arts and media and look at how much of it looks like art simulation.

I think we are talking at cross purposes, I’m referring to “the lad himself”.

Tony Hart . Had a tele programme in seventies called Take Hart he could turn a tub of salt into a landscape.

I don't rate 'The Rebel,' I think even more he's a government agent paid to decry art, though to an extent I enjoy most debasing of art as an antidote to academia. When I lived in Barcelona I used to go to a hardcore porn cinema after the bleating 'women's issues'- Fine Art M.A. seminars, just for another point of view.

Passmore Freud Egg and Bacon, Dadd.

Hart was good, but I never once ever thought of doing what he did when he showed folk how to make things. Ditto Blue Peter.

(PCN) or parking ticket - fixed penalty ... As well as for parking, you can get a PCN for: NOWT

Pstotto wrote:Egg is far better than Bacon.

Bacon is all about rage and vileness and his contemporary style was a utilization of a minimal talent.

That's not to denigrate making use of what one can, in fact I do it.

However, Egg touches on a more profound cosmological mysticism than a mere fixation on horror.

This profound cosmology is intrinsic not only to his subject matter, but also via his brilliant draughtsman-ship and outstanding use of oil paints.

Whilst horror and vileness may be all the rage, Bacon's portraits are poorly executed according to a superficial graphic formula that will wane in better times.

His triptych of Freud is a ludicrous incomprehension of cubism and perhaps the worst ever made and whoever paid £100 million for it, I better not insult to the level they deserve, but it might go along to the tune of the Worzels and 'You got a bacon freud.'

If it is was made as a sick joke as a parody, that doesn't excuse it and its general witlessness leads me to think it wasn't satirical as a parody.

We’re never going to agree about this Pstotto, but I’m glad you’ve been so active on this post.

Genuine favourite is Lowry. I just see so much and so many layers in his paintings and will cross the road or go into another room if one of his works or a print is on display.

Turner by a mile, with a soft spot for Millais and Spencer.

There are some Turners in the Clore gallery at Tate Britain in London that I think are fakes.

If you look at his watercolours they show exact and tenacious draughtsmanship and a good knowledge of architectonic form.

However there are some large paintings in the Clore gallery of animals in pastoral scenes and the animals are atrocious and look almost like abstract renderings, yet without any of the 'into-abstraction' mysticism quality of his other works.

The Beaney Gallery in Canterbury is full of oil paintings by Sidney Cooper R.A. who was active around the same time as Turner and in comparison, these Turner pictures are ham-fisted to say the least.

I was shocked to see how bad they were.

Turner quite clearly could paint animals because there are others in other paintings that are well painted.

Now things are different as to what constitutes 'Fine Art:'

https:www:saatchiart.com/art/Photography'All-Included-Racer/15243/4289324/view

Sir Alfred Munnings deserves a mention.

Different artists from different periods represent differing views of what is now perceived as art.

Before the camera an artist didn't produce 'art' he reproduced a vision, a image, a story.
Artists after the camera produced 'art' as an alternative to the capture of a vision.

When comparing various art forms one should bear in mind the era.

Holman-Hunt, Turner and Milllais for me

I would say Turner.