After the First World War there was a noticeable reluctance across Europe, and in Britain in particular, to engage in radical artistic innovations, with more traditional forms of figurative art in vogue. However within this range of figure painting and landscape there was still room for a wide range of approaches.

The works in this display illustrate these different methods, from the hard-edged, machine-inspired realism of William McCance and the sharply focussed realism of James Cowie and Mackintosh Patrick, to a different type of figurative art by Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood.