Norwich School

The Yarmouth Water Frolic, by John Crome. Crome was a founder member of the ‘Norwich School’ of painters, and left his native Norfolk, England, only once, on a visit to Paris, France. Preferring to paint open skies and tranquil rural scenes, he inspired a new generation of English artists.

English regional school of landscape painters, inspired by the 17th-century Dutch realist tradition of landscape painting, notably the work of Ruisdael. Founded in 1803, the school was made up of both professional and amateur artists and flourished until the 1830s. Its leading members were John Sell Cotman and John Crome.

They constituted a local school of landscape unique in the history of British art, and inviting a certain comparison with the French Barbizon School. The many minor but interesting artists of the school included Crome's son John Berney Crome, George Vincent, James Stark, Joseph and Alfred Stannard, John Thirtle, Thomas Lound, Henry Ninham, and Samuel David Colkett. The East Anglian heath and woodland, the River Yare, and the Norfolk coast provided many of their subjects.