David Inshaw

David Inshaw (b. 1943, Wednesfield, Staffordshire) is a British painter known for enigmatic landscapes and figure paintings in which memory, desire and the English countryside are closely intertwined. His work is particularly associated with Wiltshire and Dorset, where ancient earthworks, gardens, trees, fields and changing weather provide settings for scenes charged with a distinctive psychological atmosphere.

Inshaw studied at Beckenham School of Art from 1959 to 1963 and at the Royal Academy Schools from 1963 to 1966. In 1964 he was awarded a French Government Scholarship to study in Paris. He subsequently taught painting and printmaking at the West of England College of Art in Bristol before holding his first solo exhibition at the Arnolfini Gallery in 1969.

During the early 1970s his work moved decisively away from the Pop-influenced paintings of the previous decade towards a more personal form of landscape painting. After settling in Wiltshire in 1971, the surrounding countryside and his growing interest in the poetry and novels of Thomas Hardy became increasingly important. Figures, landscape and architecture were brought together in carefully constructed scenes that suggest memory, narrative and emotional tension without offering a fixed interpretation.

Inshaw came to widespread attention with The Badminton Game, acquired by Tate in 1973. Painted with extraordinary precision, the work places two women in a summer garden beneath a turbulent sky and has become one of his best-known paintings. Other works from the period, including Our Days were a Joy and Our Paths Through Flowers, similarly combine figures and landscape with a sense of mystery, drawing in part on Hardy’s writing and on Inshaw’s interest in the persistence of memory within particular places.

In 1975 Inshaw co-founded the Brotherhood of Ruralists with Peter Blake, Ann Arnold, Graham Arnold, Jann Haworth and Annie and Graham Ovenden. The group sought to reassert the importance of landscape, imagination and the rural tradition within contemporary British painting. They first exhibited together at the Royal Academy in 1976 and were subsequently the subject of exhibitions at the Arnolfini Gallery and Tate.

Although the Brotherhood later disbanded, the English landscape has remained central to Inshaw’s work. Ancient sites such as Silbury Hill, the Wiltshire downs and the Dorset coast recur alongside gardens, trees, bonfires, moons and female figures. His technique has evolved from the minute, highly finished brushwork of the early paintings towards a broader and more expressive handling of paint, while retaining the intense atmosphere and sense of place that characterise his work.

Andrew Lambirth, author of the first major monograph on Inshaw, has described him as “a contemporary interpreter of Hardy’s Wessex”, noting the way his paintings combine an appreciation of landscape with recurring references to women, memory and the art of the past.

Inshaw has exhibited widely in Britain and internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include A Vision of Landscape at The Redfern Gallery in 2019, Naked in 2022 and Thinking the Landscape in 2025. His work is held in major public collections including Tate, the Arts Council Collection, the British Council Collection, Bristol Museum & Art Gallery and the British Museum, which holds examples of his printmaking.

David Inshaw is represented by The Redfern Gallery.