page_title: Ancients (art group)
section_title: Membership
hierarchical_section_title: Ancients (art group) / Membership
context_page_description: The Ancients were a group of young English artists and others who were brought together around 1824 by their attraction to archaism in art and admiration for the work of William Blake, who was a generation or two older than the group. The core members of the Ancients were Samuel Palmer, George Richmond, and Edward Calvert. Except for Palmer, the central members who were artists were all students at the Royal Academy of Arts. They met in Blake's apartment, dubbed the "House of Interpreter" and at the home of Samuel Palmer in the Kent village of Shoreham. The Ancients made little impact on the English artistic scene during the ten years or so that the group continued, but several members were later significant artists, and interest in the group has gradually increased since the late 19th-century.
  They were the first English manifestation of the formalised artistic "brotherhood", an artistic movement whose aims included elements of communal living and promotion of a general vision for society. Continental groups of this sort included the German Nazarene movement and the Barbus in Paris, and the most successful later English example was to be the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
context_section_description: If there was ever any formal list of members, it has not survived, but the main figures, recruited roughly between 1824 and 1827, were:
  Artists
  Edward Calvert (1799–1883);
  Frederick Tatham (1805–1878);
  Samuel Palmer (1805–1881);
  George Richmond  (1809–1896), the portrait painter;
  Francis Oliver Finch  (1802–1862);
  Henry Walter (c. 1786 – 1849);
  Welby Sherman;
  Others
  John Giles, a stockbroker, cousin and "constant supporter" of Palmer.
  Arthur Tatham (1808–1874), for over forty years rector of Broadoak and Boconoc, Cornwall, and prebendary of Exeter Cathedral, brother of Frederick Tatham.
  Also associated
  Julia Tatham (1811–1881), Frederick Tatham's sister, who married George Richmond;
caption: Edward Calvert, The Ploughman, wood engraving of 1827, 94 mm (3.7 in) by 140 mm (5.51 in)
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