This course will provide a detailed study of those painters and sculptors who are deemed British masters/mistresses. Our studies begin in the early 18th century when a distinctive British School emerged and with it the establishment of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. This flowering of home-grown talent was supported in the nineteenth century by an increasingly wealthy middle class who wanted to ‘buy British’. Finally, we take a look at the developments in the twentieth and  twenty-first centuries and the course ends with an assessment of contemporary artists who are likely to be considered the masters of tomorrow. Artists will be studied chronologically and considered in the cultural and social context of their time.