The Camden Town Group in Context

London and its suburbs expanded at an extraordinary rate from the late nineteenth century to the outbreak of the First World War. Once a prosperous area, Camden Town in the north of the city had become shabby and run-down by the turn of the century largely through the development of the canal and railway systems. Large houses originally built for the middle classes and their servants, for example, had been divided into apartments, leaving few premises without boarders or lodgers.

Essays in this section focus on the spectacle of urban and suburban life as represented in Camden Town Group paintings and in contemporary literature, photographs and films. Explore the ways the artists captured the experience of life in the city and expressed their sense of its new beauty.