The Ancients were a group of English artists who were brought together by their attraction to archaism in art and admiration for the work of William Blake

William Blake

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...

. The core members of the Ancients were Samuel Palmer

Samuel Palmer

Samuel Palmer was a British landscape painter, etcher and printmaker. He was also a prolific writer. Palmer was a key figure in Romanticism in Britain and produced visionary pastoral paintings.-Early life:...

, George Richmond

George Richmond

For the 21st century educator see George H. RichmondGeorge Richmond was an English painter.George Richmond was the father of the painter William Blake Richmond as well as the grandfather of the naval historian, Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond.A keen follower of cricket, Richmond was noted in one...

, Edward Calvert. They met in Blake's apartment, dubbed the "House of Interpreter" and at the home of Samuel Palmer in the Kent

Kent

Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

 village of Shoreham

Shoreham, Kent

Shoreham is a village and civil parish in the valley of the River Darent six miles north of Sevenoaks in Kent: it is in the District of Sevenoaks. The parish includes the settlements of Badgers Mount and Well Hill....

.

The group were associated with the espousal of Christian and conservative social values (in contrast to Blake's own radicalism). Palmer in particular was opposed to the 1832 Reform Act, which expanded democracy. Christiana Payne, in the Grove Dictionary of Art, states,

"Their subject-matter was drawn from the Bible, or from a vision of a golden age of pastoral innocence and abundance that had both Christian and Vergilian overtones."

Other Associates

• Frederick Tatham
  Frederick Tatham
  Frederick Tatham was a British artist who was a member of the Shoreham Ancients, a group of followers of William Blake.The son of Charles Heathcote Tatham, an architect, Tatham and his brother and sister were all associated with the Ancients...
  
  ,
• His brother Arthur Tatham,
• John Linnell
  John Linnell (painter)
  John Linnell was an English landscape painter. Linnell was a naturalist and a rival to John Constable. He had a taste for Northern European art of the Renaissance, particularly Albrecht Dürer. He also associated with William Blake, to whom he introduced Samuel Palmer and others of the...
  
  ,
• Francis Oliver Finch
  Francis Oliver Finch
  Francis Oliver Finch , was an English water-colour painter.Finch was the son of Francis Finch, a merchant in Friday Street, Cheapside, London, was born 22 November 1802, and spent his boyhood at Stone, near Aylesbury...
  
  ,
• Welby Sherman
• John Giles (Palmer's cousin).