A Visionary of the English Countryside The history of eighteenth-century English art is often told through the grand, sweeping narratives of London’s elite academies, yet some of its most evocative and enduring spirits resided in the quiet provinces. Nathan Drake (c. 1728 – 1778) was such a figure, a painter whose brush captured the rhythmic pulse of rural life with an intimacy that larger-than-life portraitists often overlooked. Born into a family defined by religious devotion—the son of the Reverend Samuel Drake, rector of St Mary’s in Nottingham—Nathan’s early years were steeped in the in…