This paper sets out to explore how paintings of rural scenes made during the Industrial Revolution were a panacea for communal loss to an agrarian way of life.  Today there is ecological grief not only through the depletion of, but also connection with nature; but more precisely as the political philosopher and social reformer Robert Owen said “the Industrial Revolution was such a major change, and produced what was virtually a new kind of human being.” Putting into question what is happening today regarding technology and the seemingly stronger desire to find a way to reengage.  

During the twentieth century rural landscape paintings were often dismissed as nostalgic or myopic—an aesthetic once associated with the taste of middleclass Victorians, influencing a viewpoint in which the skill of pre‑Modernist painters became undervalued. While such works appealed to a Victorian aesthetic it appears similar ideals persist through advertising today, by continuing to draw on rural nostalgia to drive consumerism. Raymond Williams highlighted this phenomenon in 1979, yet questions remain about why these images resonate with audiences lacking direct rural experience. One explanation suggests an inherited sense of place—genetic, ecological, or cultural—that evokes familiarity and wellbeing. Although contested, research into the restorative effects of nature supports the idea that historic landscape paintings were consumed by a sense of longing whereas today advertising depicting rural scenes is potentially exploiting this deep yearning, prompting a reconsideration of “rural nostalgia” not as sentimentality, but as a desire to go home