Th centuries

George K. H. Coussmaker (1782) by Joshua Reynolds, continuing the tradition of Van Dyck

Portraits were, as elsewhere in Europe, much the most easiest and most profitable way for an artist to make a living, and the English tradition continued to draw of the relaxed elegance of the portrait style developed in England by Van Dyck, although there was little actual transmission from his work via his workshop. Leading portraitists were Thomas Gainsborough; Sir Joshua Reynolds, founder of the Royal Academy of Arts; George Romney; and Sir Thomas Lawrence. Joseph Wright of Derby was well known for his candlelight pictures, George Stubbs for his animal paintings. By the end of the century, the English swagger portrait was much admired abroad, and

had largely ceased to look for inspiration abroad.

The early 19th century also saw the emergence of the Norwich school of painters. Influenced by Dutch landscape painting and the landscape of Norfolk, the Norwich School were the first provincial art-movement outside of London. Short-lived due to sparse patronage and internal faction prominent members include 'founding father' John Crome, John Sell Cotman notable for his water-colours in particular and the promising but short-lived maritime painter Joseph Stannard.

On English coasts (1852) by William Holman Hunt

Paul Sandby was called the father of English watercolour painting. Other notable 18th and 19th-century landscape painters include Richard Wilson (born in Wales); George Morland; John Robert Cozens; Thomas Girtin; John Constable; J. M. W. Turner; and John Linnell.

The Pre-Raphaelite movement, established in the 1840s, dominated English art in the second half of the 19th century. Its members — William Holman Hunt; Dante Gabriel Rossetti; John Everett Millais and others — concentrated on religious, literary, and genre works executed in a colorful and minutely detailed almost photographic style.

Constable and Turner gave a depth and range to landscape painting that made it not only one of the most popular expressions of English art, but also one of its most important. Their achievements were complemented by a host of other landscape painters, including Richard Bonington, John Crome, John Sell Cotman, Robert Cozens, Thomas Girtin, and David Cox.

The Pre-Raphaelite movement, which was established in the 1840s, dominated English art for the rest of the century. Its members – such as Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and John Everett Millais – concentrated on religious, literary, and genre subjects, their style colourful and minutely detailed. At first ridiculed, the style of the Pre-Raphaelites produced a host of popular imitators. In the late 19th century the Arts and Crafts Movement, dominated by William Morris, promoted a revival of crafts and good design. Book illustration, a revival of which had been inaugurated by Thomas Stothard at the beginning of the century, flourished under the inspiration of both the Pre-Raphaelites and the Arts and Crafts Movement, its leading practitioners being Walter Crane, Kate Greenaway, Arthur Rackham, Aubrey Beardsley, Randolph Caldecott, John Tenniel, and William Morris.

Among the most popular artists of the day were George Watts, who made his name with allegories that expressed Victorian pieties; William Etty, who was one of the few artists to concentrate on the nude; Edward Landseer, who specialized in animal pictures; and Lord Leighton and Lawrence Alma-Tadema, both of whom made their reputations with lavish recreations of ancient Greek and Roman life.

By the end of the century English art was being influenced by French artists, in particular Edgar Degas and the Impressionists. The US-born artist James McNeill Whistler was typical, rejecting the concern with storytelling and descriptiveness that characterized so much Victorian art in favour of the aesthetics of form, colour, and tone. English Impressionists founded the New English Arts Club in 1886, and French influence, which continued well into the 20th century, can be seen in the work of Wilson Steer, John Singer Sargent (another American working in England), Walter Sickert, and Augustus John.

Themes

Its earliest known developed form, one that continues to the present-day, is arguably the decorative surface pattern work exemplified by the Lindisfarne Gospels and the exterior carving of Anglo-Saxon churches and monuments. Ackroyd argues that the concern for a light and delicate outline, for surface pattern for its own sake, and for patterns and borders that threaten to overwhelm the portrayal of figures, have all been long-standing characteristics of a continuous English art. Other elements Ackroyd sees as inherited from the early Celtic church are a concern to portray the essence of animals, a tendency to understatement, and a concern for repeating structures that extends from Celtic knotwork to church organ music to Staffordshire ceramic-ware to stained glass windows and to the wallpapers of William Morris. Strong agrees with Ackroyd on all these points.

English anti-intellectualism has led them to easily mingle fiction with observed facts, in order to invent 'traditions', but this has often given fresh life to traditions that would otherwise have gone stale. Pevsner noted, in the context of a consummate arts professionalism, a detachment and self-effacement among artists that often led them to belittle the act of creation, and to be willing to give away their ideas to be re-used by other artists.

Date: 2015-01-29; view: 877