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Earliest art

English art

English art is the body of visual arts made in England. Following historical surveys such as Creative Art In England by William Johnstone (1936 and 1950), Nikolaus Pevsner attempted a definition in his 1956 book The Englishness of English Art, as did Sir Roy Strong in his 2000 book The Spirit of Britain: A narrative history of the arts, and Peter Ackroyd in his 2002 book The Origins of the English Imagination.

Although medieval English painting, mostly religious, had a strong national tradition and was at times influential on the rest of Europe, it was in decline from the 15th century. The Protestant Reformation, which was especially destructive of art in England, not only brought the tradition to an abrupt stop but resulted in the destruction of almost all wall-paintings. Only illuminated manuscripts now survive in good numbers.

 

Earliest art

The oldest art in England can be dated to the Neolithic period, including the large ritual landscapes such as Stonehenge from c. 2600 BC. From around 2150 BC, the Beaker people learned how to make bronze, and use both tin and gold. They became skilled in metal refining and works of art placed in graves or sacrificial pits have survived. In the Iron Age, a new art style arrived as Celtic culture spread across the British Isles. Though metalwork, especially gold ornaments, was still important, stone and most likely wood was also used. This style continued into the Roman period, beginning in the 1st century BC, and would find a renaissance in the Medieval period. The arrival of the Romans brought the Classical style of which many monuments have survived, especially funerary monuments, statues and busts. They also brought glasswork and mosaics. In the 4th century, a new element was introduced as the first Christian art was made in Britain. Several mosaics with Christian symbols and pictures have been preserved. The style of Romano-British art follows that of the continent, there are some local specialities, influenced by Celtic art; the Staffordshire Moorlands Pan is one example.

Medieval

Medieval: 10th–15th centuries

 

English art

Painting and sculpture in England from the 10th century. (For English art before the 10th century, see Celtic art and Anglo-Saxon art.) The strong tradition of manuscript illumination was continued from earlier centuries. Portrait painting flourished from the late 15th century (initially led by artists from Germany and the Low Countries) through the 18th (Thomas Gainsborough, Joshua Reynolds) and into the 20th (David Hockney, Lucian Freud). Landscape painting reached its high point in the 19th century with John Constable and J M W Turner. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood produced a Victorian version of medievalism. In the early 20th century the Camden Town Group and the Bloomsbury Group responded to modern influences in painting, and in sculpture the work of Jacob Epstein, Henry Moore, and Barbara Hepworth led progressively towards abstraction. In the 1950s pop art began in the UK. Conceptual artists in the latter part of the 20th century experimented with mixed and sometimes unusual media, such as dead animals (Damien Hirst).



As elsewhere in Europe, the painting and sculpture of this period was religious and sometimes had an international rather than distinctively national character. Few examples of medieval English painting have survived, though the decoration of churches encouraged wall painting. During the 13th century painting flourished under the patronage of Henry III, but in the 14th it declined as a result of the Wars of the Roses. The 10th-century schools of Winchester and Canterbury produced illuminated manuscripts such as the Benedictional of St Ethelwold (about 960–80; British Museum, London). Later examples include the Lutterell Psalter (about 1340; British Museum). One of the few named figures of the period was the 13th-century illuminator and chronicler Matthew Paris. The late 14th-century Wilton Diptych (National Gallery, London), showing Richard II presented to the Virgin and Child, is a rare example of medieval panel painting. What little sculpture has survived the destructions of the Reformation – and, later, the Civil War of the 17th century – is heavily indebted to French works.

After Roman rule, the Anglo-Saxons brought Germanic traditions, seen in the metalwork of Sutton Hoo. Anglo-Saxon sculpture was outstanding for its time, at least in the small works in ivory or bone that are almost all that have survived. Especially in Northumbria, the Insular art style shared across the British Isles produced much of the finest work being produced in Europe until the Viking raids and invasions largely suppressed the movement; the Book of Lindisfarne is one example certainly produced in Northumbria.

 


Date: 2015-01-29; view: 1156


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