The Treasur Island

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TREASURE ISLAND
BRITISH ART FROM HOLBEIN TO HOCKNEY
2012
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www.march.es
Fundación Juan March
This catalogue and
its Spanish edition are
published on the occasion
of the exhibition
TREASURE
ISLAND
B R I T I S H A RT
F RO M
HOLBEIN
TO H O C K N E Y
F U N DAC I Ó N J UAN MAR C H
Madrid
5 October 2012
20 January 2013

2

3

TREASURE
ISLAND
B R I T I S H A RT
F RO M
HOLBEIN
TO H O C K N E Y
Madrid, 2012

5 TIM BLANNING

A CK N O W LE DGE M E N T S
The Fundación Juan March wishes to express its gratitude to the following individuals
and institutions for their collaboration, assistance and the loan of works that have made
this exhibition possible:
FRANCE PORTUGAL
Centre Pompidou, Paris. Musée national d’art moderne / Centre de création industrielle: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon: João Castel-Branco Pereira
Alfred Pacquement, Evelynne Blanc Coleção CAM-Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon: Isabel Carlos
GERMANY SPAIN
Frankfurter Goethe-Haus: Petra Maisak Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid: Glòria Pérez-Salmerón, María Luisa Cuenca
Fundación COFF, San Sebastián: Sergio Ordóñez Falcón
GREAT BRITAIN Fundación Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid: Elena Hernando, Carmen Espinosa
Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums Collections: Ann Steed / Arts Council Collection, London: Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, Bilbao: Javier Viar, Javier Novo
Jill Constantine / The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford: Christopher Brown, Aisha Burtenshaw / Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid: Miguel Zugaza, Isabel Bennasar
Blunham Parish Church, Bedfordshire: Roy Tipping / Bristol Museums & Art Gallery: Kate Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid: Guillermo Solana
Brindley, Alice Rymill / British Council, London: Andrea Rose, Diana Eccles / British Council, Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. Calcografía Nacional,
Madrid: Isabel Fernádez / The British Library, London: Barbara O’Connor, Robert Davies / Madrid: Juan Bordes, Pilar García
The British Museum, London: Neil MacGregor, Hugo Chapman / Colchester and Ipswich
Museums Service: Joan Lyall / Compton Verney House Trust (Peter Moores Foundation): UNITED STATES
Steven Parissien, Morgan Jones / The Courtauld Gallery, London: Ernst von Vegelin, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven: Amy Meyers, Angus Trumble
Barnaby Wright / Ferens Art Gallery, Hull Museums: Kirsten Simister / The Fine Art
Society, London: Robert Upstone, Simon Edson / University of Glasgow Library, Special
Collections: Julie Gardham, Lou Robertson / Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London: Jeremy
Johnson / Haunch of Venison, London: Ben Tufnell / The Henry Moore Foundation, Much
Hadham, Hertfordshire: Richard Calvocoressi, Sebastiano Barassi, Suzanne Eustace,
Theodora Georgiou / Imperial War Museum, London: Robert Crawford, Jessica Stewart /
The Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust: Gillian Crumpton / Kirklees Museums and Galleries,
Dewsbury Town Hall: Richard Butterfield, Grant Scanlan / Leeds Museum and Galleries
(Leeds Art Gallery): John Roles, Rebecca Herman / Lee Miller Archives: Ami Bouhassane /
Manchester City Galleries: Maria Balshaw, Phillippa Wood / National Library of Scotland,
Edinburgh: Graham Hogg, Martin Graham, David Kerr / National Portrait Gallery, London:
Sandy Nairne, David McNeff, Rebecca Rhodes, Juliet Simpson / National Railway Museum,
York and Shildon: Steve Davies, Sarah Norville / The National Trust: Alistair Laing, Fernanda
Torrente / New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester: Simon Lake, Claire Cooper / Norfolk PRIVATE COLLECTIONS
Museums & Archaeology Service: Vanessa Trevelyan, Giorgia Bottinelli / Pallant House Collection Geoffrey Beare
Gallery, Chichester: Stefan van Raay, Simon Martin / The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in The Duke of Buccleuch & Queensberry KBE: Duke of Buccleuch, Gareth Fitzpatrick,
British Art: Brian Allen, Martin Postle / Penlee House Gallery & Museum, Penzance, Cornwall: Sandra Howat
Alison Bevan, Katie Herbert / Piano Nobile Gallery, London: Robert Travers / River and Collection Dr I.K. Patterson
Rowing Museum, Henley-on-Thames: Rachel Wragg, Eloise Chapman / Royal Academy of Collection Kevin Prosser QC
Arts, London: Charles Saumarez-Smith, Edwina Mulvany / The Royal Collection: Jonathan Collection Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza on deposit in Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Marsden, Desmond Shawe-Taylor, Jennifer Scott / Ruskin Foundation (Ruskin Library, Collection James Saunders Watson: James Saunders Watson, Andrew Norman
Lancaster University): Stephen Wildman / Richard Saltoun – John Austin, London / Senate Collection Alessandra and Simon Wilson
House Libraries, University of London: Christine Wise / Shell Art Collection: Nicky Balfour Collection David and Diana Wood
Penney / Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead: Amy Barker, Sim Panesar / Sidney Sussex College, The Wyndham Lewis Memorial Trust: G. and V. Lane Collection: Graham Lane
Cambridge: Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Nicholas Rogers, Nick Allen, Rosamond McKitterick /
Southampton City Art Gallery: Tim Craven / St John’s College, Cambridge: Kathryn McKee / Our thanks also go to all those lenders who have chosen to remain anonymous.
The Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s Cathedral: The Revd Canon Mark Oakley, Simon Carter /
Tate: Nicholas Serota, Caroline Collier, David Blayney Brown, Helen Little, Martin Myrone,
Kathy Richmond, Nicole Simões da Silva, Alison Smith, Chris Stephens, Ian Warrell and
Andrew Wilson / Tate Library & Archive: Krzysztof Cieszkowski / University of Nottingham,
Manuscripts and Special Collections: Corinne Fawcett / Victoria and Albert Museum, London: Likewise, we wish to thank Marta Ramírez and Lucía Blanco for their assistance in research;
Martin Roth, Rebecca Wallace, Paul Williamson / Watts Gallery, Compton: Perdita Hunt, Mark and the library staff of the Fundación Juan March: Paz Fernández and José Luis Maire.
Bills / The Weiss Gallery, London: Mark Weiss, Florence Evans / Wellcome Library, London: We are grateful also to Martin Beisly, Javier Blas, Tim Bryars, Sara Holdsworth, Richard
Katherine Knowles, Luana Franceschet / Wolverhampton Art Gallery: Corinne Miller, Marks, José Manuel Matilla, Christopher Newall, David Pitcher, Anne Taylor and Andrés
Marguerite Nugent / The Provost and Fellows of Worcester College, Oxford: Joanna Parker Úbeda for their valuable help and collaboration.

LE N D E R S
FRANCE OXFORD The Ashmolean Museum [Cats. 35, 72, 92, 97, 144]
PARIS Centre Pompidou, Paris. Musée national d’art moderne / The Provost and Fellows of Worcester College [Cat. 26]
Centre de création industrielle [Cat. 124] PENZANCE Penlee House Gallery & Museum, Penzance, Cornwall [Cat. 104]
PERRY GREEN, MUCH HADHAM The Henry Moore Foundation, Much Hadham,
GERMANY
Hertfordshire [Cats. 133, 137]
FRANKFURT Frankfurter Goethe-Haus [Cat. 69] SOUTHAMPTON Southampton City Art Gallery [Cats. 131, 132]
STOURTON, WARMINSTER Stourhead, The Hoare Collection (The National Trust) [Cat. 77]
WOLVERHAMPTON Wolverhampton Art Gallery [Cat. 41]
GREAT BRITAIN
WREXHAM Erddig House, The Yorke Collection (The National Trust) [Cat. 32]
ABERDEEN Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums Collections [Cats. 56, 66]
YORK National Railway Museum, York and Shildon [Cat. 121]
BANBURY Upton House, The Bearsted Collection (The National Trust) [Cat. 59]
BEAULIEU Shell Art Collection, Hampshire [Cat. 146]
PORTUGAL
BLUNHAM Blunham Parish Church, Bedfordshire [Cat. 1]
BRISTOL Bristol Museums & Art Gallery [Cats. 65, 154] LISBON Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation [Cat. 98]
Coleção CAM-Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian [Cat. 158]
CAMBRIDGE Sidney Sussex College [Cats. 9, 10, 11, 14]
St John’s College [Cats. 115, 116]
CHASTLETON, NEAR MORETON-IN-MARSH Chastleton House, The Whitmore-Jones Collection SPAIN
(The National Trust) [Cat. 139] BILBAO Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao [Cat. 108]
CHICHESTER Pallant House Gallery [Cat. 159] MADRID Biblioteca Nacional de España [Cat. 52]
CHIDDINGLY Lee Miller Archives [Cat. 148] Fundación Lázaro Galdiano [Cat. 40]
COALBROOKDALE, TELFORD The Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust [Cat. 78] Museo Nacional del Prado [Cats. 43, 48]
COLCHESTER Colchester and Ipswich Museums Service [Cat. 61] Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza [Cats. 125, 126]
COMPTON Watts Gallery [Cat. 99] Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando.
COMPTON VERNEY Compton Verney House Trust (Peter Moores Foundation), Calcografía Nacional [Cats. 33, 55, 84, 85]
Warwickshire [Cat. 38] SAN SEBASTIÁN Fundación COFF [Cat. 112]
DEWSBURY Kirklees Museums and Galleries, Dewsbury Town Hall [Cat. 74]
EDINBURGH National Library of Scotland [Cats. 143, 149, 175] UNITED STATES
GATESHEAD Shipley Art Gallery [Cat. 34] NEW HAVEN Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection,
GLASGOW University of Glasgow Library, Special Collections [Cats. 31, 51, 80] New Haven [Cats. 17, 20, 36, 37, 42, 44, 58]
HENLEY-ON-THAMES River and Rowing Museum [Cat. 21]
HULL Ferens Art Gallery, Hull Museums [Cats. 49, 96]
LANCASTER Ruskin Foundation (Ruskin Library, Lancaster University) [Cat. 75]
LEEDS Leeds Museum and Galleries (Leeds Art Gallery) [Cat. 134]
LEICESTER New Walk Museum and Art Gallery [Cats. 106, 129, 152]
LONDON Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre [Cat. 160, 162]
British Council [Cats. 136, 150, 151, 155, 163, 168, 172]
The British Library [Cats. 12, 13, 27, 28, 53, 109, 110, 111, 114, 119]
The British Museum [Cats. 45, 46, 47, 62, 63]
The Courtauld Gallery [Cats. 120, 135]
The Fine Art Society [Cat. 102] PRIVATE COLLECTIONS
Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London [Cats. 93, 94] Collection Geoffrey Beare [Cat. 113]
Haunch of Venison [Cat. 171] The Duke of Buccleuch & Queensberry KBE [Cats. 5, 18, 19]
Imperial War Museum [Cats. 128, 138, 141] Collection Dr I. K. Patterson [Cat. 147]
National Portrait Gallery [Cats. 2, 4, 6, 22, 23] Collection Kevin Prosser QC [Cat. 91]
Piano Nobile Gallery [Cat. 156] Collection Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza on deposit in Museo
Royal Academy of Arts [Cat. 60] Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid [Cat. 103]
The Royal Collection [Cats. 16, 90] Collection James Saunders Watson [Cat. 39]
Senate House Libraries, University of London [Cat. 86] Collection Alessandra and Simon Wilson [Cats. 88, 89, 117, 118]
The Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s Cathedral [Cat. 24] Collection David and Diana Wood [Cats. 29, 30]
Tate [Cats. 64, 70, 71, 73, 95, 100, 107, 123, 157, 166, 167, 170, 173] The Wyndham Lewis Memorial Trust: G. and V. Lane Collection [Cats. 140, 142]
Tate Library & Archive [Cats. 82, 145, 174, 177] Private Collection. Courtesy of Nevill Keating Pictures [Cat. 6]
Victoria and Albert Museum [Cats. 50, 57, 83, 127] Private Collection, London. Courtesy Richard Saltoun / John Austin, London [Cat. 165]
Wellcome Library [Cats. 54, 76] Private Collection. Courtesy of The Weiss Gallery, London [Cats. 3, 7, 8]
MANCHESTER Manchester City Galleries [Cats. 122, 130]
NORWICH Norfolk Museums & Archaeology Service [Cats. 67, 68] OTHER PRIVATE COLLECTIONS
NOTTINGHAM University of Nottingham, Manuscripts and Special Collections [Cat. 79] [Cats. 15, 81, 87, 101, 105, 153, 161, 164, 169, 176, 178, 179]

8

CONTENTS

11 The Island’s Treasure
Foreword
16 Where was British Art?

Richard Humphreys
46 England and the British Isles 1485–1980

Tim Blanning
64 “The Isle is Full of Noises”:

A Very Short Introduction to English Literature
Kevin Jackson

84 Works in the exhibition
87 Destruction and Reformation 1520–1620
107 Revolution and the Baroque 1620–1720
129 Society and Satire 1720–1800
163 Landscapes of the Mind 1760–1850
201 Realism and Reaction 1850–1900
235 Modernity and Tradition 1900–1940
269 Brave New World 1945–1980
315 Chronology (1477–1979)
318 Indices
Chronological Index of Artists
Alphabetical Index of Artists
321 Catalogue of Works in the Exhibition
327 Select Bibliography
331 Exhibition Catalogues and other Publications by the Fundación Juan March

9

THE ISLAND’S TREASURE
Foreword
Art aficionados are certainly familiar with celebrated figures such as Turner and Constable, Bacon and
Hockney. More recently, they cannot have failed to notice the sensation surrounding contemporary
artists who are as controversial as they are media-savvy and international in their orientation: the
generation of “Young British Artists” including Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Chris Ofili and Tracey
Emin, among others. Few, however, would think of Hans Holbein or Anthony van Dyck as British artists,
nor are they likely to be familiar with the work of artists such as Jan Siberechts or Marcus Gheeraerts.
In contrast to French, German or Italian art, it is quite possible that art lovers and dedicated museum-
goers in general have not managed to acquire a thorough grasp of the extraordinary scope and vitality of
art in Great Britain since the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century through to the twentieth.
It is perhaps owing to the “eccentric” character of the British Isles vis-à-vis Continental Europe – a
certain différence anglaise or its famous “splendid isolation” – that its history of art is less familiar to
us than other regions and countries in the West, despite Britain’s enormous historical and geopolitical
importance. It is therefore reasonable to ponder British art’s whereabouts: where has it been hiding?
This catalogue accompanies an exhibition (whose title, Treasure Island, of course invokes that
of an eminently British writer, Robert Louis Stevenson) that is founded on a very simple conviction:
namely, that the island has not been explored fully and that it conceals a real treasure in its art, its
painting and sculpture, which, like almost every treasure, remains half-hidden, yet to be discovered.
Inspired by the common sense so characteristic of British philosophers, writers and historians, the
exhibition and its catalogue aspire to offer a wide-ranging reply to this question, or, more specifically,
to the matter of where British art has been since the Reformation.
Evidently, British art was and continues to be found above all in the British Isles. In fact, Treasure
Island: British Art from Holbein to Hockney is an exhibition that emerged out of another “British”
show at the Fundación Juan March three years ago: the exhibition devoted to the artist Wyndham
Lewis, held from February to May 2010, for which the vast majority of the over one hundred works on
display came from private and public collections in Great Britain.
In addition to affording an opportunity to establish very close ties to a large number of scholars,
collectors, museum directors and curators from all over Great Britain, the research and work car-
ried out for the Wyndham Lewis exhibition expanded significantly our knowledge – in its breadth
and depth – of British culture, its history and its great variety. This increased familiarity led to a
fascination and a great admiration and ultimately to the proposal for another exhibition that could
expose the Spanish public to British art. What developed was the idea of designing a kind of “com-
panion-to” show, in imitation of that very Britannic genre of books that provides an introduction
to some branch or corner of knowledge and its appreciation – in this case a March Companion to
British Art, an effort to select and gather a series of works that could guide and accompany viewers
11

and readers in their tour through five centuries of British art. This aesthetic tour, replete with literary
references, ranges from the iconoclasm of the sixteenth-century Puritans and the secular art of Hans
Holbein to the work of true icons of recent British art such as Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, David
Hockney, Peter Blake, Richard Hamilton, and Richard Long.
From that initial premise, the idea of involving Richard Humphreys as a guest curator seemed
almost self-evident. He had served along with Professor Paul Edwards as a special consultant for the
Wyndham Lewis project (an artist about whom he has contributed a volume in the British Artist Series
published by Tate). His studies in English Literature at Cambridge, and Art History at the Courtauld
Institute, his long career at Tate as a curator and as the Head of Education, the exhibitions he has over-
seen, his publications and, finally, his exhaustive knowledge of British art and art institutions made
him the ideal person for this project. A reading of any passage from his Tate Britain Companion to
British Art (2001) is enough to convince anyone, furthermore, that his vast knowledge is accompanied
by a sharp intellect, an ability to synthesise and a keen sense of humour. These qualities have enriched
the project enormously.
Richard Humphreys, then, would be our “Demon Pantechnicon Driver,” to borrow Lewis’ epithet
for Ezra Pound. In this case, his removals van would serve to carry works of art from places in the
past to a new space, one that is both physical and interpretative – for what else is an exhibition? It re-
mained for us to decide what approach to such a broad subject we would adopt. Would it be a thematic
exhibition, an anthology of masterpieces or a focus on one angle of British art (such as, for instance,
its significant literary component)? Would it offer a new view of art history, a new thesis about the
specificity of British art?
In the end, the approach with Treasure Island: British Art from Holbein to Hockney is a sum of all
these possible perspectives, though filtered through a decidedly empirical and pragmatic lens: the
notion of places. The idea that lies behind this project is that we can arrive at more precise knowledge
of what occurred in the arts in Great Britain when we enquire into where it was and is, instead of what
it was and is.
British art, we learn in this catalogue’s main essay, is what we find in 1477 in Eton College; in
the distant native American village of Pomeiooc in North America in 1585; in St Paul’s Cathedral,
London, around 1712; in Lucknow, India, in 1784; in Roger Fry’s Omega Workshops in 1913; in the
Whitechapel Gallery in London in 1956; or in Francis Bacon’s studio in South Kensington, London,
in the 1960s. As is the case with treasure hunters or with historians (who are treasure hunters of the
past), this matter of geographical spaces proves to be enormously illuminating, despite the apparent
simplicity of the question we have posed. With British art in particular, this may be the consequence
of a tradition and social customs that favour lived experience over theoretical speculation. Indeed,
without falling into the trap of facile and dubious readings of national “physiognomies” or “psyches”
in works of art, our approach in this exhibition leads to what might be a surprising initial discovery:
far from the rigid corset implied by national schools or by belonging to a country, a state, a nation
or an empire, in British art one perceives a kind of “universal localism”. A considerable number of
foreign artists made Great Britain their home and their place of work. (Wyndham Lewis himself
was born off the coast of Nova Scotia in the yacht owned by his father, an American.) In this way,
a chronicle of British art presents it from the outset as strikingly universal. Though the features of
British art are undeniably unique and particular, the work of the most prominent artists in Britain
was born and evolved alongside more general historical and artistic events.
This topical approach to British art (topical in the sense of “place” or “space”) is naturally comple-
mented by a temporal perspective. The exhibition reviews the works and places of British art with a
visual tour spanning more than five centuries of its history. With the aim of bringing these treasures
12

of the British Isles to light, Treasure Island presents over 180 pieces – paintings, sculptures, works on
paper, books, magazines, manifestos and photographs – produced by more than a hundred different
artists, giving an account of the arts in Great Britain that makes manifest the power and particular
significance of certain creators and works. This wealth of art is organised in seven sections, each cor-
responding to a different era.
In the first section, Destruction and Reformation (1520–1620), we present examples of religious
sculptures damaged by Puritan iconoclasts during the Protestant Reformation, which reveal the pro-
found break with the medieval past that England witnessed beginning in the 1530s. It also includes
works by the most prominent artists from the period, such as Hans Holbein, Robert Peake, Marcus
Gheeraerts and William Larkin, along with the great miniaturists Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver,
as well as manuscripts, John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (The Book of Martyrs), the King James Bible
from 1611, popular prints and emblem books.
Revolution and the Baroque (1620–1720) features court culture under the Stuart dynasty with
portraits by Anthony van Dyck, Peter Lely, William Dobson and Godfrey Kneller. James Thornhill’s
history painting and the landscapes by Jan Siberechts point to a series of events that affected British
art after 1660, when a manifestly “modern” art world began to take shape. The section is completed
with set designs and costumes for masques by Inigo Jones, political caricatures, masterpieces from
the printing press, maps, and prints by Wenceslaus Hollar.
The section titled Society and Satire (1720–1800) juxtaposes society portraits by artists such
as Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough and Thomas Lawrence with the social satire of James
Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson. Beginning with William Hogarth and the artists (such as Fran-
cis Hayman) connected to the recently established exhibition spaces at Vauxhall Gardens and the
Foundling Hospital in London in the 1740s, we can see how the new dynamism of British art paved
the way for an expanded market, which included the arrival on the scene of Antonio Canaletto and
the achievements of the “Golden Age” of the House of Hanover and the Regency. Works by Louis-
François Roubiliac and Joseph Nollekens provide excellent examples of rococo and neo-classical
sculpture portraits that became so fashionable in the period.
Landscapes of the Mind (1760–1850) examines the notion of landscape in various senses of the
word. Paintings by Richard Wilson, Thomas Gainsborough, George Stubbs, John Constable and
J.M.W. Turner reflect the emergence of landscape painting and developments up to its high point at
the beginning of the nineteenth century. These works are complemented by the innovative water-
colours of Thomas Girtin, Samuel Palmer and others. Meanwhile, the imaginative history paintings
of James Barry, Joseph Wright, Henry Fuseli, William Blake and John Martin reveal a new tendency
– one that was often marked by political radicalism – toward the fanciful and fantastical. Sculptures
by John Flaxman and Thomas Banks, in turn, suggest the underlying power of neo-classicism
throughout this period. Books by William Gilpin and Alexander Cozens, prints by Thomas Rowland-
son for the satirical series Doctor Syntax, images from John Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery, George
Stubbs’ The Anatomy of the Horse, images of industrial Britain and illustrated books by William Blake
round out this section.
The appearance of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in mid-nineteenth-century England coincid-
ed with the great period of realism and naturalism in Continental Europe. Realism and Reaction
(1850–1900) presents works by John Frederick Lewis and David Roberts, as well as others by Pre-
Raphaelites such as John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt. These pieces serve to highlight
the variety and strength of British art from the 1840s through to the 1860s. The Symbolist and aes-
theticist reaction at the end of the nineteenth century to scientific values and materialism is reflected
in the work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Coley Burne-Jones, J.A.M. Whistler and Frederic
13

Leighton. This section also includes sculptures by George Frederic Watts and Alfred Gilbert, together
with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley. In addition, there are examples of Victorian photography by
Roger Fenton and J.M. Cameron, popular art publications, illustrated works of fiction, and the great
edition of Chaucer published by William Morris’ Kelmscott Press.
The last years of the nineteenth century witnessed the arrival of Impressionist and Post-
Impressionist art in Britain. The generation of modern figurative artists that leapt onstage in the
early twentieth century is represented in Modernity and Tradition (1900–1940) by Walter Richard
Sickert, Henry Lamb, Gwen John and Spencer Gore. A more radical approach that often verges on
the abstract is found in the art of Wyndham Lewis, Duncan Grant and David Bomberg. The works of
Edward Wadsworth, Ben Nicholson, Paul Nash, Edward Burra and Meredith Frampton, meanwhile,
serve to reveal an intimate dialogue between the most traditional styles and international modern-
ism, including Surrealism, after 1920. The pieces by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Henry Moore tell
a similar tale in the form of sculptures in wood and stone. The section is completed with examples
of design from the Omega Workshops, copies of the journals Blast, The Tyro and Circle, the political
satire of James Boswell, Paul Nash’s photography and other fascinating documents.
Finally, a section with an ironically Huxleyan title, Brave New World (1945–1980), describes
the major expansion of British art after the Second World War. Works by Lucian Freud, R.B. Kitaj
and Frank Auerbach represent the famous artists of the so-called School of London. Sculptures by
Barbara Hepworth, Reg Butler, Eduardo Paolozzi and Anthony Caro reflect a revitalisation of the
medium in Britain that earned it international recognition. The Surrealist landscapes of Graham
Sutherland; L.S. Lowry’s industrial ones; Peter Coker’s realism; Pop Art by Peter Blake, Richard
Hamilton and David Hockney; abstract works by Peter Lanyon, Bridget Riley and Howard Hodgkin;
Gerald Scarfe’s imagery; Tony Cragg’s assemblages; and the conceptual art of Keith Arnatt, Richard
Long and Ian Hamilton Finlay provide the final resounding chords in the exhibition, which stand in
open (and enriching) contrast to the art from earlier centuries.
In addition to the main essay by Richard Humphreys, the essays by Tim Blanning and Kevin
Jackson analyse the artistic, historical and literary dimensions of a history that is extremely rich in
visual terms though perhaps unfamiliar in its details to audiences in Spain. Furthermore, each of
the sections of the catalogue – and of the exhibition – includes a selection of texts (some of which
have never before been published in Spanish translation) that offer the reader a fuller sense of the
historical and cultural context of the works of art on display. These texts by artists, essayists, histo-
rians and literary writers are diverse in tone and content: legal provisions from Parliament or the
Crown, fragments from Peacham, Richardson, Addison, Pope, Hume, Shaftesbury, Turner, Consta-
ble and Cozens; texts by Whistler, Ruskin, Morris, Fry, Lewis, Read, Stokes and Alloway. The cata-
logue concludes with a brief bibliography intended as a guide for those who are interested in delving
further into those places of British art that an exhibition and its accompanying catalogue can only
explore partially.
The Fundación Juan March wishes to express its profound gratitude to all those people and
institutions that have made this exhibition possible. Richard Humphreys’ contribution as exhibition
curator was crucial for the project’s fruition. It has been an immense pleasure to work with him. We
would also like to thank Jo Banham for her wonderful and selflessly energetic collaboration, as well as
Tim Blanning and Kevin Jackson for their illuminating essays, and Jorge de la Fuente for his efficiency
in obtaining permissions and images. As always, we are grateful to Banca March and the Corporación
Financiera Alba for their support for the project.
Without the helpful cooperation of many institutions, obtaining works on loan for the exhibition
would have been a very complex task and, in some cases, impossible. For their generosity and
14

unwavering support, the Fundación Juan March wishes to acknowledge its indebtedness to
Christopher Brown, Director of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford; to Sandy Nairne, Director of the
National Portrait Gallery; to Brian Allen, Director of Studies at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies
in British Art in London; and to Amy Meyer, Director of the Yale Center for British Art. We owe
our sincere thanks also to the British Council in Madrid and London. From institutions in Spain,
we should like to acknowledge in particular the directors of the Fundación Lázaro Galdiano, the
Museo Nacional del Prado and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza; Elena Hernando, Miguel Zugaza
and Guillermo Solana have striven with efficiency and generous enthusiasm to facilitate the loan of
works that were fundamental for the project’s success; many thanks to all.
Finally, it must be stressed that the exhibition has benefited from the unconditional support and
from a series of extraordinary loans – in terms both of quality and quantity – from one of the most
important museums in the world: Tate. For these and many other reasons, our debt of gratitude to
its director, Nicholas Serota, as well as to Caroline Collier, Director of Tate National, and to Chris
Stephens, Head of Displays, is immense.
A famously droll headline from the British press in the 1950s alluded to the dense fog augured by
forecasters: “Fog in the Channel. Continent Cut Off”. The island wit who contrived these bons mots
turned the tables on the Continent, making it the territory isolated by the gloom hanging over the
English Channel. It is our hope that this exhibition and catalogue will help disperse other banks of
fog, providing people with a less obstructed vista of British art, so that in contemplating and enjoying
it they may enrich their knowledge.
FUNDACIÓN JUAN MARCH
Madrid, October 2012
15

WHERE
WAS
BRITISH
ART?
RICHARD HUMPHREYS

“Where was British art?” Where was it made, displayed and discussed over the years; and also, how [ F I G . 1]
Anon., Murals on north wall of Eton
was it used beyond the studio, gallery and academy, in peace and war, in the city and the country-
College Chapel, 1477–87. Wall painting
side? Here are some of the many and varied places where it has happened over five centuries. in oil. Reproduced by permission of the
Provost and Fellows of Eton College.
Eton College, Berkshire, 1477–87
Eton College has been the “alma mater” of many major public figures in Britain, from the Duke [ F I G . 1]
of Wellington to David Cameron, the current prime minister. There are even fictional Etonians,
most famously perhaps James Bond, agent 007. Founded by King Henry VI (1421–71) in 1440 as
a place of education for 70 poor scholars, it became the school where the British elite educated
their sons. Wellington claimed memorably that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing
fields of Eton.
At the heart of the school lies the great gothic chapel (1469–82), dedicated to “Our Lady of
Eton”, where a cult of the Virgin made it a place of pilgrimage. By 1487, it contained a set of murals
that survived the iconoclasm of the Reformation, to remind us of a visual culture that was almost
entirely eradicated by Puritans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Two series of grisaille
paintings in linseed oil, applied directly onto the stone walls by unknown artists, compare well
with the work of great Flemish artists such as Rogier van der Weyden and Hugo van der Goes.
The north wall carries images of the miracles associated with the Virgin and clear moral
narratives suitable to instruct the young boys and local people who attended the chapel. The
murals on the south wall tell the story of a mythical empress and her escape from execution, exile
on an island and discovery of the miraculous power of certain herbs in a vision of the Virgin.
The paintings were lost to sight in 1560, when Queen Elizabeth I (1533–1603) continued
the severe policies against religious imagery for which her brother King Edward VI (1537–53)
was notorious before the brief respite under the Catholic Queen Mary I (1516–58). They were
whitewashed and not uncovered until 1923. Most religious art in Britain suffered a worse fate:
paintings were scratched out and sculptures broken up, sometimes used as building material, or
buried by those who hoped they might one day be restored to a revived Catholic setting. They are
a poignant reminder of how a whole world disappeared so quickly and yet lurked under paint or
earth and haunted an often guilty British imagination in myriad ways thereafter.
17

Pomeiooc, North America, 1585
[ F I G . 2] John White was a “gentleman-artist” and map maker who accompanied the sailors and adven-
turers Ralph Lane and Richard Grenville, and the mathematician, astronomer and ethnographer
Thomas Harriot on their voyage to North America in 1585. The expedition was funded by one of
Queen Elizabeth I’s favourites, Walter Raleigh, who owned the land patent to what the English
called “Virginia”, and was intended to create a settlement, find out about the local population and
search for precious metals and other valuable materials. Harriot’s account of the journey, with
engravings by Theodor de Bry after White’s watercolours, is one of the most important documents
of early European colonisation of the Americas.
White, asked to “draw to life” what he saw, made watercolours of the Algonquin Indians, their
towns, cooking processes and clothing, as well as the fish and other wildlife of the eastern seaboard.
He returned to England in 1586 but was sent out again by Raleigh and the Virginia Company in
1587 to set up a colony in Chesapeake Bay, of which he was to be the governor. He took nearly 120
settlers with him, including his daughter and son-in-law. Their child was the first English person
born in North America.
In fact, the expedition settled on Roanoke Island and soon found the new life very difficult.
Relations with the local populations deteriorated quickly and supplies began to run out. White
arrived back in England after a disastrous sea passage and was unable to return to America until
1590. When he did so, he discovered a deserted and ruined settlement. All he found was “about
the place many of my things spoyled and broken, and my books torne from the covers, the frames
of some of my pictures and mappes rotten and spoyled with rayne, and my armour almost eaten
through with rust”.1 After searching for some time for the lost colonists, White returned to England
a broken man, the mystery remaining unsolved to this day.
Pomeiooc was a fortified town and White’s inscription says that it shows the “true forme of
their houses, covered and enclosed some with matts, and some with barcks of trees. All compassed
abowt with smale poles stock thick together in stedd of a wall.”2 Some of the houses are long, with
open sides showing the sleeping benches, others are oval. The “tempel” is the large one at top right
with the pointed roof that is covered with skins. In his description of the town, Harriot mentions
a pond, not visible in the drawing, and also the fire in the centre. Harriot and White were struck
by the complex social relations, hierarchy and family structures of the Algonquins, as well as their
religion and methods of cultivation. Later, White made drawings of ancient British warriors and
women, which stress their cultural and visual similarities to the Algonquins and other tribes that
he had studied. The drawings were made with watercolour and gouache over black lead sketches.
It seems likely that they were presented to Raleigh or another sponsor of the expedition.
Arundel House, London, 1618
[ F I G . 3] Queen Elizabeth was a cultivated and highly educated woman, yet she was not a significant patron
of the visual arts, perhaps betraying her Protestant preference for the word. It was the Stuart
monarchy and its courtiers that brought painting and sculpture into the heart of elite culture
in the early seventeenth century. The first great British art collector was Thomas Howard, 2nd
1
John White, quoted in Kim
Sloan, A New World:
England’s First View of America.
London: British Museum Press,
2007, 48.
2
Ibid., 113. 18 WHERE WAS BRITISH ART?

[ F I G . 2] [ F I G . 3]
John White, The village of Daniel Mytens, Thomas Arundel,
Pomeiooc, bird’s-eye view of huts 2nd Earl of Arundel, ca. 1618. Oil on
in palisade of stakes with Indians canvas, 207 x 127 cm. Courtesy the
around a fire, 1585. Watercolour National Portrait Gallery, London.
over graphite, heightened with Accepted in lieu of tax by H.M.
gold, 222 x 215 mm. The Trustees Government and allocated to the
of the British Museum, London. Gallery, 1980.
19 RICHARD HUMPHREYS

[ F I G . 4]
Glory, ca. 1700. Reredos painting
of the divinity above the altar in
Framlingham Church of St Michael
the Archangel, Suffolk. Courtesy Revd
Canon Graham Owen.
Earl of Arundel, a widely-travelled special envoy, connoisseur and patron of the arts, who invited
foreign artists such as Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck to London. With his Catholic fa-
mily background, wealth, privilege and love of art, Arundel was precisely the sort of powerful figure
in King James I’s (1566–1625) inner circle guaranteed to infuriate the Puritans and parliamenta-
rians who eventually went to war against King Charles I (1600–49) and who executed him in 1649.
Like the Palladian Banqueting House, built by Inigo Jones and decorated by Rubens with vast
ceiling paintings celebrating the Divine Right of monarchy, Arundel’s house on the Strand over-
looking the Thames was a symbol of everything that the opposition loathed. In the Dutch artist
Daniel Mytens’ portrait of Arundel, forming a pair with one of his wealthy wife, Alethea Talbot,
seated before a portrait gallery, the great collector is shown gesturing with a baton to a long gallery
of Roman sculpture leading the eye towards the Thames.
Art was now inflammatory. For his intemperate criticism in 1633 of the elaborate court
masques, designed by Inigo Jones and favoured by Charles I’s Catholic queen, Henrietta Maria,
the puritan William Prynne was branded on the cheeks and had his ears cut off by the authori-
ties. However, Prynne and his supporters had the ultimate revenge when Charles I’s execution
was conducted on a balcony outside the Banqueting House where masques were frequently held.
20 WHERE WAS BRITISH ART?

Arundel, like many other supporters of the king, died in exile, having reconverted to Catholicism
in Italy. His collections found their way in time to the Royal Collection and the Ashmolean
Museum in Oxford, and his influence on British taste was assured.
Church of St Michael the Archangel, Framlingham, Suffolk, ca. 1700
In the heart of an ancient market town dominated by the ruins of a great medieval castle, [ F I G . 4]
Fram–lingham church is a mainly “Perpendicular” style building constructed in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. It has a seventeenth-century organ, a superb hammer beam roof and many
splendid tombs of the Howard family, who were Dukes of Norfolk. The major Renaissance poet
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, was buried there after his execution by King Henry VIII in 1547.
Above the altar is a highly mysterious painting known as a “Glory”. Concentric coloured
circles seem to create a bright light, like a series of coronas, which burst through a mass of dark
cumulus clouds. At the centre of the circles, in large capital letters, is the Greek monogram “IHS”
(Jesus), ironically, for a Protestant church, the same device used by the Jesuits. It was proba-
bly painted in the 1660s for Pembroke College, Cambridge, the patron of the church, and was
moved to Framlingham in about 1700. The circles of light are divided by fine lines suggestive of
a scientific diagram. It is possible that whoever painted the image was influenced by the inves-
tigations into the diffraction of light of Isaac Newton, who was a fellow of Trinity College,
Cambridge. Certainly, although faded, the colour sequence of the circles follows that proposed
by Newton. Such images were prevalent at the time, though the Framlingham painting is unique.
In many of his London churches of the late seventeenth century, Christopher Wren included the
sunburst motif with the monogram as architectural ornament at the east end, along with the Ten
Commandments, Lord’s Prayer and Creed. In Framlingham, however, although once surrounded
by such textual features, the “Glory” is now by itself. It was originally known as “The Institution”
in reference to the Eucharist, which takes place beneath it. The congregation would look up at the
blinding light of the Word as they took Holy Communion at the altar rail.
After the Reformation and the iconoclasm that followed, the prohibition on most religious
imagery and the emphasis on the Word of Holy Scripture meant that this kind of abstract mysti-
cal image was one of the few permitted in churches. The church’s records seem to suggest that
even this painting was regarded by some zealous Puritans in Framlingham as too papist and
superstitious. However, the growth of scientific knowledge, the emphasis upon the interpre-
tation of words and signs, and the rise of Deism in the late seventeenth century meant that the
Framlingham “Glory” now gives us a powerful idea of the visual aspects of Anglican aesthetic and
intellectual culture during the period in which it consolidated its position in national life.
St Paul’s Cathedral, London, 1712–14
The civil war and Commonwealth period, dominated by the figure of Oliver Cromwell, saw no [ F I G . 5]
great flowering of the visual arts, for obvious reasons. Religious imagery was attacked again by
the Puritans in the 1640s. However, with the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, Britain

began to embrace the visual arts and, gradually, acknowledged the need to adorn churches to
encourage worship.
Following the Great Fire of London in 1666, the rebuilding of the City of London included
the construction of Christopher Wren’s baroque masterpiece, St Paul’s Cathedral, completed in
1710. Wren favoured a foreign painter such as the Italian Antonio Pellegrini to decorate the dome
of his vast new structure, but the commission went to the English painter James Thornhill. The
Archbishop of Canterbury was reported as saying: “I am no judge of painting, but I think I may
fairly insist: first, that the Painter employed be a Protestant, and secondly, that he be an English-
man.”3 The appointment exposed an increasingly nationalistic tendency in British art that found
some kind of apogee in the career of Thornhill’s pupil and son-in-law, William Hogarth.
The English were notoriously fond of portraiture, in part because of their problems with
devotional images. As The Spectator put it in 1712:
No Nation in the World delights so much in having their own, or Friends and Relations Pictures;
whether from their National Good-Nature, or having a Love to painting, and not being encouraged
in that great Article of Religious Pictures, which the Purity of our Worship refuses the free use of, or
from whatever other Cause.4
Thornhill’s imagery had to be sanctioned by the authority of the Bible and stress the moral
aspects of religion, St Paul being the leading spiritual figure after Christ in Protestant theology.
Above all, there had to be a sense of historical reality about the imagery. The painter and theorist
Jonathan Richardson wrote in his Theory of Painting (1715) that the painter must “keep within
the Bounds of Probability”. There should be nothing “absurd, Indecent, or Mean; nothing con-
trary to Religion or Morality”.5
One fear about Catholic imagery was its perceived ability to sway the emotions and tempt
the good Protestant into doctrinal error and even heresy. This was a reason why the Grand Tour
across the Continent undertaken by most young male aristocrats was viewed with such apprehen-
sion by parents and clerics alike. St Paul’s embodied in its severe grandeur, acoustic clarity and
even lighting a distinctly English and Protestant aesthetic, emphasising the power of the sermon,
and Thornhill’s paintings, sober and didactic, were the appropriate visual counterpart as the
worshipping congregation gazed upwards into space.
Burlington House, London, 1724
[ F I G . 6] Like his father-in-law Thornhill, William Hogarth believed that there needed to be a truly
“English” school of art, one not dependent on the hated French model of a rigorous classicism
3 taught through academies. Where Thornhill took on commissions to compete with foreign paint-
Minutes of St Paul’s, ers in great institutions and to decorate the grand houses of the period, Hogarth turned his satiri-
3 March 1709, vol. xvi. cal and more domestic eye to the complex urban world of a burgeoning London, which was fast
London: Wren Society, 107.
becoming the world’s largest city and centre of commerce.
4
Masquerades and Operas, Burlington Gate, a print of 1724, shows Hogarth early in his career
Joseph Addison and Richard
attacking the snobbish taste for all things foreign: “O how refin’d, how elegant we’re grown!” the
Steele, eds. The Spectator, no.
555 (London, 6 December 1712),
quoted in Donald F. Bond,
ed. The Spectator. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1965, 496.
5
Jonathan Richardson,
An Essay on the Theory of
Painting. London, 1715, 21. 22 WHERE WAS BRITISH ART?

[ F I G . 5]
The interior of the Great Dome
at St Paul’s Cathedral with grisaille
trompe-l’oeil architectural paintings
by James Thornhill, created
between 1717 and 1719.
[ F I G . 6]
William Hogarth, Masquerades
and Operas, Burlington Gate, 1724.
Etching on paper, 127 x 171 mm.
Private Collection.

[ F I G . 7]
Stourhead Gardens, Stourton,
Wiltshire, England.

accompanying verse begins. On the left, the London Opera House is besieged by a large crowd, led
by a fool and a devil, anxious to see the latest “masquerades” introduced into London by the Swiss
impresario John James Heidegger. A banner satirises a group of gullible aristocrats with bags of
money who prostrate themselves before three Italian singers. On the right of the image is the New
Theatre at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which was thriving through performances of commedia dell’arte
pantomimes. A harlequin leans over the huge throng of people, beckoning them into the theatre.
As an artist, Hogarth was most incensed by the central image in his print: the “Accademy
of Arts” with its pompous Palladian entrance, in fact the home of Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of
Burlington, seen by many as the promoter of an Italianate and classical taste that oppressed
native culture and talent. His great protégé was the painter, architect and landscape designer,
William Kent, who is shown towering hubristically in sculpted form at the apex of the pediment,
above Michelangelo and Raphael. Staring up in wonder are three connoisseurs, victims of an
enormous confidence trick.
Hogarth saw the demand for foreign art as a clear danger to English creativity and national
integrity. He took delight in promoting simple native products, such as the painted shop signs
that adorned London’s streets, and castigating the market for bogus Old Master paintings sold
by unscrupulous dealers to ignorant collectors. In this print, he shows a female scrap merchant
pushing a barrow full of unwanted books by William Shakespeare, John Dryden and others, and
shouting “Waste paper for shops”, as if they are now used only to wrap consumer goods.
Stourhead, Wiltshire, from 1740
Hogarth’s bête noire, William Kent, was influential in all matters of taste. He was a close associate [ F I G . 7]
of the architect Henry Flitcroft, who was employed by Henry Hoare II, son of the founder
of Hoare’s bank, to erect the buildings in his spectacular landscaped estate at Stourhead in
Wiltshire. Set in 93 acres of chalk downland, Hoare’s creation was in effect an epic and symbolic
painting in three dimensions. Inspired by his recent Grand Tour in Italy, Hoare set about in the
1740s creating a dynamic landscape that derived much of its aesthetic programme from the art of
the French painter Claude Lorraine. Claude was, from the seventeenth century onward, hugely
popular with aristocratic collectors in Britain. By the 1750s, the Welsh artist Richard Wilson was
making a very good living not only painting the Campagna itself, but also the British landscape as
seen through Claudian eyes.
The narrative for the visitor walking along the serpentine path around the lake at Stourhead
was based on Virgil’s Aeneid (29–19BC). As well as representing a general taste for classical
culture, the Aeneid had become a manifesto for Britain’s sense of itself as a new Augustan civilisa-
tion. National histories had traced Britain’s founding back to Aeneas’ grandson Brutus’ supposed
arrival in the country. However, the symbolism was not prescriptive: attractions included the
Temple of Apollo, suggestive of the power of the sun; the Temple of Flora dedicated to Ceres,
redolent of springtime; a pantheon with its statue of Hercules, the image of the human labour at
the heart of the civilising process; a bridge derived from Andrea Palladio’s five-arched bridge in
Vicenza; a grotto with a figure of Neptune, indicating the descent of Aeneas into the Underworld;
and the High Cross of Bristol, a medieval structure taken down by the citizens as a “ruinous and

superstitious Relick”.6 In walking through this elaborate literary landscape, it was as if the visitor
was inside a painting, observing staged images that passed before the eyes.
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London, 1787
[ F I G . 8] Most aesthetic experience was to be had in London, the heart of a growing empire. Britain’s
art world needed to reflect this power. In the last years of his life, Hogarth bitterly opposed the
founding of an official academy for artists as too French and authoritarian. However, he was in a
minority and, in 1768, the foundation of the Royal Academy of Arts in London ushered in a new
and confident era in British art.
The first president of the Academy was the powerful and brilliant portraitist Joshua Reynolds.
His political skills and eloquent lectures to the students have made him one of the major figures
in the history of art in Britain. Although in his annual lectures known as Discourses (1769–90) he
showed himself to be a sophisticated theorist and judge of art, Reynolds’ promotion of the virtues
of “history painting” as the highest achievement in art seemed hollow when the actual contents
of the Academy’s exhibitions were analysed: portraits dominated this world of conspicuous con-
sumption, above all Reynolds’ own images of the wealthy and privileged.7
The openings of the annual exhibitions held in the Great Room at the Academy’s brand new
headquarters at Somerset House on the Thames were among the most fashionable events in the
social calendar. In Pietro Antonio Martini’s print, Reynolds is shown in the foreground, holding his ear
trumpet, standing next to George, Prince of Wales (1752–1830), famous for his mistresses and financial
difficulties and, like Reynolds, despised by his father, King George III (1738–1820). Above them on the
far wall is Reynolds’ controversial portrait of Prince George standing with a black servant.
It seems extraordinary today to see such a large number of paintings of all sorts hung so close-
ly and up to the top of the walls. There was a hierarchy for such hanging depending on an artist’s
ranking and, of course, Reynolds could dominate a room with his huge portraits hung advanta-
geously in the centre of the wall. In 1787 alone, he displayed thirteen portraits. The crowd pay
little attention to the art as they jostle each other in the latest fashions above the Greek subtitle of
the print, which can be translated as, “Let no Stranger to the Muses enter”.
Royal Academy Schools, London, 1771–72
[ F I G . 9] The Royal Academy was a place of education as well as self-promotion. Johan Zoffany’s painting
of the evening life class shows the Keeper positioning the second male model of the session
6 while the first one dresses in the foreground. The room is full of classical busts and Academi-
This phrase is from a cians: Zoffany on the extreme left with his palette; Reynolds listening with his ear trumpet to
petition asking for the
demolition of the High Cross the Secretary; Hogarth’s contemporary, Francis Hayman, with his legs wide apart; the melan-
by the citizens of Bristol in 1733,
choly and alcoholic landscapist Richard Wilson near the écorché figure in the background; the
quoted in Michael Alexander,
Medievalism: The Middle Ages Professor of Anatomy, the surgeon William Hunter, stroking his chin thoughtfully as he observes
in Modern England. Note 26.
New Haven and London: Yale
the model; on the left, the one Chinese member of the Academy, the Cantonese Tan Chitqua,
University Press, 2007, 274. chats to a fellow artist; and, for modesty’s sake, as they would not have been allowed to take part
7
Robert R. Wark, ed.
Discourses on Art. New Haven
and London: Yale University
Press, 1975. Reynolds’ Discourses
were the published versions of his
annual lectures to the students of
the RA and were published from
1769 until his retirement in 1790. 26 WHERE WAS BRITISH ART?

[ F I G . 8]
Pietro Antonio Martini (after a painting
by Johan Heinrich Ramberg),
Interior view of Somerset House showing
King George III (1738–1820), Queen
Charlotte (1744–1818) and the Royal
family viewing an exhibition of the
Royal Academy of Arts in 1788, 1788.
Etching, stipple etching and
engraving, ink on paper, 360 x 500 mm.
Guildhall Library, City of London.
[ F I G . 9]
Johan Zoffany, The Academicians
of the Royal Academy, 1771–72.
Oil on canvas, 101.1 x 147.5 cm.
The Royal Collection.

in the nude drawing sessions, the two women Academicians, Angelica Kauffmann and Mary Mo-
ser, are represented by portraits on the right.
Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, London, 1777–84
[ F I G . 10] Inevitably, the Royal Academy, and in particular Reynolds, provoked much envy and antipathy
among those who felt excluded or who had very different ideas about art and society. One of its most
famous opponents was the disgraced Academician, the Irish painter James Barry. He practised
what Reynolds preached – “history painting” dealing with significant subject matter, organising
complex groups of figures in imaginative compositions that put painting on a level with the highest
literature.
Barry was prepared to suffer for his art. When the Society of Arts, Manufactures and Com-
merce, an organisation that promoted excellence in various disciplines, moved to new premises
in the Adelphi designed by Robert Adam, Barry offered to paint a series of six large canvases for
its Great Room for his material expenses only. From 1777 to 1784, he worked in great secrecy,
creating the largest cycle of historical paintings of the eighteenth century and influencing artists
such as Jacques-Louis David and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.
Barry’s theme was no less than the progress of human culture from ancient times to the
present, and into an ideal future. The first three paintings show the rise of Greek civilisation, from
Orpheus leading the primitive Thracians out of barbarism, through the development of an idyllic
agrarian society, to the high achievements of the fifth-century Olympic games, where a perfec-
tion of mind and body was encouraged by competition and the wise distribution of prizes. The
next two paintings are concerned with contemporary Britain. The Triumph of the Thames shows
Britain’s commercial success led by the nation’s heroic sailors such as Walter Raleigh and the
recently deceased Pacific explorer, Captain Cook. Tritons and Nereids hold up examples of British
manufactures. The Distribution of Premiums by the Society of Arts complements the Olympics
canvas by showing the Society of Arts encouraging industrial innovation, enlightened patronage
and artistic excellence by the promotion of competition and the award of prizes to outstanding
new talent. Other themes referred to in the two British pictures include the problems of luxury,
the role of women, the abolition of slavery and the status of art in a commercial society.
The final painting, which is 12.8 metres long, is called Elysium and Tartarus, or the Final
Retribution and is an Enlightenment version of a Last Judgement. It portrays 125 identifiable
men and women, from Homer to the Quaker William Penn. It was, according to Barry’s lengthy
book explaining the cycle, an image of the coming together of “great and good men of all ages
and nations”.8 Barry was an idealist republican, but also a Catholic. The anti-Catholic Gordon
Riots of 1780 erupted in London when Barry was working on his grand project. He therefore
had to be careful, as the hidden meaning of the series, entirely missed by the Society of Arts, is
that the Roman Catholic Church is the embodiment of humanity’s finest achievements. Barry’s
extraordinary but cryptic message was that Britain’s supremacy would come about only when it
reconciled itself to Rome.
8
James Barry, An Account of
a Series of Pictures in the Great
Room of the Society of Arts,
Manufactures and Commerce at
the Adelphi. London, 1783, 116. 28 WHERE WAS BRITISH ART?

[ F I G . 10]
The Great Room, Royal Society of Arts,
showing paintings by James Barry
painted between 1777 and 1784.

Lucknow, India, 1784–88
[ F I G . 11] Johan Zoffany travelled to India in the 1780s where he was a successful portrait painter for six
years. One of his most famous images is of a cockfight in Lucknow between Asaf-ud-daula, Nawab
Wazir of Oudh and Colonel John Mordaunt. The picture was commissioned in 1784 by Warren
Hastings, the 1st Governor-General of Bengal, who paid Zoffany about £1,500.
The court at Lucknow was the most extravagant of the Indian courts, attracting many
Europeans tempted by the money and lifestyle. Faiz Bakhsh claimed that Asaf “delighted in
[ F I G . 11] meaningless amusements and was immensely pleased with anyone who indulged in filthy lang-
Johan Zoffany, Colonel Mordaunt’s
uage; and the more obscene the conversation was in any company, the better he was pleased”.9
Cock Match, ca. 1784–88.
Oil on canvas, 103.9 x 150. Tate. The illiterate Mordaunt, a favourite of Asaf, was an illegitimate son of the Earl of Peterborough,
9
Mildred Archer, India and British
Portraiture 1770–1825. London
and New York: Sotheby Parke
Bernet, 1979, 143. 30 WHERE WAS BRITISH ART?

commander of the Nawab’s bodyguard and organiser of court entertainments, such as the cock-
fights. Indians and Europeans enjoyed social equality and friendships in Lucknow, with many
European men taking Indian wives.
The leading figures at the court in Lucknow are shown by Zoffany, including: Colonel Antoine
Polier, in a red coat under an awning, who was a Swiss engineer to the Nawab and had several
local wives; John Wombwell, seated with a hookah, who was the East India Company’s paymaster
at Lucknow; the artist Ozias Humphrey, standing beside Wombwell with a hand on Zoffany’s
shoulder; and Claude Martin, seated on the dais, a disreputable French adventurer. He kept four
wives and was renowned as the only man ever known to have successfully performed a surgical
operation on himself.
The Nawab’s evident sexual arousal, his pose and inclination towards his chief minister and
favourite bodyguard, give the painting an erotic aspect. Behind the Nawab is a bearded, turbanned
Hindu fondling a white-capped Muslim boy, to the disgust of a man in a red turban who is being
restrained. Lewis Ferdinand Smith recounted that the Nawab, in spite of a harem of 500 beautiful
women, had many adopted children, but none of his own. He was widely regarded as impotent.
Hogarth surely would have approved of the painting.
Christie’s Auction Rooms, London, 1796
Much of the debate about British culture, which intensified after the French Revolution in 1789,
concerned the effects of commerce on the fine arts. London’s art market had grown enormously
during the eighteenth century. The collectors, dealers, critics and auctioneers that we take for
granted now were new forces in a highly profitable business.
James Christie opened his auction business in 1766. This was two years before the founding
of the Royal Academy and the well-connected Christie was a good friend of Reynolds, Thomas
Gainsborough and many others in the cultural elite. His auction rooms, like the Academy exhibi-
tions and Reynolds’ portrait studio, became a fashionable meeting place for polite society. There
was no public gallery in London until 1824, when the National Gallery opened, so Christie’s was
among the few prominent venues in which artists, dealers and their wealthy clients could look at
art and do business.
The satirist James Gillray, who was in the pay of the government to produce anti-French [ F I G . 12]
images during the Napoleonic wars, was also a free spirit who enjoyed ridiculing the follies of
contemporary taste as much as Hogarth had decades earlier. His image of the Earl of Derby, a
Whig politician and horse-racing enthusiast, taking a morning “lounge” at Christie’s auction
house with his mistress, the actress Elizabeth Farren, brings together a number of themes.
One theme is the sexual encounters that such venues hosted and the dubious morals of those
involved. The tiny fat Earl looks at a painting of a fox-hunt called The Death, a reference to his
wife’s illness and impending demise. Elizabeth Farren, the “Nimeney-pimmeney” of the print’s
title after a famous dramatic role that she had played, looks through a spyglass at a picture of the
austere Greek philosopher Zenocrates and the courtesan Phryne. In the background, a man and
two women examine a titillating image of Susannah and the Elders. The erotic undercurrent in
this space of commerce and taste is clear; few people were truly interested in the art.

[ F I G . 12]
James Gillray, A Peep at Christies,
or Tally-ho, and his Nimeney-pimmeney
Taking the Morning Lounge,
24 September 1796. Etching, engraving,
aquatint and watercolour on paper,
355 x 253 mm. Published by Hannah
Humphrey in 1796. Courtesy of the
Warden and Scholars of New College,
Oxford.
[ F I G . 13]
Samuel Palmer, The Magic Apple Tree,
ca. 1830. Indian ink and watercolour
on paper, 349 x 273 mm. Fitzwilliam
Museum, University of Cambridge.

Shoreham, Kent, 1830
Samuel Palmer formed one of the first artist groups in Britain, “the Ancients”, in 1824. Along [ F I G . 13]
with John Linnell, George Richmond and others, Palmer was a follower of William Blake and was
inspired by European artist groups such as the Nazarenes in Germany. Like the Pre-Raphaelites
later on, the Ancients wanted to form a close community of artists with shared interests and prac-
tices, admiring in particular the art of the Middle Ages, which they believed was purer and more
spiritual than contemporary art. Politically, Palmer and his associates tended to conservatism
and to a love of the traditional social organisation, religion and customs of the countryside.
The Ancients formed their loose community in the small village of Shoreham, Kent, although
only Palmer stayed there for a long period, living at Water House and buying local plots of land.
They drew attention to themselves by their eccentric dress and behaviour, although they enjoyed
mainly amicable relations with the villagers. Palmer’s watercolour The Magic Apple Tree (ca.
1830) expresses his belief in the abundance of God and the possibility of creating an earthly para-
dise. The title was given by the artist’s son and suggests a pastoral world of supernatural events
and fecundity: the apples, golden cornfields and the sheep by the piping shepherd seem to grow
out of the church at the centre of the painting. Palmer’s vision is a profoundly Christian one, in
this case perhaps inspired by Psalm 65: “Thou crownest the year with thy goodness; and thy paths
drop fatness. They drop upon the pastures of the wilderness: and the little hills rejoice on every
side. The pastures are clothed with flocks; the valleys also are covered over with corn; they shout
for joy, they sing”.
Houses of Parliament, London, 1840
After the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1815, Britain was the undisputed leading European
power. By the time of Queen Victoria’s (1819–1901) accession to the throne, there were moves
afoot to develop the role of the fine arts in society. Various impulses were at play: a need to improve
economic performance by training manufacturers and craftsmen to produce goods more likely to
sell in an increasingly competitive international market; a desire to improve the taste and morals
of not only the working classes but also a rapidly expanding middle class; and a general feeling that
no nation could consider itself civilised in the way Barry and Reynolds, in their different ways, had
envisaged, without museums, art schools and the state’s general overall commitment to culture.
In the 1830s, following major political reforms, a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the state of
the arts was set up. This led to the founding of schools of art and design and museums, such as the
Royal College of Art and the related Victoria and Albert Museum, and to efforts to support public
art in major institutions across Britain.
Inspired by the enthusiasm of Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert (the Chairman of the Royal [ F I G . 14]
Commission), a series of murals to decorate the new gothic Houses of Parliament built by Charles
Barry was commissioned. Major artists were employed to create fresco paintings celebrating
English history and democracy. The Scottish painter and polymath, William Dyce, produced the
Arthurian paintings for the chivalric Robing Room, where the monarch puts on a ceremonial
costume before proceeding to the House of Lords for the annual State Opening of Parliament. In

performing this ritual, the king or queen sheds their individual identity to become the embodi-
ment of monarchy and so a suitably elaborate and uplifting setting was required.
Dyce developed a scheme of seven paintings based on tales from the fifteenth-century epic
Le Morte d’Arthur by Thomas Malory. Arthur was a figure who, as a British hero rather than an
English one, was seen as a unifying force in a nation comprising many different ethnic groups.
There was also a growing fascination with the romantic and spiritual meanings of the Arthurian
legends, as shown in Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Victorian poetry, as well as a strong sense of national
destiny embodied in the tales that had been part of the British imagination since at least Edmund
Spenser’s Faerie Queene (1590–96).
Dyce’s five finished paintings deal with the themes of Hospitality, Generosity, Mercy,
Courtesy and Religion, represented through stories about King Arthur and his Knights of the
Round Table. Religion: The Vision of Sir Galahad and his Company was completed by 1851 and
depicts the mystical experience of the Holy Grail. The chaste Galahad, in the left foreground, a
monk with the Holy Grail, Perceval, Bors and other figures from Malory’s tale look up as Christ
appears on a throne promising that the knights will learn his “secrets”. The obsession with Arthur
continued throughout the nineteenth century, not least among the Pre-Raphaelites, the younger
contemporaries to the distinctly Raphaelite Dyce. The murals enshrined a romantic ideal of the
British monarchy.
The Peacock Room, London, 1877
From the Albert Memorial to the great town halls of Manchester and other northern industrial
cities, the Victorians covered their government ministries, museums and municipal buildings in
the imagery of national heroes, good works and medieval chivalry. By the 1870s, however, there
was a reaction against this earnest, moralising nationalism. Many artists were alienated from
official culture and its values and sought novel forms of expression.
[ F I G . 15] When the American painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler arrived in Chelsea, London, in
the 1860s, he did so having trained in Paris and was familiar with the fashion for Diego Velásquez
and aware of the radical art of Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet, as well as the newly avail-
able Japanese art. He met Dante Gabriel Rossetti and other Pre-Raphaelites and became one of
the most controversial and original artists of his time; he was not only a painter, but also a print-
maker, writer, designer and extravagant dandy. Whistler was the chief exponent of an extreme
aestheticism that famously brought him to the courtroom in 1877 to sue the critic John Ruskin for
libel. Ruskin had accused Whistler of “flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face” with his recent
paintings shown at the Grosvenor Gallery in London.10
In the same year, Whistler completed the decorations commissioned by the Liverpool ship
owner Frederick R. Leyland for his house in Princes Gate in London. The dining room, designed
by Thomas Jeckyll, became known as “The Peacock Room” and housed Leyland’s collection
of Chinese porcelain, with Whistler’s japoniste painting La Princesse du pays de la Porcelaine
10 (1863–64) hanging above the fireplace. Whistler thought that the current scheme clashed with his
This phrase is from painting and offered to retouch the walls. Leyland agreed to this and for Whistler to decorate the
Letter 79, 18 June 1877,
one of Ruskin’s “letters to the
Workmen and Labourers of
Great Britain”, published as
pamphlets from January 1871
to December 1884 and given the
collective title Fors Clavigera.
Quoted in Dinah Birch, ed. Fors
Clavigera. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 2000, 265. 34 WHERE WAS BRITISH ART?

[ F I G . 14]
West wall of the Robing Room, Palace
of Westminster, showing fireplace
and murals by William Dyce painted
between 1847 and 1851.
[ F I G . 15]
James Abbott McNeill Whistler,
Harmony in Blue and Gold:
The Peacock Room, 1876–77.
Oil paint and gold leaf on canvas,
leather, and wood, Freer Gallery of Art,
Smithsonian Institution, USA. Gift of
Charles Lang Freer; once the dining
room of Frederick R. Leyland;
purchased in 1904.

[ F I G . 16]
Spencer Gore, Gauguins and
Connoisseurs at the Stafford Gallery,
1911-12. Oil on canvas, 84 x 72 cm.
Private Collection.

wainscoting and cornice with a “wave” pattern. Assuming the decoration of the room to be nearly
finished, Leyland returned to Liverpool.
Whistler covered the ceiling with imitation gold leaf, over which he added an intricate pattern
of peacock feathers using a brush on a fishing rod. He then gilded the shelving and painted the
shutters with four plumed peacocks.
Leyland returned and was shocked not only by the expensive excess of Whistler’s work, but also
by his having allowed friends and journalists into the house to see it. He refused to pay Whistler
what the artist demanded. Whistler then painted a pair of peacocks confronting one another on the
wall opposite La Princesse. Scattered at the feet of one bird are the coins that Leyland would not pay;
the silver feathers on the peacock’s throat refer to the ruffled shirts that Leyland wore. The other
peacock has a silver crest feather that resembles the distinctive curl of white hair above Whistler’s
forehead. The artist called it Art and Money; or, The Story of the Room and obtained a blue rug to
complete his work, naming the room Harmony in Blue and Gold. He and Leyland never met again.
The room was dismantled in 1904 and was installed eventually at the Freer Gallery in Washington.
Stafford Gallery, London, 1911
One of Whistler’s most talented followers was the Anglo-Danish painter Walter Richard Sickert.
He settled in London and began to paint the life of the music halls and other scenes of working-
class London, most famously his often-sinister images of dingy bedsit rooms in north London. He
was the leader of a group of artists called the Camden Town Group, who exhibited independently
and sought to create a modern realist idiom in British art, neither conventional nor “aesthetic” in
the Whistlerian sense.
One of Sickert’s younger protégés was Spencer Gore. His Gauguins and Connoisseurs at the [ F I G . 16]
Stafford Gallery (1911–12) documents the private view of an exhibition of works by Paul Cézanne
and Paul Gauguin. Their work had been seen at the celebrated Manet and the Post-Impressionists
exhibition, staged at the Grafton Galleries, London by the painter and critic Roger Fry in 1910, but
were admired by only a minority of artists, critics and connoisseurs in Britain. Gore’s view shows a
number of figures looking at the paintings, including three famous works by Gauguin on the main
wall. The veteran English Impressionist Philip Wilson Steer holds a cane, while the Welsh painter
Augustus John is distinguished by his red beard. A gently humorous image of the London art scene
harking back to Hogarth and Gillray, its composition and colours are also a homage to a new taste
and art practice emerging in Britain.
Omega Workshops, London, 1913
From the later nineteenth century, artists had not only begun to form groups with explicit
aesthetic and often political programmes, but also such programmes extended their ambi-
tions beyond painting and sculpture. Following Whistler’s perhaps anarchist efforts at interior
design, and William Morris’ socialist Arts and Crafts movement, artists looked for new pictorial
approaches to make an impact on design and even architecture in the name of some broader
social and cultural aim.

[ F I G S . 17a, 17b] Roger Fry founded the Omega Workshops in 1913 in a house on Fitzroy Square, London,
a “bohemian” quarter near the University of London and the British Museum, and just west of
the residential area of Bloomsbury, which gave its name to the loose group of artists, writers and
intellectuals known as the “Bloomsbury Group”. The “Bloomsberries”, as they were sometimes
known to detractors and friends alike, had a modern ethos based on the importance of friendship,
pacifism, liberal or socialist politics, and aesthetic experience. Lytton Strachey’s book, Eminent
Victorians (1918), expressed a whole generation’s rejection of its grandiose grandparents. Famous
Bloomsbury figures included the novelist Virginia Woolf, her sister the painter Vanessa Bell and
the economist John Maynard Keynes.
Fry’s aim was to break down barriers between the fine and applied arts and to promote his
concept of “significant form”. This stressed the pre-eminence of pure aesthetic experience above
narrative or description, a quality Fry believed resided in all the greatest art. Bloomsbury art was
broadly Post-Impressionist in tendency but, between about 1911 and 1915, it also encompassed
Fauvist, Cubist and abstract qualities. Omega products included furniture, textiles, pottery and
other domestic products, as well as murals, mosaics, books, dresses and stained glass. Everything
was designed anonymously and marked only by the “omega” Greek letter. Mainly produced by
professional craftsmen to designs by Fry’s artists, the products were expensive and, as with many
such projects, were bought by an informed and sophisticated clientele.
Liverpool, 1917–18
The Vorticist movement, which began in 1913, was in part the result of a rift between Roger Fry and
Wyndham Lewis over a commission for an Ideal Home exhibition in the same year. Lewis accused
Fry of excluding him and set up his own group, the “Rebel Art Centre”, to the east of Bloomsbury.
The Vorticist aesthetic was drawn from a Futurist vision of modernity at odds with Bloomsbury.
The Vorticists’ focus was on the metropolis, machinery, England’s maritime traditions and new
means of communication, rather than the still life, rural landscape or portrait of a friend in a private
room. Most of the artists associated with the Vorticist magazine, Blast, enlisted for military service.
[ F I G . 18] Edward Wadsworth, son of a Yorkshire textile manufacturer, was one of Lewis’ closest
associates in 1914. He became a Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve and was posted to the eastern
Aegean where he used his visual skills to analyse aerial photography and work on camouflage
before he was invalided back to England in 1917. He came to the attention of another painter,
the maritime artist Norman Wilkinson, who was head of the Royal Navy Dazzle Camouflage
Section based at the Royal Academy. With a staff of nineteen, comprising five artists designing the
patterns, three model makers and eleven female art students producing hand-coloured drawings,
Wilkinson introduced a novel idea into naval warfare. He realised that while he could never hide
his ships from German U-boats, he could paint them “in such a way as to break up her [the ship’s]
form and thus confuse a submarine officer as to the course on which she was heading”.11
The painting took place at ports around the British coast and Wadsworth was one of two
supervising officers in Liverpool, managing 120 men painting up to 100 ships at a time. It must
have seemed like Vorticism applied to the military effort, and certainly was effective in reducing
heavily the number of ships lost in 1917–18. Wadsworth’s large oil painting for the war artists’
11
Norman Wilkinson, A Brush
with Life. London: Seeley Service,
1969, 38. 38 WHERE WAS BRITISH ART?

[ F I G . 17a]
Roger Fry at work in the Omega
Workshops, ca. 1913.
[ F I G . 17b]
Omega Workshops, January 1913.
[ F I G . 18]
Edward Wadsworth, Drydocked for
Scaling and Painting, 1918. Woodcut
print on Japan paper, 230 x 208 mm.
The Trustees of the British Museum.

scheme, contributed to by Lewis, David Bomberg and many other modernists, was related to a
number of semi-abstract woodcuts that he also made of the work on which he had been employed.
Halland, Sussex, 1938
Public sculpture had been part of the urban landscape for centuries, as had the placing of sculp-
tures in landscaped gardens. In the 1920s and 1930s, however, a new concept of sculpture and the
landscape developed. With the reforms to working and housing conditions of the urban poor in
the nineteenth century came a vision of the importance of clean air and healthy outdoor lifestyles.
The names of organisations such as the Sunlight League and the Ramblers Association give a
good idea of this impetus. Often allied to socialist politics, frequently indebted to the writings of
John Ruskin and William Morris, a culture that embraced plans for garden cities, parks, munici-
pal swimming pools and holiday camps saw the expansion of activities such as walking, cycling,
swimming and nude sunbathing.
[ F I G . 19] One enthusiast for such activities was the sculptor Henry Moore, son of a Yorkshire miner,
who remembered his father coming home covered in coal dust, and the coal mines, coke ovens,
chemical factories and gas works providing a grim, smoky backdrop to everyday life. Diseases
such as rickets, bronchitis and tuberculosis were widespread. Relief for many in the mining
communities came in the form of walking and cycling trips in the Yorkshire moors. Moore said
this gave him a love of outdoor life, light and exercise, and was a major influence on his ideas
about modern sculpture.
By 1922, the art student Moore was carving directly in stone in gardens and on beaches during
his holidays in Norfolk, and began to formulate an idea of “open air” sculpture. He thought the
often dull, diffused light of Britain actually encouraged artists to think “in the round” and to
achieve “big architectural contrasts of masses”.12 On his holidays, he took to wearing the daring
new “slip” when swimming, and frequently he and friends bathed naked.
By the mid-1930s, Moore was part of the modernist group of artists and architects who
published the influential Circle magazine in 1937. Contributors included the immigrant Russian
artist Naum Gabo and the German architect Walter Gropius. In 1938, Moore created a sculpture
for the Azerbaijani modernist architect Serge Chermayeff’s home, Bentley Wood, at Halland,
Sussex. He described the reclining female nude figure as “a mediator between the modern house
and the ageless land”, suggesting, perhaps, that his piece was a modernist, maternal megalith.13
The holes of his sculptures were intended to work against the density of the stone that he was
carving, and to allow the viewer to see through it and into the landscape, the appearance changing
as he or she moved around it.
Moore’s sculpture was placed on the sun terrace where Chermayeff and his wife sunbathed –
naked, of course – on their wicker sunloungers.
Bolton, Lancashire, 1938
The British art scene in the 1930s was as divided as ever, and while Henry Moore and his mainly
12
socialist friends might share political views with many other groups, there was plenty of aesthetic
D. Hall, “Henry Moore”,
Horizon (US), vol. 3
(November 1960): 103.
13
Henry Moore quoted in Robert
Melville, ed. Sculpture in the
Open Air: A Talk on his Sculpture
and its Placing in Open-Air Sites.
London: British Council, 1955. 40 WHERE WAS BRITISH ART?

[ F I G . 19]
Henry Moore, Recumbent Figure, 1938.
Hornton stone. Photograph showing
the work in front of Serge Chermayeff’s
house in Sussex. Architectural Press
Archive / RIBA Library Photographs
Collection, London.
[ F I G . 20]
William Coldstream on the roof
of the art gallery, Bolton, 1938.
Photograph by Humphrey Spender.
Mass Observation Archive, University
of Sussex, Worktown Collection,
Courtesy Bolton Museum.
and strategic disagreement. Many artists rejected the post-Cubist and abstract forms of Moore,
Ben Nicholson and others, and sought to engage with the lives and interests of “ordinary”
working-class people and create an art from that experience.
“Mass Observation” was an organisation founded by three men in 1937 who wanted to create
“an anthropology of ourselves”: the anthropologist Tom Harrisson, the poet Charles Madge, and
the polymathic film-maker and artist Humphrey Jennings. Harrisson and a team of observers
moved to the northern industrial city of Bolton, Lancashire, which they called “Worktown”. A team
of paid investigators observed Worktown’s factory life, political meetings, church services, football
games and the life in pubs and cafes, and recorded what they saw and heard in astonishing detail.
Two artists joined the project: the realists William Coldstream and Graham Bell. Coldstream [ F I G . 20]
worked on the roof of the local art gallery in Bolton, painting the sprawling industrial landscape
around him with the cool, empirical approach for which he is most famous. It was a view of the
same conditions that Moore sought to escape in his cycling, swimming and open-air sculpture.
Harrisson, the most politically radical of the three founders, became impatient with his middle-

class colleagues and moved on to encourage what he called “worker artists”. In 1938, he displayed
work by Northumbrian miners from the colliery at Ashington at an exhibition called Unprofessional
Painting, at the Bensham Grove Settlement, Gateshead, a workers’ educational and arts centre.
Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, 1944
[ F I G . 21] The Second World War highlighted many of the tensions in British art and the wider society.
While the nation came together to fight Hitler, thinking began on how Britain might be after the
war. There were advanced plans by the middle of the war for a Welfare State, which it was hoped
would improve medical care, education and social benefits, and provide a foundation for a fairer
and more equal society.
Throughout the war, exhibitions of the art produced for the War Artists Advisory Commi-
ttee were staged across the country, to boost morale and encourage people to attend art galleries.
The Committee expressed the belief that the exhibitions would “provide a very useful stimulus to
the art of painting in this country, and to public appreciation. This stimulus will, we hope, have a
far-reaching influence on cultural activities in days to come, after the war is over”.14
The wealthy and well-connected Kenneth Clark epitomised some of the main contradictions
at work. Clark knew everyone, from royalty and politicians to Bloomsbury artists and writers.
Director of the National Gallery, he was appointed Chairman of the WAAC and was also head of the
Ministry of Information Films Division and Controller of Home Publicity. While he encouraged
artists who painted realistic images of the war effort that appealed to a broad audience, he was also
an elitist who wrote later in his autobiography: “Popular taste is bad taste, as any honest man with
experience will agree”.15 Like John Maynard Keynes, a central figure in the Bloomsbury scene who
was director of the wartime Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA), Clark
was alarmed by the mass culture threatening the fine arts that he most prized.
Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1956
CEMA was the forerunner of the Arts Council, which has been, politically and officially, the domi-
nant contemporary cultural force in post-war Britain. Out of the Arts Council grew two important
organisations, the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in 1947, which still exists today, and the
short-lived Independent Group in 1952.
The Independent Group included the artists Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi and
the critic Lawrence Alloway. They met at the ICA in Dover Street, an organisation dominated by
pre-war modernist figures such as Roland Penrose and Herbert Read. The younger generation
was dissatisfied with the intellectual and aesthetic preferences of the senior figures. Instead of
geometrical abstraction and Surrealism, they wanted a new kind of art, drawing on a bewildering
range of sources: popular music and imagery, advertising, Hollywood films, fashion, information
theory and scientific illustration, along with the more primitive and hard constructivist forms of
abstraction being made in the USA, France and elsewhere. Alloway coined the idea of a “fine art/
popular art continuum”, which insisted on the relativism of all culture and proposed a connoisseur-
14
ship for the appreciation of motor cars as much as for the art of Michelangelo. Pop Art was born.
“Interim Report for the
Third Year of the War”.
London: War Artists
Advisory Committee,
August 1942: 4–5.
15
Kenneth Clark, The Other Half:
A Self-Portrait. New York:
Harper & Row, 1977, 26. 42 WHERE WAS BRITISH ART?

[ F I G . 21]
War Pictures by British Artists, Bristol
Museum and Art Gallery, January 1944.
Installation photograph. Bristol
Museum and Art Gallery.
[ F I G . 22]
This is Tomorrow exhibition,
Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1956.
Installation photograph showing
Robbie the Robot by Richard Hamilton;
the other two works are by John
McHale and John Voelcker.
Architectural Press Archive / RIBA
Library Photographs Collection.
The This is Tomorrow exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1956 resulted from the [ F I G . 22]
Independent Group meetings. Artists, architects and sculptors worked in twelve groups to design
a “house of the future”. Setting the tone at the entrance to the show was a huge image of Robby the
Robot from the science-fiction film Forbidden Planet (1956), a futuristic setting of Shakespeare’s
The Tempest. The exhibition poster by Richard Hamilton became an icon of British Pop Art.
Among the installations was the Patio and Pavilion (1956) designed by a husband and wife
architectural team, Peter and Alison Smithson. The Patio was sand-covered, suggesting a primeval
beach, while the Pavilion was constructed from the ruins of an old garden shed. Paolozzi provided
a roughly cast totemic bronze sculpture, and Nigel Henderson a photo-collage of a man’s head
formed from fragments of graffiti, photographs of cell structures, foliage and torn paper. This was
an alarming “Brave New World” indeed, as Britain pulled out of austerity towards a comforting
new consumer culture.

Reece Mews, South Kensington, London, 1964
[ F I G . 23] Francis Bacon drew on much of the material used by the Independent Group, but with very
different results. His studio in Reece Mews, South Kensington, was recorded by the Vogue photo-
grapher John Deakin. It was deep in tubes of paint, bottles and, above all, paper of many kinds.
Bacon was “at home in this chaos because chaos suggests images to me”.16
In 1952, the year that the Independent Group was discussing the reproduced image, the critic
Sam Hunter visited an earlier studio of Bacon’s:
At one end stand his paintings, unique and extremely personal interventions. At the other are tables
[ F I G . 23]
littered with newspapers, photographs and clippings, crime sheets … and photographs or repro-
John Deakin, George Dyer in ductions of personalities …Violence is the common denominator of photographs showing Goebbels
Francis Bacon’s studio, Reece Mews,
waggling a finger … the human carnage of a highway accident, every sort of war atrocity … fantastic
ca. 1964. Dublin City Gallery
The Hugh Lane. scientific contraptions.17
[ F I G . 24]
When Attitudes Become Form Bacon spoke of this “pin-board” material as “triggers of ideas”,18 and that his own task as a painter
exhibition, ICA, 1969. Installation was “to unlock the valves of feeling and therefore return the onlooker to life more violently”.19
photograph showing Victor Burgin’s
Photographic Path. ICA Archives / Tate. The studio image of his tragic lover George Dyer, a small-time criminal whom he first met in 1963,

emphasises the meaning of the chaos. Bacon’s intense sexual and emotional life was drowning in
this compost of mass culture and was, he believed, mysteriously part of it and part of the history
that it misrepresented. Dyer was not a subject apart from the mediated events of the photographs;
autobiography was not vacuum-sealed. His death in 1971, from a drugs overdose, was for Bacon
part of the twentieth century’s deeper, unknowable, meaning.
Everything was significant. “My photographs are very damaged by people walking over them
and crumpling them … and this adds other implications to an image of Rembrandt’s, for exam-
ple, which are not Rembrandt’s”.20 The reference to Rembrandt is important: Bacon wanted to
make Old Master paintings from his accidental existence, painting in oil and acrylic on canvases
framed in gold with thick glass; an art for museums, not avant-garde spaces in east London. That
was where he went cruising; he showed his art in the West End.
In 2001, Bacon’s studio was reconstructed at the Dublin City Art Gallery The Hugh Lane. The
artist was dead and therefore unable to comment.
Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1969
By the late 1960s, many artists had turned their backs on conventional art and involved them- [ F I G . 24]
selves in the new counter-culture. From the moment the artist John Latham and his students
at St Martin’s School of Art ate a copy of American critic Clement Greenberg’s Art and Culture
(1961) and returned the dissolved pulp to the library in a glass container, the old certainties
were dead. Greenberg’s book had been the bible for a previous generation of abstract painters.
In 1966, the German artist and political activist Gustav Metzger organised a Destruction in Art
Symposium, during which he, artist Yoko Ono and John Latham built “Skoob Towers” of books,
called “The Laws of England”, outside the British Museum, and then set fire to them. Interna-
tional groups such as “Fluxus” had British members and, in 1968, the French sculptor César
Baldaccini invited his well-heeled audience at the Tate Gallery to cut up pieces of coloured foam 16
21
produced by a giant machine, “a cry of hope, the opening of a new way into a pioneer’s world”. David Sylvester, ed.
Interviews with Francis Bacon.
This was a generation galvanised by opposition to the Vietnam War and to virtually all aspects London and New York:
of contemporary capitalism. Thames & Hudson, 1993, 190.
The When Attitudes Become Form exhibition at the ICA in 1969 brought together much of the 17
minimal and conceptual art that dominated art practice for the next decade. In certain respects it Sam Hunter, “Francis Bacon:
was the child of Roger Fry’s Manet and the Post-Impressionists exhibition of 1910 in its attempt at The Anatomy of Horror”,
The Magazine of Art, vol. 45,
a survey, and of This is Tomorrow of 1956 in spirit. It comprised works by an international group no. 1 (January 1952): 12.
of artists first brought together by the curator Harold Szeeman in Berne. These included Carl
18
Andre, Joseph Beuys, Eva Hesse, Yves Klein, Claes Oldenburg and Richard Serra. The British
Sylvester 1993, 30.
artists included Victor Burgin, Barry Flanagan, Richard Long and Bruce McLean. Photography,
performance, “art informel”, minimalism and land art opened up unexpected new vistas for what 19
the art historian Lucy R. Lippard called “the de-materialization of the art object”.22 Ibid., 17.
Ten years later, Margaret Thatcher came to power; British art moved to new places. 20
Ibid., 38.
21
César Baldaccini quoted in
Studio International, vol. 175
(1968): 333.
22
Lucy R. Lippard, Six Years:
The Dematerialization of the
Art Object from 1966 to 1972.
Berkeley, CA: University
45 RICHARD HUMPHREYS of California Press, 1973.

ENGLAND
AND THE
BRITISH
ISLES
1485–1980
TIM BLANNING
Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge

The Tudors, 1485–1603
“Now is the winter of our discontent” is the opening line of William Shakespeare’s Richard III,
purporting to be a history of the events of 1483–85. In the final scene, the villainous king gets
his just deserts at the hands of Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond. Proclaimed on the battlefield as
King Henry VII, he promises an end to the Wars of the Roses that had plagued England for the
past 30 years: “Now civil wounds are stopp’d, peace lives again:/ That she may long live here, God
say amen!”
Shakespeare was only the most talented of a host of creative artists who combined to project
a triumphalist image of the Tudor dynasty, whose rule was to last from 1485 until 1603. Whether
it was Hans Holbein portraying King Henry VIII as the perfect Renaissance prince, or Edmund
Spenser worshipping Queen Elizabeth I in verse in The Faerie Queene (1590–96), or William
Byrd setting panegyrics to music, every medium was brought into play.
Much of this was self-conscious myth-making, but there was enough solid achievement to
sustain credibility. Henry VII (1457–1509) did tame the feudal barons and restore stability to
royal finances and administration; Henry VIII (1491–1547) did turn England into a sovereign
state by excluding foreign jurisdiction; King Edward VI (1537–53) did consolidate the Protestant
Reformation; and Elizabeth I (1533–1603) did defeat the Spanish Armada and preside over a
cultural flowering of unprecedented richness. The odd Tudor out was Queen Mary I (1516–58),
whose brief reign was marred by religious persecution at home – hence her sobriquet “Bloody
Mary” – and military defeat abroad.
Most important of all was the constitutional development. All the Tudor sovereigns tried to
maximise royal authority, but none of them could dispense with Parliament. It may have seldom
met and for short periods only, but at critical times its intervention was crucial. As Henry VII’s
hereditary claim to the throne was so dubious, he derived his legitimacy primarily from the
parliamentary statute that recognised him as king. The two major episodes of the sixteenth
century – the breach with the Papacy and the secularisation of monastic land – were achieved
only with the active approval and participation of Parliament. It was on the alliance between
the Crown and the landed wealth of England, represented by the fifty to sixty lay peers sitting in
the House of Lords and the ca. 450 Members of the House of Commons, that the Reformation
47

settlement rested. The relationship was mutually supportive: the king was a Member of Parlia-
ment and Parliament was part of the king’s government. It was in the name of the “liberties of
England” that Henry VIII opposed the Papacy.
Two priceless assets kept Parliament at the centre of English politics. The most important
was the axiom that no tax could be imposed by the king on his subjects without their consent,
expressed through Parliament. Expected to “live of his own” in peacetime, even the most frugal
of rulers struggled to make ends meet, as prices inexorably rose faster than income. When war
came, resort to parliamentary grants of extraordinary taxation became inevitable. This power
of the purse was supported by freedom of speech, although MPs were obliged to be “neither
unmindful nor uncareful of their duties, reverence, and obedience to their sovereign”.1
Existing since time out of mind (or so it was claimed), these privileges won added relevance
in such a swiftly-changing age. Most fundamentally, the population of England almost doubled,
from more than two million in 1500 to just over four million a century later. Unsurprisingly, the
main losers were the labouring poor, as downward pressure on labour costs met upward pressure
on food prices, with the result that real wages fell by 57 per cent in the course of the century. The
great beneficiaries were the nobility and gentlemen, who took advantage of the massive land sales
unleashed by the dissolution of the monasteries. Representative was John Thynne, who put to-
gether a great collection of estates in London and the West Country. They included a secularised
Carthusian priory on the boundary of Wiltshire and Somerset, where he built one of the greatest
[ F I G . 1] Elizabethan country houses and called it Longleat. His great-grandson became a baronet,
his great-great-grandson a baron and viscount, and his great-great-great-great-grandson a
marquis. The house remains in the ownership of the Thynne family.
A lot of money was being made in Tudor England by a small but increasing number of people.
Much of it went to the great country houses and town palaces that still embellish the English
landscape. An impressive share also went to found eleven new Colleges, five at Oxford and six at
Cambridge, including the grandest and richest of them all – Trinity College, Cambridge. It was at
Cambridge in particular that the more austere form of Protestantism that came to be known as
“Puritanism” was fostered, especially at Emmanuel College, founded in 1584, and at “the Ladie
Fraunces Scidney Sussex Colledge”, founded in 1596 by the eponymous Countess “in devocion
and Charitie … for the mainteynance of good learninge”.2
Although both Catholicism and Puritanism could be found in all regions and classes, the former
was especially strong among the gentry and their tenants in the west and north-west, while the
latter was especially strong in the towns, most notably in London. Defenders of Catholicism were
handicapped by their inevitable association with treason, following the papal excommunication
of Queen Elizabeth in 1570, the assassination plots inspired by her Catholic rival Mary Queen
of Scots (1542–87) and King Philip II’s (1527–98) attempt at invasion with his great Armada in
1588. It was an association strengthened by the dogged refusal of most native Irish to embrace
the Protestant Reformation. When an English army commanded by Lord Mountjoy defeated a
combined force of Spanish and Irish at Kinsale near Cork in 1601, thus finalising the subjection
[ F I G . 2] of Ireland, the process was complete.
1
David Lindsay Keir,
The Constitutional History
of Modern Britain 1485–1951.
5th ed. London: A. & C. Black,
1953, 149.
2
Richard Humphreys,
Sidney Sussex. A History.
Cambridge: Sidney Sussex
College, 2009, 8. 48 ENGLAND AND THE BRITISH ISLES 1485–1980

[ F I G . 1] [ F I G . 2]
Jan Siberechts, Longleat House, 1675. Attributed to George Gower,
Oil on canvas, 111.8 x 172.7 cm. The Armada Portrait (detail), ca. 1588.
Private Collection. Oil on panel, 97.8 x 72.4 cm.
National Portrait Gallery, London.
Painted by the Flemish artist
Jan Siberechts, Longleat was only one This portrait of Queen Elizabeth I
of the many great country houses built was painted to celebrate victory
by families made rich by the dissolution over the Spanish Armada, which is
of the monasteries. Others include depicted in the background.
Welbeck Abbey (Cavendish-Bentinck),
Woburn Abbey (Russell), Beaulieu
(Montagu), Chatsworth (Cavendish)
and Syon House (Percy).
49 TIM BLANNING

[ F I G . 3]
The Beheading of King Charles I Outside
the Banqueting House, Whitehall
Palace, 30 January 1649, 1649–55.
Published by Sebastian Furck.
Etching and engraving, 188 x 289 mm.
The Trustees of the British Museum.
This German print shows the execution

of King Charles I, for which he wore
two shirts lest it be said that he shivered
from fear rather than the cold.
An observer recorded that, as the axe
fell, there rose from the crowd “such
a groan as I never heard before, and I
desire I may never hear again”. Above,
there are portraits in ovals of Thomas
Fairfax, Charles and Oliver Cromwell.
Civil Wars and Revolutions, 1603–1688
The accession of the Tudor dynasty had marked the end of one long period of instability; its
extinction marked the beginning of another. Unlike the Wars of the Roses of the fifteenth century,
however, the next episode of civil strife was to have a worldwide impact. As historian G.M.
Trevelyan observed: “while Germany boasts her Reformation and France her Revolution, England
can point to her dealings with the House of Stuart”.3 The execution of King Charles I (1600–49)
in 1649 and the ejection of his son King James II (1633–1701) in 1688 were just the highlights of a
[ F I G . 3] series of bruising confrontations between sovereigns and subjects.
The Stuarts had got off to an inauspicious start with the arrival of King James I (1566–1625),
who had ruled Scotland as James VI since the abdication of his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, in
1567. Although undoubtedly intelligent, James was also pompous, verbose, lazy, self-indulgent,
extravagant and often drunk. Nor did his new subjects take kindly to his broad Scottish accent,
the favouritism he showed to his fellow countrymen or his demonstrative homosexuality. More
alienating in the long run was his absolutist conception of kingship. Elizabeth I had also had an
elevated view of her calling but had known how to temper it with tact. James positively invited
dissent by informing his first Parliament that “Kings are not only God’s lieutenants upon earth and
sit upon God’s throne, but even by God Himself they are called gods”.4
By the ruthless exploitation of such financial expedients as the sale of monopolies and titles,
James managed to rule for much of his reign without Parliament. However, enforced absence did
nothing to lessen its Members’ determination to defend their position. On the contrary, it was
3
G.M. Trevelyan, England under
the Stuarts. Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books, 1960, ix.
4
Ibid., 99. 50 ENGLAND AND THE BRITISH ISLES 1485–1980

during this period that the doctrine of the “ancient constitution” matured. As Parliament had
existed since time immemorial, it was argued, no king could rule without it. So, when James told
MPs that they must not discuss matters of state, they replied that their traditional rights and privi-
leges, including freedom of speech in Parliaxment, formed the “ancient and undoubted birthright
and inheritance of the subjects of England”.5
Their sensitivity was intensified by three interlocking issues: Puritanism, fear of Catholicism
and especially Spain, and the great war on the continent that began in 1618. Gradually coming to
terms with the different political culture of his new kingdom, James proved that he could adapt.
Showing sensible restraint after an initial burst of persecution, he steered a middle course between
the confessional extremes. Crucially, he also managed to avoid war, even though two of the first
victims of what eventually would be known as the Thirty Years War were his daughter Elizabeth
and her husband, the Elector of the Palatinate, who were dispossessed by the Spanish in 1620.
James’ son, Charles I, had few of his father’s vices but none of his political acumen. Impul-
sive, tactless, inconsistent and just as prone as his father to resounding absolutist statements,
Charles alienated almost everyone apart from the direct beneficiaries of his patronage. After first
succumbing to the influence of the Duke of Buckingham, his late father’s favourite and the most
hated man in England, he then submitted to his queen, Henrietta Maria, who, being a French
Catholic with a strong will and a high profile, was the most hated woman in England.
Humiliating failure in wars waged incompetently, necessitating financial expedients even more
unpopular than those of his father, led to acrimonious confrontations with the political elites. In
1629, Parliament was dissolved, but not before the House of Commons condemned in advance
any attempt to change the country’s religion, to levy taxes without parliamentary authority or to
betray the liberty of England. For the next eleven years, Charles ruled without Parliament. Of the
resentments that seethed beneath the surface of royal control, religion was especially divisive.
Charles’ resolute support for Archbishop Laud’s “High-Church” programme aroused fears of a
re-imposition of Catholicism and destroyed the fragile confessional peace established during the
previous reign.
Religious differences also brought the Eleven Years Tyranny to an end. An attempt to impose
the English Book of Common Prayer on Scotland unleashed a war that forced the recall of
Parliament in 1640. Led by a group of peers who combined Puritanism with ambitions to establish
Parliamentary rule, the Members took full advantage of their regained power. So intransigent
were the two sides by this stage that no negotiated settlement could be found. Decisive in turning
political conflict into civil war was the Irish rebellion of the autumn of 1641 involving the massacre
of several thousand Protestants. Although professed by less than 2 per cent of the population of
England, Catholicism could trigger waves of intense paranoia, not least because it was associated
with political tyranny and material deprivation as well as religious error.
The civil war that began in the following year was a confusing affair with many twists and turns,
involving Scotland and Ireland as well as England. The Parliamentarians eventually won because
they controlled London and the navy, had more durable financial resources and eventually pro-
duced in Oliver Cromwell and the New Model Army decisive military superiority. Defeating,
prosecuting and killing Charles I was the easy part. Restoring stability proved elusive, not least
because Parliament and the army fell out. England experienced four different constitutions
5
Henry Hallam, The Constitutional
History of England from
the Accession of Henry VII
to the Death of George II.
51 TIM BLANNING London: John Murray, 1914, 262.

between 1649 and 1659 before dissolving into a welter of short-term expedients in 1659–60. It
was with a collective sigh of relief but with varying degrees of enthusiasm that the English greeted
the Restoration of the monarchy in the amiable person of King Charles II (1630–85) in 1660.
Much more easy-going and much more of a politician than his father, the new king enjoyed – in
all senses of the word – a long and relatively untroubled reign until his death at the age of fifty-five
in 1685. Although interrupted by two great natural disasters in the shape of the Great Plague of
1665 and the Great Fire of London in 1666, this was a period of social relaxation and economic
expansion, recorded on a daily basis by the peerless diarist Samuel Pepys. It also showed that the
upheaval of 1642–60 had changed surprisingly little. The king still ruled as well as reigned; Parlia-
ment was acknowledged to be an essential if intermittent partner; landowners dominated both
legislature and localities; and the hegemony of the Church of England co-existed with a toleration
of dissent.
Although a prolific sire of bastards, Charles did not produce a legitimate heir and was succeeded
by his brother as James II. Within just three years, his prophecy that the latter would “lose his
kingdom by his bigotry and his soul for a lot of ugly trollops” had come true (although we can be
certain only about the first part).6 Never in British history has there been such a spectacular epi-
sode of self-destruction. James managed to squander his impressive inheritance in double-quick
time by identifying himself as the ultimate English bogeyman – the Catholic Francophile tyrant.
He did it by proroguing Parliament when it opposed his policies; dismissing anyone who disagreed
with him, most notably the Lords Lieutenant and Justices of the Peace who ran the shires; packing
the judiciary to bend the law of the land; prosecuting dissident printers, imposing censorship and
employing all the techniques of a police state; allying with France; imposing Catholics on Oxford
and Cambridge colleges in contravention of their statutes; and appointing Catholics to senior
military positions in defiance of the Test Act 1673. This unashamed process of catholicisation was
rendered even more unacceptable by King Louis XIV’s (1638–1715) simultaneous persecution
of Protestants, which sent a flood of refugees across the Channel. From even closer to home,
Protestants harassed by James’ regime in Ireland fled to England, bearing with them stories of
atrocities that could only grow with the telling.
The last straw proved to be the birth of a male heir to James II and his Italian queen, Mary
of Modena, on 10 June 1688, which opened up the awful possibility of an endless succession of
Catholics. Before the month was out, a group of seven aristocrats had sent an invitation to the
Dutch Stadholder William of Orange, husband of James’ Protestant daughter Mary, to rescue
England’s “religion, liberties and properties”.7 Events were to show that their claim that nineteen-
twentieths of the population wished to see James replaced by Mary was not much exaggerated.
After William landed at Torbay on 5 November 1688, James’ army melted away as both officers
[ F I G . 4] and men deserted. After suffering what amounted to a nervous breakdown, James fled to France
at the end of the year. His attempt to regain his kingdom by a campaign in Ireland in 1689 served
only to confirm English prejudices against him and his Irish supporters. It ended in disaster with
a decisive defeat at the Battle of the Boyne on 1 July 1690, after which he escaped again to France,
this time for good.
6
Tim Harris, Revolution.
The Great Crisis of the British
Monarchy, 1685–1720. London:
Allen Lane, 2006, 9.
7
Ibid., 296. 52 ENGLAND AND THE BRITISH ISLES 1485–1980

[ F I G . 4]
J.M.W. Turner, The Prince of Orange,
William III, Embarked from Holland
and Landed at Torbay, November 4th,
1688, after a Stormy Passage, 1832.
Oil on canvas, 90.5 x 120 cm. Tate.
First exhibited at the Royal

Academy Exhibition in 1832 and
subsequently marketed as a hugely
popular engraving, this testifies to the
enduring fame of a critical moment
in English history.
53 TIM BLANNING

[ F I G . 5]
Benjamin West, The Death of General
Wolfe, 1770. Oil on canvas,
152.6 x 214.5 cm. Transfer from the
Canadian War Memorials, 1921 (Gift of
the 2nd Duke of Westminster, England,
1918). National Gallery of Canada.
This painting was exhibited to great

popular acclaim at the Royal Academy
Exhibition in 1771. As the general
commanding the British forces at
Quebec on 13 September 1759 expires,
a messenger approaches from the left to
announce victory over the French. A truly
world-historical moment, this ensured
that eventually English would replace
French as the dominant world language.
54 ENGLAND AND THE BRITISH ISLES 1485–1980

The Long Eighteenth Century, 1688–1815
Out of the prolonged constitutional crisis of the seventeenth century came a political settlement
that has endured with periodic modifications until the present day. After failed experiments
in trying to dispense with king or Parliament, it was now appreciated that both were essential.
Sovereignty was recognised as residing with the “King (or Queen) in Parliament”, or, in other
words, laws were legitimate only if passed by both Houses of Parliament and given royal assent.
The religious settlement was less clear. Although England remained a confessional state, with
access to all public offices and the universities confined to Anglicans, Protestant Nonconformists
were not punished if they failed to attend Anglican services and were permitted to establish their
own chapels and schools. The small Catholic minority was excluded from the Toleration Act of
1689 but was usually left untroubled.
The ejection of James II did not put an end to domestic political conflict. On the contrary,
the years that followed were marked by a “rage of party” between Whigs and Tories (labels that
derived from the campaign for and against excluding James from the throne during the closing
years of Charles II’s reign). However, this was a struggle taking place within a constitutional
framework accepted by all combatants, apart from a small and dwindling number of Jacobites,
as supporters of the exiled James II and his descendants were known. More important was the
international conflict that England joined in 1688 as part of their new king’s struggle against
French hegemony. Thus began the Second Hundred Years War between England and France,
which did not end until the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
This epochal struggle was decided in favour of England (or rather the “United Kingdom of
Great Britain” following the union with Scotland in 1707) by naval superiority supported by a
fiscal system that was universal, bureaucratic, professional and public. In the process, a great
empire was assembled in the Caribbean, North America, Africa, India and Australasia. Although
seen as a disaster at the time, the loss of the thirteen American colonies in 1783 soon proved to be
a blessing in disguise, as all the economic benefits of trade could be gained without the attendant
costs of empire. [ F I G . 5]
The wars and the City of London were mutually supportive. Through the Bank of England,
founded in 1694 for just this purpose, the necessary finance was mobilised to send the fleets that
protected the trade and expanded the markets, which fed profit back to the capital. As a result,
London was the great demographic success story of the western world in the eighteenth century,
increasing from ca. 200,000 in 1600 to ca. 400,000 in 1700, to 600,000 in 1720 and to almost a
million by 1800. Once Parliament began to meet more regularly and for longer periods, peers and
gentry spent more time “in town” each year, creating an ever-growing market for luxury goods,
services and various forms of recreation. Landowners’ profits were swollen by growing demand
meeting rapidly increasing productivity, thanks to enclosure and the introduction of new crops,
selective breeding and stall-feeding.
So, the eighteenth century witnessed a massive expansion of the public sphere, as concerts,
pleasure gardens, art exhibitions and theatres all multiplied. The ubiquitous coffee houses had
grown in number to more than 500 by the 1740s. It was with admiration, often mixed with horror,
that foreign visitors found high and low, rich and poor, sitting at the same table, reading the
55 TIM BLANNING

newspapers, discussing matters of state and attacking the government of the day. The criticism
to be heard in Parliament, coffee houses or any other public or private space was often loud, often
radical but very seldom revolutionary. Success in the wars against Spain and France between 1739
and 1748 and especially in the Seven Years War (1756–63), together with growing prosperity at
[ F I G . 6] home, intensified an already strident nationalism.
Although the first two kings of the Hanoverian dynasty – George I (1660–1727) and George
II (1683–1760) – were never popular, they did possess two crucial assets: they were Protestant
and they had the good sense not to interfere with the traditional constitution. It was when the
long-reigning King George III (1738–1820) appeared to be reasserting royal authority that more
fundamental discontent erupted. As he was also identified so personally with the policies that led
to the revolt of the American colonies, failure to master it provoked a systemic crisis in 1780–84.
This proved to be the British Revolution that never happened. So tormented was George III
by his opponents that at one point he considered abdicating and moving to Hanover. In the event,
he rolled up his sleeves and proceeded to demonstrate that a monarch could manipulate public
opinion just as well as professional politicians. His reward was seventeen years of political stabili-
ty directed by William Pitt the Younger, who was just twenty-four years old when appointed Prime
Minister in December 1783. In the year that Revolution broke out in France, George’s recovery
from a temporary period of dementia was celebrated across the length and breadth of the country.
Royal popularity helped the British social and political establishment to navigate the storms
of the French Revolutionary–Napoleonic period without too much difficulty. Traditional Franco-
phobia, intensified by the execution of King Louis XVI (1754–93) and the Terror, promoted
conservatism rather than radicalism, although there was always a noisy dissenting minority. Only
in Ireland was there a major insurrection, in 1798. Quickly and brutally suppressed with the help of
the Protestant population, its main effect was to bring political union with Great Britain, in 1801.
The Nineteenth Century
The peace settlement of 1815 achieved all Britain’s war aims: no single power exercised hege-
mony on the continent; France was stable but weak; the worldwide supremacy of the Royal Navy
was uncontested; and the British empire was both much larger and more secure. The immedi-
ate post-war period, however, was a very unhappy time. Across Europe, the demobilisation of
hundreds of thousands of soldiers and sailors, the universal need for retrenchment in the face of
colossal indebtedness, and harvest failure in the wake of the largest volcanic eruption the world
had ever seen, on the island of Tambora in Indonesia in 1815, all conspired to bring a deep and
prolonged recession.
There were special problems in the United Kingdom. In 1810, George III succumbed perm-
anently to senile dementia. His son, who reigned as Prince Regent until his father’s death in
1820 and then in his own right as King George IV (1762–1830) until 1830, was certainly clever
and could be charming but had a reputation for being extravagant, irresponsible, mendacious and
debauched: “a more contemptible, selfish, unfeeling dog does not exist than this King” was the
verdict of one well-placed observer (Charles Greville).8 His successor and brother, who reigned as
8
Edward Pearce, ed.
The Diaries of Charles Greville.
London: Pimlico, 2005, 23. 56 ENGLAND AND THE BRITISH ISLES 1485–1980

[ F I G . 6]
William Hogarth, The Gate of Calais or
O the Roast Beef of Old England, 1748–49.
Oil on canvas, 78.8 x 94.5 cm,. Tate.
As a sirloin of beef is brought ashore

at Calais for Madam Grandsire’s English
eating-house, the emaciated French
with their diet of watery soup look
on incredulously. At bottom right, a
tartan-clad Scottish Jacobite laments
his treachery; at bottom left, a group
of fishwives believe they have found
the features of Christ in a fish. Equally
idolatrous, in Hogarth’s opinion, was
the scene beyond the archway, where
the faithful kneel as the Host is carried
past. As Hogarth sketches the scene at
the left, the pike announces his imminent
arrest on suspicion of espionage.
57 TIM BLANNING

King William IV (1765–1837) until 1837, was no better: “something of a blackguard and something
more of a buffoon”.9
To the hour came the woman. Just as the Hanoverians appeared to be tottering towards a
graveyard already occupied by so many other European dynasties, there succeeded an eighteen-
year-old girl mercifully free from the numerous vices of her rascally royal uncles. Small of stature
but strong of will, she made monarchy respectable once more. Helped by a judicious choice of con-
sort, the intelligent and enterprising Prince Albert of Saxony-Coburg, she emerged as an exemplar
[ F I G . 7] of the moral code named after her: serious-minded, public-spirited, industrious and pious.
Victoria (1819–1901) was fortunate that, by the time she came to the throne, the most conten-
tious issues of the post-1815 period had been settled, by Catholic Emancipation in 1829 and the
Great Reform Act of 1832. Although the first did not satisfy the Irish and the second was variously
thought to go too far or not far enough, together they signalled that the establishment could
reform itself. The message was reinforced by the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 after a vigorous
campaign outside Parliament. However, the limits of public pressure were exposed by the failure
of the other great cause of the 1840s: the Chartist agitation for universal male suffrage.
Relative peace in Britain during 1848, the year of revolutions on the continent, was due in
part to precocious economic growth. By this time, enough of the benefits of industrialisation
were apparent to make the squalor of the mushrooming cities seem less intolerable. By 1850,
the country was covered by a network of nearly 10,000 kilometres of railway; the population had
increased by a third in just twenty years to reach 21,000,000 (excluding Ireland); and a third of
the population lived in towns with more than 20,000 inhabitants. As complacent Victorians liked
to boast, Britain had become “the workshop of the world”. Symbolic of its economic achievement
was the Great Exhibition held in a gigantic crystal palace in Hyde Park, which attracted more
than six million visitors between 1 May and 15 October 1851.
Enormous amounts of money were being made in nineteenth-century Britain. Many colossal
country houses, urban palaces and town halls remain as obtrusive reminders of an age when
wealth was not so much displayed as flaunted. Of course, it was not shared equally, but if it
cascaded into the hands of the richest, it also poured through the upper middle classes, trickled
into the lower middles and even seeped down to the labouring poor. Between 1860 and 1914, the
real wages of the last probably doubled. Greater prosperity also provided the resources for the
improvement of everyone’s standard of living – a proper urban infrastructure, most notably clean
drinking water and adequate sewage disposal, and a better quality of life by multiplying recreat-
ional opportunities. Although religion remained central to public life, especially in Parliament,
this was a period of rapid secularisation: by 1900, only 19 per cent of Londoners went to church
[ F I G . 8] regularly, and most of those were in middle-class areas.
For much of the nineteenth century, most British politicians took the line that the best of
all states was the state that did least. “I take it as my starting-point that it is not the duty of the
Government to provide any class of citizens with any of the necessaries of life” was the representa-
tive view of one Conservative Home Secretary (Viscount Cross).10 Yet the growing complexities
of an industrialising society compelled increasing intervention, whether positively (to regulate
housing, factory conditions, hours of work, education, public health, and so on) or negatively
(most importantly, to permit the formation of trade unions). Partly as a result, class conflict was
9
Ibid., 161.
10
Derek Beales, From Castlereagh
to Gladstone 1815–1885. London:
Nelson, 1969, 264. 58 ENGLAND AND THE BRITISH ISLES 1485–1980

[ F I G . 7] [ F I G . 8]
Edwin Landseer, Queen Victoria. Stephanne Pannemaker after Gustave
and Prince Albert at the Bal Doré, Over London by Rail, 1872.
Costumé of 12 May 1842, 1842–46. Engraving. Private Collection.
Oil on canvas, 143 x 111.6 cm.
The Royal Collection. Depicting the squalor of life in what
was then the world’s largest city, this was
Dressed as Queen Philippa of Hainault one of 180 engravings published in book
and King Edward III respectively, form in thirteen instalments as London:
the royal couple personify a contemporary A Pilgrimage in 1872, written by William
fascination with all things medieval that Blanchard Jerrold and engraved by
grew ever more intense as the pace of Stephane Pannemaker, for which the
modernisation accelerated. Among other French artist had received the enormous
things, it also covered the country with sum of £10,000 from the publisher,
neo-gothic churches and secular Grant & Co. Although a commercial
buildings, both public and private. success, it was much criticised by those
who did not appreciate a foreigner
drawing attention to their shortcomings.
59 TIM BLANNING

contained within existing structures. Unlike in most of continental Europe, a mass socialist party
did not emerge until the twentieth century.
When Queen Victoria celebrated her Diamond Jubilee in 1897, the empire she ruled appeared
to be at its zenith. In the course of her reign, vast tracts of territory in Africa and Asia had been
added to the empire, yet behind the triumphalist pageantry, all was not well. Handicapped by
an educational system that was inadequate and placed undue emphasis on classics and theology
at the expense of the natural sciences and technology, the country was beginning to fall behind
more dynamic and innovative economies, especially those of Germany and the USA. The Boer
War of 1899–1902 exposed a colossus with feet of, if not clay, then certainly not steel. The running
sore that was Ireland had never ceased to suppurate and was about to turn septic. In some of the
colonies, nationalist agitation began to stir.
The Twentieth Century
On the occasion of the 1897 Jubilee, Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem entitled “Recessional”. This
showed that, although George Orwell later referred to him as “the poet of British imperialism”,
Kipling was well aware of the fragility of empires:
Far-called our navies melt away –

On dune and headland sinks the fire –
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget – lest we forget!11
Personal tragedy was to reinforce the message when his only son, John, was killed in action at the
[ F I G . 9] Battle of Loos on the Western Front in 1915.
The First World War had a deep and lasting impact on the United Kingdom, not least because
nearly three-quarters of a million soldiers were killed and more than one-and-a-half million
wounded. Its empire was actually enlarged by the peace settlement, thanks to the addition of
territories in Africa and the Middle East mandated by the League of Nations. The financial cost
of the war had been so great, however, that it proved difficult to hold on to existing possessions.
An early indication of dissolution had been the Easter Rising in Ireland in 1916. This was the start
of a long and bloody process that ended in independence in 1922 for the Irish Free State, which
included all but six counties in the north.
At home, the main beneficiaries, as far as politics was concerned, were women. With more than
four million men in the armed forces by 1917, women’s labour had been indispensable. By the end
of the war, more than a million of them were working in the metal and chemical trades alone. Their
reward was a franchise in 1918 limited to women over the age of thirty who were householders or
married to householders, extended ten years later to everyone over the age of twenty-one. The
other great collective beneficiary was the trade unions, whose membership rose from two-and-a-
half million in 1910 to eight million in 1920.
11
Craig Raine, ed. Rudyard Kipling,
Selected Poetry London: Penguin
Books, 1992, 131. 60 ENGLAND AND THE BRITISH ISLES 1485–1980

[ F I G . 9]
John Singer Sargent, Gassed, 1919.
Oil on canvas, 231 x 611 cm. Imperial
War Museum, London.
Commissioned by the British Ministry

of Information for a planned Hall of
Remembrance, this colossal painting
is now in the Imperial War Museum.
It depicts two groups of soldiers,
blinded by a mustard gas attack, being
led through heaps of dead and dying
comrades towards a field station.
In the previous year the artist had
spent time at the Front near Arras
with the Guards Division.
61 TIM BLANNING

[ F I G . 10]
David Low, “Open wide, please.
I’m afraid this might hurt a little”,
9 December 1948. Cartoon of the
creation of the National Health
Service, 29.5 x 44.5 cm. British
Cartoon Archive, University of Kent.
This cartoon, which appeared in

London’s Evening Standard in 1948,
shows Aneurin Bevan, Minister
for Health in the Labour
government, using a pneumatic
drill to extract money from the
well-filled pockets of a private
dentist applying his altogether more
puny instrument to the National
Health Service Act designed to give
free medical care to all.
The advance of organised labour was matched by its political wing, the Labour Party. Although
it held office for only nine months, the first Labour government, which took office in 1924, was a
turning point in British politics. While it was the Liberals who brought the Labour government into
office and it was the Liberals who brought it down, the general election that followed ended their
history as a major party, as they proved unable to win enough votes from Labour in working-class
constituencies and unable to win enough votes from the Conservatives in middle-class constit-
uencies. The slump of 1929 then polished the Liberals off, reducing them in 1931 to less than 7 per
[ F I G . 10] cent of the vote and giving Britain the two-party system that persisted for the rest of the century.
For all their many backward-looking aspects and many backwoods members, the Conserva-
tives flourished in an age of democratic politics. After 1924, they were out of power for only
eighteen years of the next seventy. They were helped by choosing, more often than not, the appro-
priate leader: the reliable Stanley Baldwin, the charismatic Winston Churchill, the unflappable
Harold Macmillan and the unique Margaret Thatcher. They also proved to be surprisingly supple
when accepting the inevitable. So, it was a Conservative government that took Britain into the
Common Market and it was mainly Conservative governments that managed the dissolution of
the British empire and its replacement by the Commonwealth of Nations.
The Conservatives both promoted and benefited from constitutional stability. At the establish-
ment’s heart stood the monarchy. Buffeted by the crisis of 1936, when the feckless King Edward VIII
(1894–1972) abdicated after less than a year on the throne in order to marry an American divor-
cee, it recovered strongly under his reliable brother King George VI (1895–1952). Rehabilitation
was completed by his long-reigning daughter, Queen Elizabeth II (b. 1926), who succeeded in 1952
and proved a master of public relations. Wrong-footed only briefly by the hysteria that greeted the
death of her ex-daughter-in-law, Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997, she celebrated her Diamond
Jubilee in 2012 as probably the most popular British sovereign since Elizabeth I.
62 ENGLAND AND THE BRITISH ISLES 1485–1980

[ F I G . 11]
Ralph Steadman, “Self-sufficient by 1981!
The Primeministerial Scream”. Cartoon
published in the New Statesman, 6 July
1979. British Cartoon Archive,
University of Kent.
Ralph Steadman is one of

Britain’s most famous political
cartoonists. His caricatures of Margaret
Thatcher helped to define her public
image throughout the 1980s.
Here she is shown at the beginning of
her premiership as a grotesque bird-like
creature emitting a “Prime Ministerial
Scream” that Britain will be “self-
sufficient by 1981”. Thatcher was
the most divisive figure in modern British
politics, hated but also venerated. The
strong emotions she aroused testified to
her radicalism.
The First World War had weakened Britain’s world power status; the Second destroyed it.
Although spared the horrors of German occupation, nearly 400,000 were killed and double
that number were wounded, while the aerial attacks by the Luftwaffe killed tens of thousands
of civilians and left many cities in ruins. The cost of the war and the impetus it gave to libera-
tion movements around the globe also finished off the British empire. The occasional colonial
adventures, whether dismal failures (the Suez Operation of 1956) or brilliant successes (the
Falklands War of 1982), served only to illustrate the country’s marginalisation. The abrasive style
of Thatcher, Prime Minister from 1979 until 1990, outraged the centre-left Liberal intelligentsia [ F I G . 11]
that had come to dominate so many British institutions, including the BBC and most other mass
media. Although her victory over the trade unions, most spectacularly during the miners’ strike
of 1984–85, opened the way for economic modernisation, it also proved to be deeply polarising.
Her administration shifted the economic balance of the United Kingdom decisively towards the
south-east, which in turn gave a major impetus to separatist nationalism in Wales and Scotland.
Especially for politicians, journalists and those who take these two groups seriously, the
disorientation inflicted by the rapid changes of the late twentieth century, notably the explosion
of youth culture, the implosion of the churches, drug abuse and sexual liberation, has generated
a sense of decline and decadence. However, in reality, most British people – and the millions who
have immigrated to join them since 1945, taking the total population to 56,000,000 by 1980 (and
62,700,000 in 2012) – have never had it so good, to borrow a phrase used by Macmillan in 1957.
They live longer, enjoy healthier lives (if they so choose), have a much greater range of cultural
and recreational opportunities, suffer far less social and sexual repression and for several genera-
tions have been spared the horrors of a general European war.
63 TIM BLANNING

“THE ISLE IS FULL
OF NOISES”:
A VERY SHORT
INTRODUCTION
TO ENGLISH
LITERATURE
KEVIN JACKSON

Be not afeared: the Isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs that give delight
and hurt not …1
(Caliban, in The Tempest by William Shakespeare,

Act III, Scene II)
The British no longer have much of an appetite for poetry – certainly not as keen an appetite
as they had in Queen Victoria’s (1819–1901) day, when the likes of Alfred, Lord Tennyson and
Robert Browning were best-sellers and internationally famous. It is likely that only one British
person in ten could tell you the name of our current Poet Laureate, Carol Anne Duffy. Yet there is
an English poem that almost every British subject can still recognise: a short set of verses about
Britain itself, written in 1808 by the Romantic poet and artist William Blake, and set to a stirring
tune by an English composer, Hubert Parry, in 1916. Blake did not give his poem a title, but nowa-
days it is usually called “Jerusalem” and it begins like this:
And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the Holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic Mills?2
It would be hard to overestimate how well and widely this poem is loved, by the reddest of
revolutionaries as well as the most diehard of Conservatives. Patriotic, flag-waving British men
and women sing it with gusto every year in the Royal Albert Hall in London, to mark the end
of the annual BBC Promenade Concerts. Members of the Labour Party sing “Jerusalem” as well
as the “The Red Flag” at their party conferences. Young couples have it sung as a hymn at their
weddings; mourners sing it with tears running down their cheeks at funerals. It is often suggested
that “Jerusalem” should take over from “God Save the Queen” as our official national anthem;
and, for many people, it is already our true national anthem.
Clearly, this short verse must speak to something very deep in British culture. However, if
you look at the text more closely, you start to realise how strange its words are and how curious
it is that the poem has become so passionately embraced. The words to most national anthems 1
are usually some kind of boast – “our men are brave, our women are lovely, and we’re generally a Alfred Harbage, ed. William
Shakespeare: the Complete
Works. New York: Viking Press,
1969, 1387.
2
Jacob Bronowski, ed. William
Blake: A Selection of Poems
and Letters. The Penguin
Poets Series. Harmondsworth:
65 Penguin, 1958, 162.

terrific bunch”. The only obvious boasts Blake makes about England are that it is “green” and has
“pleasant pastures” – claims so modest they could hardly offend anyone. The poem also draws
attention to the dismaying fact that England is packed with “Satanic Mills” – literally, the ugly
mills and polluting factories of the early Industrial Revolution, but in Blake’s revolutionary mind
also the tyrannical sway of organised religion, the rise of modern science in its inhumane aspects,
and the rule of what he saw as unjust laws. Above all, “Jerusalem” is radically different from most
[ F I G . 1] anthems or hymns in that it does not state, but asks – it is simply a series of questions.
One of the reasons why Britain has embraced this poem so wholeheartedly is because Parry’s
music has a powerful emotional tug, but it also has qualities that connect with thoughtful Britons
on much deeper levels too. Short though it is, the poem manages to evoke – or touch on – at least
four of the major themes that run through centuries of English literature, and help unite it: a love of,
even a fascination with, the British landscape and the environment; a recurrent concern with spiri-
tual matters – with religion, magic and the supernatural; a fearful sense that we have done great evil
to each other and to the land in which we live; and a profound curiosity about our national origins.
Blake’s poem is built on a myth that can first be found in twelfth-century tales about King
Arthur and his Knights, which states that Jesus Christ, during his “lost years”, visited England in
the company of Joseph of Arimathea – to be exact, that he visited the town of Glastonbury, which
has always been associated with supernatural wonders. Was England once a sacred place, Blake
asks? How and why was it spoiled? How can we make it sacred again?
English literature is so vast that no short introduction can hope to encompass its full range
and variety. However, we can use those four key topics summoned by this most English of English
poems as entrances into Britain’s labyrinth of words, and to chart some of the ways in which the
distinctive qualities of our literature have developed over half a millennium and more.
“Mountains Green …”
Nature
[ F I G . 2] English literature as it is taught in schools and colleges begins with the humane, civilised and
attractive figure of Geoffrey Chaucer, a well-to-do Londoner and high-ranking civil servant.
Chaucer’s best-known poem work is The Canterbury Tales (late fourteenth century), which
describes how a group of about thirty pilgrims, representing almost every class and calling,
amuse themselves on the journey from London to the shrine of St Thomas Becket at Canterbury
by telling tales. The General Prologue begins – and so, we might say, English literature itself
begins – with a description of the natural world coming back to life in springtime:
Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote,

The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne …3
3
Fred Norris Robinson,
ed. The Works of Geoffrey
Chaucer. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1974, 17. 66 “THE ISLE IS FULL OF NOISES”: A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE

[ F I G . 1]
Philip James (Jacques) de
Loutherbourg, Coalbrookedale by Night,
1801. Oil on canvas, 68 x 106.7 cm.
Science Museum, London.
[ F I G . 2]
William Blake, Jeffrey Chaucer and
the Nine and Twenty Pilgrims on their
Journey to Canterbury, ca. 1808.
Tempera on canvas, 46.4 x 136.5 cm.
Stirling Maxwell Collection, Pollok
House, Glasgow.
67 KEVIN JACKSON

[ F I G . 3]
J.M.W. Turner, Tintern Abbey,
the transept, ca. 1795. Watercolour on
paper, 345 x 254 mm. The Trustees of
the British Museum, London.
68 “THE ISLE IS FULL OF NOISES”: A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE

The English language has changed quite a lot since Chaucer wrote those words, but the general
sense is not hard to make out and the music is delightful. His couplets are elegant and apparently
simple, though if you read them more closely you will find they are actually a complex mixture of
medieval biological theory (“of which vertu”), astrological lore (“the Ram”), classical mythology
(“Zephirus”), and sheer delight in the natural world (“shoures soote” – sweet showers). Chaucer
is remembered most often for his genius at sketching character, his humour – ranging from the
most subtle irony to bawdy, vulgar knockabout – and his astonishing technical skill. As these lines
show, though, he was also a poet of nature; he set a precedent that English writers have been
following ever since. English painters, too: one of the strong points of British art has long been
landscape painting, and John Constable and J.M.W. Turner are probably the most widely loved
of all English artists. In our own time, David Hockney is among those English painters who have
kept the landscape tradition fully alive.
Asked to name a “nature poet”, most Britons would probably think of the Romantic master
William Wordsworth, whose greatest work was composed at the end of the eighteenth century
and the start of the nineteenth; or, more recently, the Yorkshireman Ted Hughes, who was Poet
Laureate from 1984 until his death in 1998. Between them, these two poets of northern England
embrace the full range of responses to nature. For Wordsworth, the landscape of the wilder parts
of England, and especially of his native Lake District, was largely a testament to a Divine force in
nature, and an affirmation of benevolence and purpose in creation. Turner’s famous watercolour
of Tintern Abbey records the same countryside that occasioned one of Wordsworth’s most
memorable accounts of how the English landscape inspired him: “Lines composed a few miles
above Tintern Abbey…” (1798). The verses speak of how these scenes gave him access to a mystic
vision of the inner harmony of all creation:
…a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air…4
Unlike many poets of the century that preceded him, Wordsworth risked being simple and did [ F I G . 3]
not care if critics thought him a simpleton. Again, these few lines from 1815 are very well known:
I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.5
Childish? Wordsworth would not have been worried unduly by that charge. Loosely inspired by Pla- 4
tonic ideas about the immortal existence of the soul before and after birth, he thought that children
Thomas Hutchinson,
were closer than adults were to essential truths – small visionaries, who gradually lost their powers ed. Wordsworth: Poetical Works
(1936). Revised by Ernest de
Selincourt, ed. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1969, 164.
5
Thomas Hutchinson,
ed. Wordsworth: Poetical Works
(1936). Revised by Ernest de
Selincourt, ed. Oxford: Oxford
69 KEVIN JACKSON University Press, 1973, 149.

as they grew older. Wordsworth’s interest in the young was one of the factors that created a thriving
literature for and about children in the nineteenth century and beyond; but that is another story.
In the late twentieth century, by contrast, Ted Hughes looked at nature with a far more wary
eye. Ever since Charles Darwin (who can be counted among the major English nature writers)
published On the Origin of Species (1859), it has been much harder for poets to take a straight-
forwardly Wordsworthian attitude to the natural world as a place of beauty, harmony and spiritual
refreshment. Darwin’s contemporary, Tennyson, absorbed the lesson of the biologist that nature
is in reality a place of warfare, an endless struggle for food, sex and survival, and he coined the
much-used phrase “nature red in tooth and claw”. Seldom have teeth, claws and beaks been more
dripping with red than in Hughes’ poetry. He dwells on the murderous perfection of the pike,
the hawk and other predatory creatures; in one of his most famous books, Crow (1970), Hughes
presents, with touches of horrific black comedy, an entire Creation myth founded on the black,
carrion-devouring bird.
Between these two poles of ecstasy and terror, English writers have celebrated or brooded on
their country’s geology, flora and fauna in countless different ways. True, there are a few major
writers for whom the English landscape does not greatly matter – Jane Austen, Lawrence Sterne
and Alexander Pope (who preferred his nature tamed by man and turned into elegant gardens) –
but they are in the minority. For the others, the English landscape is inexhaustibly fascinating: at
the mildest, a source of pleasure and enrichment; at the most intense, a place of mystery and awe.
Think of the Brontë sisters’ works – in Emily’s Wuthering Heights (1847), the moor is virtually a
character in its own right – or the novels and poems of D.H. Lawrence, or of Thomas Hardy, whose
stories chronicle in a realistic, sometimes brutally harsh, manner the slow decline of an economy
based on farming, and yet can also convey a sense of deep enchantment.
W.H. Auden, considered by many academics to be the most gifted English-born poet of the
twentieth century (he later moved to the USA and took American citizenship), never shook off
his boyish fascination with the landscape of northern England. One of his most famous poems,
“In Praise of Limestone” (1948), celebrates the actual rocks that make up Britain’s skeleton:
… Mark these rounded slopes

With their surface fragrance of thyme and, beneath,
A secret system of caves and conduits; hear the springs
That spurt out everywhere with a chuckle,
Each filling a private pool for its fish and carving
Its own little ravine whose cliffs entertain
The butterfly and the lizard …6
One aspect of that traditional sense of wonder felt by our nature writers is the awareness,
prompted by the sight of stone circles, burial mounds and similar strange remains, that
others have inhabited this land before us. Who, we ask as children, built Stonehenge? Giants?
Magicians? (One legend has it that King Arthur’s sorcerer, Merlin, transported the stones from
Wales.) Druids? Archaeology tells one story; poetry, painting and atmospheric photographs, like
[ F I G . 4] Bill Brandt’s, tell another.
6
W.H. Auden: Collected Shorter
Poems 1927–1957. London:
Faber, 1966, 238–39. 70 “THE ISLE IS FULL OF NOISES”: A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE

[ F I G . 4]
Bill Brandt, “Stonehenge under Snow”,
1947. Front cover of Picture Post
magazine, 19 April 1947.
[ F I G . 5]
Green Man, detail of a roof boss,
English School, Norwich Cathedral,
Norfolk, 1297–1330. Painted stone.
71 KEVIN JACKSON

There are a number of contemporary British writers, sometimes referred to as “psycho-
geographers”, who have returned to the old tales and legends in an entirely new spirit, part comic,
part mystical, part documentary: the extraordinary poet and novelist Iain Sinclair, for example,
who in books such as London Orbital (2002) and Edge of the Orison (2005) has made it his mission
to explore both the countryside and the city to truffle out the events and stories that have shaped
them; or the highly prolific Peter Ackroyd, whose many books are almost entirely about the people
and history of England, and especially of Londoners – Chaucer, Blake, Turner, Thomas More,
Charles Dickens …
[ F I G . 5] Britain also abounds in other cryptic traces: above all, the image of the Green Man, some sort
of pagan fertility god or incarnation of the ancient English forest, whose face can be found staring
from the walls of old churches. Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream is supposed to be
set in woods outside Athens, but that purportedly Greek setting looks suspiciously like an image
of a folkloric England in the days when powerful fairies lived cheek by jowl with humans, and
interfered mischievously with their business, sometimes blighting the land’s fertility:
The ox hath therefore stretched his yoke in vain,

The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard;
The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
And crows are fatted with the murrion flock.7
(Act II, Scene I)
(While Shakespeare spent his adult life in London, he never forgot the rural and agricultural
world of his youth in Warwickshire. His plays teem with memories of the English countryside.)
Since the middle of the seventeenth century, an increasing number of writers have dwelt
on the fear that England, once an earthly paradise, is being ruined by the English themselves.
Britain was the first country in the world to undergo the rapid transition from an agricultural
economy to an industrial one. No surprise, then, that we have such a rich vein of protest against
the “Satanic Mills”.
It blazes in the likes of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin, and it
surfaces repeatedly throughout the twentieth century in quite unexpected places. Probably the
most popular English poet since Rudyard Kipling – that is to say, a poet widely read not just by the
usual, fairly select audience for verse but by the general public, too – is Philip Larkin. Famously
ill tempered and curmudgeonly, Larkin is usually remembered as a poet who wrote about the
miseries of lonely lives and squalid deaths in shabby northern cities. Yet “The Whitsun Weddings”
(1964) shows that he was also a fine lyricist of the modern English landscape, developed and
damaged by humanity but still, just about, a source of relief and muted hope for town dwellers
when they travel:
Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and

Canals with floatings of industrial froth;
A hothouse flashed uniquely; hedges dipped
7
Alfred Harbage, ed. William
Works. New York: Viking
Press, 1969, 155. 72 “THE ISLE IS FULL OF NOISES”: A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE

And rose; and now and then a smell of grass
Dispatched the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth …8
Elsewhere, Larkin was gloomier and more bitter. He foresaw the imminent destruction both of
Britain’s ancient natural beauties and of its man-made treasures. In 1972, he wrote an anticipa-
tory elegy, “Going, Going”:
And that will be England gone,

The shadows, the meadows, the lanes,
The guildhalls, the carved choirs.
There’ll be books; it will linger on
In galleries, but all that remains
For us will be concrete and tyres.9
Many of his readers thought he was right.
“Satanic Mills …”
Satire, Cities and Citizens
The Romantic and post-Romantic attack on those forces destroying the English Eden ought to
be seen as one aspect of a more general tendency in English writing: satire. Satire is essentially a
genre of the city, which arises when people are forced into close proximity with each other, look
closely at each other, and often do not like what they see. Though most nations have produced
major satirists, the genre of satire was an essential part of English literature from the outset –
usually gentle, subtle and ironic in Chaucer, vastly more scathing in Piers Plowman, by Chaucer’s
less well-known contemporary William Langland, who railed furiously against what he saw as
the corruption and depravity of his times.
English satire blossomed in distinct phases: firstly during the Elizabethan and Jacobean
reigns, in Ben Jonson’s plays – such as Volpone (1606), The Alchemist (1610) and Bartholomew Fair
(1614) – and in the darker comedies of Shakespeare; then in the late seventeenth century, after
the civil wars and the Restoration of King Charles II (1630–85) in 1660. “Restoration Comedy” is
a recognised theatrical genre of its own, intricately plotted, urbane and often more hard-hitting
than it appears to be. The playwrights William Congreve and William Wycherley were its masters.
However, the true golden age of English satire was the eighteenth century, which produced many
masterpieces of mordant social commentary and steely rage: Jonathan Swift with Gulliver’s
Travels (1726) and other works, Alexander Pope with the mock-epic Dunciad (1728), and Samuel
Johnson (our greatest writer of discursive prose) with “The Vanity of Human Wishes” (1749) and
“London” (1738), his free adaptation of the work of Roman poet, Juvenal:
8
Anthony Thwaite, ed. Philip
Here falling houses thunder on your head, Larkin: Collected Poems.
London: Faber, 1988, 114.
And here a female atheist talks you dead.10
9
Ibid., 190.
10
J.D. Fleeman, Samuel
Johnson: The Complete
English Poems.
Harmondsworth: Penguin,
73 KEVIN JACKSON 1971, 61.

These writers have their visual counterparts in the most famous of our caricaturists and
[ F I G . 6] cartoonists: Thomas Rowlandson, George Cruickshank and, above all, William Hogarth. Simi-
larly, the art of English portraiture developed in parallel with that of the English novel from
Henry Fielding (another great satirical writer) onwards: the shared concern is “character” and
individual psychologies.
English satire has never again reached such formal perfection as it attained in the eighteenth
century, but the true satirical spirit blazes up repeatedly: with the Romantics’ attack on the rise
of industry, in the savage indignation of Dickens’ novels – Bleak House (1852–83), Little Dorrit
[ F I G . 7] (1855–57), Great Expectations (1860–61) – and their memorable illustrations by Hablot Knight
Browne (“Phiz”), in John Ruskin’s blistering assaults on laissez-faire capitalism, and in the dan-
gerous wit of Oscar Wilde, who charmed the very people who would later destroy him.
During the twentieth century, the same spirit animated dystopian fantasies: Aldous Huxley’s Brave
New World (1931), and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and his allegorical account of
the Russian Revolution, Animal Farm (1945). There was a new explosion of satire in the early 1960s,
with the success of the comic revue Beyond the Fringe (1960) – starring Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller,
Dudley Moore and one of Britain’s best-loved writers, Alan Bennett – and the launch of the satirical
journal Private Eye (1961), which still mocks the pompous and corrupt fifty years on.
Comic novels also flourished from the 1950s onwards, as the generation that had grown up
during and after the war began to publish. Much noise was made at the time about the so-called
“Angry Young Men” – the playwright John Osborne, the novelist/poets Kingsley Amis and John
Wain, the existentialist Colin Wilson and many others. This comic/satirical vein remains very
strong in the English novel and many of the leading novelists at work today have written at least
one satirical work. Kingsley Amis’ son, Martin Amis, is possibly the best known, with savagely
hilarious comedies of venality and excess such as Dead Babies (1975), Success (1978) and Money:
A Suicide Note (1984). Unlike Kingsley Amis, who became vehemently right-wing as he grew
older, most contemporary English novelists incline towards the left, so that times of Conservative
rule – Mrs Thatcher in the 1980s, Mr Cameron in the 2010s – have provoked explosions of angry
fiction, of which one of the most visionary and impassioned is Iain Sinclair’s fantasia Downriver
(1991). First- and second-generation British writers with roots in Asia and Africa have also
written works that cast a sceptical eye on the state of the nation, including Monica Ali, Kazuo
Ishiguru, Hanif Kureshi and Zadie Smith.
Satire is, then, the worldly face of English literature. It also has a persistent spiritual aspect.
“The Holy Lamb of God …”

Religion, Magic and the Supernatural
Most of the world agrees that Shakespeare is the greatest of Britain’s writers, and when you think
of his plays you probably think of characters who, however heightened the drama, seem like real
people in real societies: Hamlet dithering in the corrupt court of Elsinore, Othello driven insane
with jealousy by a malicious underling, King Lear raging against his cruel daughters. Or you
might think of funny but psychologically convincing characters from his comedies, including

[ F I G . 6]
William Hogarth, Gin Lane, 1751.
Etching and engraving, 390 x 325 mm.
Private Collection.
[ F I G . 7]
Hablot Knight Browne (“Phiz”),
Mr Pickwick on Election Day at
Eatenswill, illustration from Pickwick
Papers (1836) by Charles Dickens.
Coloured engraving. Bibliotheque
Nationale, Paris.
75 KEVIN JACKSON

[ F I G . 8]
Henry Fuseli (Johann Heinrich Füssli),
Three Witches, ca. 1783. Oil on canvas,
76.2 x 91.44 cm. Collection of the Royal
Shakespeare Theatre.

complex grotesques such as the gross and greedy Falstaff, or the strait-laced, self-deceiving
Malvolio, or the bickering lovers Beatrice and Benedict; or of Shakespeare’s renderings of
actual figures from world history – Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, the English kings from
Richard III to Henry V.
All true enough. However, there is also a strong vein of the magical and mysterious in
Shakespeare. Think of the three malevolent witches who cast their spells over Macbeth, the [ F I G . 8]
ghosts that “make night hideous” in Hamlet and Julius Caesar, the fairy aristocracy we have
already noted in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the magus Prospero and his messenger spirit
Ariel in The Tempest. There is even a Roman god in Cymbeline and an amorous Roman goddess
in Shakespeare’s early narrative poem Venus and Adonis.
This should not surprise us. For centuries, British writers have been inspired to evoke the world
beyond the visible and the everyday: they have returned to old myths, or pondered the eternal
mysteries of religious faith, or simply told new versions of the fireside stories that beguiled long
winter nights in the centuries before electricity drove the ghosts away. Shakespeare’s strongest
rival on the Elizabethan stage was the young Christopher Marlowe, and Marlowe’s greatest play
is the familiar German story of a man who sold his soul to the devil, Doctor Faustus (ca. 1592). To
put it simply: a great deal of English literature deals with matters supernatural.
This has been true since the beginnings. One of the very earliest poems written in a form of
English that is still ( just about) readable was Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, attributed to an
anonymous contemporary of Chaucer. It is a winter’s tale, an Arthurian epic, which begins with
a bold young nobleman slicing off the head of a threatening giant who has come to menace his
master’s hall. The monster nonchalantly puts his head back on and challenges Gawain to a second
encounter exactly a year later. The plot almost certainly owes something to fertility myths – the
Green Knight is an avatar of our old friend, the Green Man – with a heavy layer of more recent
Christian sentiment, though you do not need to know that to relish its combination of menace,
beauty and other-worldly chill.
A more serious aspect of supernaturalism in English literature is its concern with religion,
usually meaning, after the Reformation that began during the reign of King Henry VIII (1491–
1547), various Protestant forms of Christianity (although there have been several outstanding
Catholic and ex-Catholic British writers, from the aptly-named Alexander Pope, to twentieth-
century novelists including Anthony Burgess, Graham Green, James Joyce, Muriel Spark and
Evelyn Waugh). Somewhat to the dismay of pious believers, the so-called King James Bible, a
translation into English of the Old and New Testaments, which appeared towards the end of
Shakespeare’s life in 1611, is often admired by non-believers solely as a magnificent work of poetry
and prose. The rhythms of the King James Bible, taken in during early childhood and heard every
week or every day in church and chapel, had a profound influence on English writers for centuries
afterwards.
Though Christian faith has inspired countless British writers from Langland in the four-
teenth century to Geoffrey Hill in the twenty-first, much of the greatest Christian writing in
English belongs to the seventeenth century. The same cultural and spiritual flowering that pro-
duced the King James Bible also inspired the religious poems of the “Metaphysical” poets, the
most famous being John Donne. Something of a hellraiser and ladies’ man in his youth, Donne
77 KEVIN JACKSON

turned from writing anatomically explicit poems about the joys of women’s bodies, took Holy
Orders, and wrote magnificently tormented, powerful verses about the agonising love of God.
George Herbert, another Anglican priest, wrote short and simple religious poems of breathtaking
beauty; while other Metaphysicals, including Thomas Traherne and Henry Vaughan, recorded
their ecstatic mystical encounters with the Divine.
When poets of later centuries wished to address religious subjects, they very often looked
back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for inspiration. The only twentieth-century
English poet whose reputation exceeds that of Auden was born an American: T.S. Eliot. Just as
Auden crossed the Atlantic and adopted Yankee ways, so Eliot settled in London and became
more English than the English. (The UK and USA sometimes wrangle about which nation owns
which poet.) His most famous poem, The Waste Land (1922), is in part an expression of spiritual
anguish, drawing on the agonies of the Christian saints and Buddhist scriptures, though not
affirming either tradition. A few years later, Eliot converted to Christianity and he brooded on
his new-found faith in his later masterpiece, Four Quartets (1943), a work saturated with his
knowledge of post-Reformation English poetry and prose. Here, in the fourth quartet, “Little
Gidding”, he is thinking of a chapel in which Herbert had prayed:
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,

They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.11
Asked to name the greatest epic poem in our language, most educated readers would name John
Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), a long and sonorous attempt to “justify the ways of God to man” –
that is, to explain why it was essential that Adam and Eve should fall from grace and be expelled
from Eden. Milton was an ardent supporter of the English Revolution, whose leaders executed
King Charles I (1600–49) and established a short-lived republic, governed by Oliver Cromwell.
Paradise Lost also includes reflections on that Revolution, as well as on Milton’s personal woes
– he was blind and had to dictate his works. An even more famous work than Paradise Lost was
published not long afterwards: The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), a Christian allegory composed by
John Bunyan. This work has been translated into more than 200 languages and has never been
out of print since its first publication in 1678. Few other works of English literature have been so
universally influential around the globe.
After the Restoration in 1660, the nation’s writers grew more secular for a century or so and
tended to focus on this world rather than the next. There are important exceptions to this rule,
above all the towering figure of Johnson, who besides being a biographer, critic, compiler of the
first important dictionary of English, editor and essayist, also turned his prodigious intellect to
theology, and wrote sermons for less gifted clergymen to deliver. Many thinking people con-
tinued to be sincere Christians, but now they observed their beliefs politely and quietly, frowning
on loud and vulgar displays of religiosity, or “enthusiasm”, as it was known.
11
T.S. Eliot: The Complete Poems
and Plays. London: Faber,
1969, 192. 78 “THE ISLE IS FULL OF NOISES”: A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE

[ F I G . 9]
Christopher Lee in the title role
in the 1958 movie Dracula, aka
Horror of Dracula.
British writers returned to myth and the supernatural at the end of the eighteenth cen-
tury, with the origins of the Romantic movement. While Wordsworth regarded the still-wild
landscapes of the Lake District, Wales and elsewhere as direct expressions of God, his friend
and collaborator Coleridge was obsessed not only with religion but also with sorcery, Western
Hermeticism and old folk tales. Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798), the bizarre
tale of a sailor who falls under a terrible curse, is a fascinating work that continues to spawn fresh
interpretations to the present day:
The many men, so beautiful!

And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.12
At about the same time, writers of fiction began to produce the works we now call gothic. The
earliest examples are most often read by students, but later works in the same field are known, if
only through films and television, to the whole world: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), Robert
Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). Alongside
Arthur Conan Doyle’s adventures featuring Sherlock Holmes, which also have a touch of the
12
R.L. Brett and A.R. Jones,
eds. Wordsworth and
Coleridge: Lyrical Ballads.
London: Methuen, 1963,
79 KEVIN JACKSON 19 and footnote.

[ F I G . 10]
James Archer, Le Morte d’Arthur, 1860.
Oil on millboard, 43.2 x 50.9 cm.
Manchester Art Gallery.

gothic here and there, as in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901–02), these are among the most
potent myths that British writers have ever created. On a more practical level, they continue to
make fortunes for the film-makers and other artists who return to them repeatedly. In the 1950s
and 1960s, the English studio Hammer Films boosted the UK’s economy with its internationally
successful movie versions of the tales – above all, with Christopher Lee’s intensely charismatic
performances as Count Dracula (1958 and onwards). [ F I G . 9]
British Victorians and Edwardians also bequeathed us some more charming creatures of
fantasy, from the alternative worlds of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
and, slightly less well known outside the UK, Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (1908)
– a book for adults as well as children that includes an extraordinary chapter about the English
sense of awe at nature, in which the great god Pan manifests himself on the river Thames.
Supernatural fantasy is an English tradition every bit as robust as the satirical vein and
it carried on into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in the ghost stories of M.R. James
– often reckoned to be the very best of their kind – in the epic creations of J.R.R. Tolkien and in the
theological children’s tales of C.S. Lewis such as The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (1950).
More recently still, you may have heard of a young English wizard, name of Harry Potter …
To conclude, a brief look at the major English myths about England.
“And was Jerusalem Builded Here …?”

Tales of National Identity
Back to the strange medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. We are not certain about the
identity of the man – it probably was a man; women writers were rare before Queen Elizabeth I’s
(1533–1603) reign and not plentiful until the nineteenth century – who wrote this extraordinary
work, but, whoever he was, he is Chaucer’s only rival in greatness. His strange and haunting work
opens with these words:
Sithen the sege and the assaut watz sesed at Troye …13
(“Since the siege and the assault was ceased at Troy …”)
Why Troy? Well, it is a very common human failing to want one’s ancestors to have been noble,
brave, distinguished and famous and, for many years, Britons liked to believe that they were
descended from Trojans. They sometimes called their country “New Troy”. The legend describes
how, just as Aeneas fled the burning ruins of his city and made his way to Italy, where he founded
Rome, so another Trojan by the name of Brutus or “Brut” sailed on, out of the Mediterranean and
then to the North, where he and his people founded a new Trojan colony.
It is an attractive myth, though not commonly known nowadays. However, the stanzas of Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight are populated mainly by mythical characters that are still very fam-
iliar: King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.
Arthurian tales have been told by many English writers – by Thomas Malory in Le Morte [ F I G . 10]
d’Arthur (1485), by Edmund Spenser in the Elizabethan epic the Faerie Queene (1590–96), in
13
J.R.R. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon,
eds. Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight (1925). 2nd ed. Norman
Davis, ed. Oxford: Oxford
81 KEVIN JACKSON University Press, 1967, 1.

Tennyson’s Victorian epic The Idylls of the King (1856–85), in T.H. White’s The Sword in the Stone
(1938), and in Any Old Iron (1988) by Anthony Burgess – as well as by artists in countless Victor-
ian paintings and engravings with Arthurian themes, and in dozens of television programmes and
films, notably John Boorman’s Excalibur (1981). (Many of Boorman’s films, even those set in the
USA, have hidden Arthurian themes.) The only body of English myth to rival that of King Arthur,
or more exactly to complement it, are the tales of Robin Hood.
Both sets of myths tell different forms of the same fundamental story. The nation was once
great; then there was a terrible downfall; but it may rise again one day. In some versions of the
Arthurian story, Arthur and his Knights, seemingly dead, are in fact merely sleeping in some
English cave, and will rise again when their nation most needs them: Rex quondam, rexque
futurus – the Once and Future King. Tales of Robin Hood are usually set in a fantastical version
of the reign of King Richard I (1157–99) (also known as Richard the Lionheart). In this legend,
the good king is not dead, but far away at the Crusades, leaving his evil and tyrannical brother in
charge. It falls to noble Robin and his men – significantly dressed in the green of the Green Man
– to fight for justice and liberty until the king returns.
So: a golden age, a fall, a promise of Restoration. Many cultures have some such tripartite
structure somewhere in their mythology, but it has particular force in Britain, and we can some-
times catch sight of it in places where it might least be expected. One of the most famous speeches
in all of Shakespeare’s plays taps into this theme, though it nowhere openly mentions Arthur. It is
the speech of John of Gaunt in Richard II and it is quoted frequently – entirely out of context – as
a rather fine piece of national boasting:
This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in a silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England …14
(Act II, Scene I)
This is where the quotation usually stops, but Gaunt, who is dying before our eyes, is not so much
concerned to praise the greatness of England as to mourn its passing. His beloved country, he
goes on to say, is now “leased out … like to a tenement”; it is “bound in with shame / With inky
blots and rotten parchment bonds.” He concludes:
That England that was wont to conquer others

Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.15
14
Alfred Harbage, ed. William
Works. New York: Viking
Press, 1969, 644–45.
15
Ibid. 82 “THE ISLE IS FULL OF NOISES”: A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE

The past was glorious; the present is squalid and corrupt; but what of the future? Gaunt does not
say so, but some of those who listen to him hope that it may be glorious again. It is a sentiment
with deep roots in the King Arthur story and – to return us to our point of departure – it is the very
same story that lies deep below the words of Blake’s “Jerusalem”.
It has been said that the world’s greatest writers achieve universality through the particular:
they approach the inexhaustible themes of love and death, honour and betrayal, terror and pity
by way of what they see around them. Aeschylus’ Athens, Dante Alighieri’s Florence, Charles
Baudelaire’s Paris, Frederico Garciá Lorca’s Granada – different locations, but the same desire to
render the experience of men and women in exquisitely grafted language. This is as true of English
literature as it is of any other great nation’s literature. Our writers may focus on the particularities
of a small northern island (or archipelago), but their deeper subject is common to artists every-
where: the nature of being human.
So, when Blake speaks of building “Jerusalem” in “England”, the second name is as much a
metaphor as the first. Blake’s “Jersualem” is not an ancient city in the Middle East but the “Good
Place” that we must try to create – or, rather, to re-create. Blake’s “England” embraces the whole
world and its peoples. Blake never left England, never even travelled very far from London, but
he studied the news from other lands with the keenest attention. He noted the American War of
Independence, the French Revolution (his famous poem “The Tiger” is partly about the violent
events in France) and the horrors of the slave trade.
“Jerusalem” is about the need for us to create a new golden age of righteousness, truth and
freedom, including erotic freedom. (Not many of the millions of people who saw the 1981 Oscar-
winning film Chariots of Fire would have heard Blake’s call for revolution in that phrase, but a
revolution is exactly what Blake wanted.) Like many other great English writers, Blake was a
visionary and his visions are a common treasure for the whole world, not just the people who live
on an island that has long been full of the sweet noises of poets:
Bring me my Bow of burning gold:

Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O, clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire.
I will not cease from Mental Fight,

Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green & pleasant Land.16
16
Jacob Bronowski, ed. William
Blake: A Selection of Poems
and Letters. The Penguin
Poets Series. Harmondsworth:
83 KEVIN JACKSON Penguin, 1958, 162.

WORKS
IN THE
EXHIBITION
Each section includes a selection

of historical texts and documents.
Introductions to each section and all

catalogue entries for works in the exhibition
were written by the curator, Richard
Humphreys, apart from catalogue numbers
88, 89, 117 and 118, which were written
by Simon Wilson.
David Hockney,
Portrait of Nick Wilder, 1966.
[detail CAT. 161]

85

86 DESTRUCCIÓN Y REFORMA

DESTRUCTION
AND REFORMATION
1520–1620
King Henry VIII’s enlightened patronage of the German painter Hans Holbein coincided with the P I E T RO TO R R I G I A N O
breakaway from Rome that enabled him to divorce his Spanish queen, Catherine of Aragon, and HANS HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER
marry Anne Boleyn. Henry was a major patron of the arts and learning, as well as a composer and
NICHOLAS HILLIARD
poet in his own right. Along with Holbein, other major European artists came to England to work
ISAAC OLIVER
for him, including the Florentine sculptor Pietro Torrigiano, a contemporary of Michelangelo at
Lorenzo de’ Medici’s Academy, who produced tombs and portrait busts. Until the early eighteenth MARCUS GHEERAERTS II
century, in fact, foreign artists dominated the British visual arts. R O B E R T P E A K E T H E E L D E R and studio
Henry’s dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s and 1540s was followed by greater WILLIAM LARKIN
destruction during his son Edward VI’s reign. Edward’s programme of iconoclasm in religious
MILEMETE WORKSHOP
buildings was even more severe than those taking place in other Protestant countries at the time.
The damage inflicted can be seen in the fragments of a fourteenth-century alabaster sculpture from CORNELIUS BOEL
a small church in Bedfordshire. Edward’s zealous attack on Catholic visual culture earned him the THEODOR DE BRY
title of “Josiah”, the Old Testament king who destroyed false idols. The brief period of the Catholic JOHN WHITE
Mary I’s reign did little to reverse the damage.
JODOCUS HONDIUS
The great Elizabethan and Jacobean miniaturists, Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver, were also
indebted directly to Holbein’s miniatures and to his subtle drawing style. Their tiny images, painted
on vellum stuck to pieces of playing cards, were usually mounted inside precious lockets and worn
as jewellery, to be seen only by a chosen few. Miniatures were thus part of a complex and secretive
court culture. In the oil paintings of Robert Peake and William Larkin, we see the aesthetic of the
miniature magnified in an almost hallucinatory fashion.
The major figure in late Elizabethan painting was Marcus Gheeraerts II, one of a dynasty of
artists from Bruges who had arrived in England in the 1560s as religious refugees. The connections
between England and the Low Countries were very strong through ties of trade, culture and
religion. Gheeraerts was probably the first painter to work on canvas in England, artists previously
having painted on wood panels.
Oil paintings and miniatures were created for an elite. Most people in England after the
Reformation would have had access to visual imagery through crude wall paintings in houses and
inns, depicting religious, moral or folk themes, and through printed imagery. Virtually all images
were linked to a text, above all to the word of the Bible. The most widely distributed images were
the woodcuts in John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (1563), also known as The Book of Martyrs.
These often gruesome images were intended to bolster Protestant resolve at a time of great
religious tension and were kept in most churches until the nineteenth century. They were probably
illustrated by foreign artists such as Gheeraerts.
Robert Peake the Elder and studio,

Catherine Carey, Countess of
Nottingham, ca. 1597.
87 [detail CAT. 7]

88

DESTRUCTION
AND REFORMATION
1520 – 1620
And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that if any person or persons of whatever estate,
degree, or condition whatsoever, he, she or they be, body politic or corporate, that now have, or
hereafter shall have in his, her, or their custody any books or writings of the sort aforesaid, or any
images of stone, timber, alabaster or earth, graven, carved or painted, which heretofore have been
taken out of any church or chapel, or yet stand in any church or chapel, and do not before the last day
of June next ensuing deface and destroy or cause to be defaced and destroyed the same images and
everyone of them shall be therefore convict, forfeit and lose to our Sovereign Lord the King, for the
first offence twenty shillings, and for the second offence shall forfeit and lose, being thereof lawfully
convict, four pounds, and for the third offence shall suffer imprisonment at the King’s will.
Act of Parliament, January 1550. (Quoted in

BernardDenvir, From the Middle Ages to the Stuarts: Art,
Design and Society before 1689. London and New York:
Longman, 1988, 116–17.)
For as much as through the natural desire that all sorts of subjects, both noble and mean, have to
procure the portrait and picture of the Queen’s Majestie, great number of Paynters and Gravers
and some Printers have allready and doe daily, attempt to make divers manners portraictures of
hir Majestie, in paynting, graving and printing, wherein is evidently shewn that hytherto none hath
sufficiently expressed the naturall representation of Hir Majestie’s person, favor or grace, but for
the most part have also erred therein, as thereof daily complaints are made amongst Hir Majestie’s
loving subjects, in so much, that for ridress thereof Hir Majestie hath lately bene so instantly and
unfortunately sued by the Lords of her Consell, and others of hir nobility, in respect of the great
disorder herein used not only to be content that some special coning paynter might be permitted by
access to Hir Majestie to take the naturall representation of Hir Majestie, whereof she hath been
allwise of her own right disposition very unwillying, but also to prohibit all manner of other persons
to draw, paynt, grave or pourtray Hir Majestie’s person or visage for a time until by some perfect
patron [pattern or prototype] and example, the same may be by others followed.
Royal Proclamation, 1563. (Quoted in Bernard Denvir,

From the Middle Ages to the Stuarts: Art, Design and
Society before 1689. London and New York: Longman,
1988, 124.)

This makes me to remember the wourds also and reasoning of Her Majestie when first I came into her
Highnes’ presence to drawe, whoe, after showeing me how shee noticed great differences of shadowing
in the works and diversity of drawers of sundry nations, and that the Italians [who] had the name to
be cunningest, and to drawe best shadowed not, requiring of me the reason for it, seeing that best to
showe onesselfe nedeth no shadowe, but rather the oppen light; to which I graunted [and] afirmed
that shadowes in pictures weare indeed caused by the shadow of the place or coming in of the light as
only one waye into the place at some small or high windowe, which many workmen covet to worke in
for ease to their sight, and to give unto them a grosser lyne, and a more aparent lyne to be deserned,
and maketh the worke imborse well, and shew very well afare off, which to liming worke needeth
not, becawse it is to be veewed of nesesity in hand neare unto the eye. Heer her Majestie conseved
the reason, and therfor chosse her place to sit in for that purposse in the open ally of a goodly garden,
where no tree was neere, nor any shadowe at all, save that the heaven is lighter than the earthe, so must
that littel shadowe that is from the earthe. This her Majestie’s curious demane hath greatly bettered my
jugment, besids diverse other like questions in art by her most excellent Majestie, which to speake or
writ of weare fitter for some better clarke.
Nicholas Hilliard, The Art of Limning (1600). Ed. R.K.R.

Thornton and T.G.S. Cain. Manchester: Fyfield Books,
Carcanet Press, 1992. (Quoted in Bernard Denvir, From the
Middle Ages to the Stuarts: Art, Design and Society before
1689. London and New York: Longman, 1988, 125–26.)
II

Now therefore I wish it weare so that none should meddle with limning, but gentlemen alone, for that
it is a kind of gentill painting, of less subjection than any other, for one may leave when he will, his
coullers nor his work taketh any harme by it. Moreover it is a secreet; a man may use it, and scarecely be
perceaved of his own foIke; it is sweete and cleanly to use, and it is a thing apart from all other painting
or drawing, and tendeth not to common mens use, either for furnisshing of howses, or any patternes for
tapestries or building, or any other worke whatsoever, and yet it excelleth all other painting whatsoever
in sondry points, in giving the true lustre to pearle and precious stones, and worketh the metals gold
or silver with themselves, which so enricheth and enobleth the work, that it seemeth to be the thinge
itselfe, even the worke of God, and not of man, being fittest for the decking of princes’ bookes, or to
put in jewells of gold, and for the imitation of the purest flowers, and most beautifull creatures in the
finest and purest collors which are chargeable, and is for the service of noble persons very meet in small
volumes in private manner for them to have the portraits and pictures of themselves.
Nicholas Hilliard, The Art of Limning (1600). Ed. R.K.R.

Thornton and T.G.S. Cain. Manchester: Fyfield Books,
Carcanet Press, 1992. (Quoted in Bernard Denvir, From the
Middle Ages to the Stuarts: Art, Design and Society before
1689. London and New York: Longman, 1988, 145.)
III

89

1 Unknown artist(s)
Virgin Mary and baby Jesus; Pietà; The Way of the Cross;
unidentified figure (possibly a kneeling saint or perhaps
Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane), 1350–1475
Alabaster, each approx. 50 x 30 cm
Blunham Parish Church, Bedfordshire
These alabaster fragments of a “Pietà”, a “Virgin and Child”, a

“Calvary” and an unidentified figure were discovered in the floor
of the medieval parish church of Blunham in Bedfordshire in the
nineteenth century during restoration work. Their dates range from
ca. 1350 to ca. 1475. Those who buried the pieces may have hoped
that at some time in the future a return to Rome would allow for
their recovery, repair and reinstatement in the church.
Before the fifteenth century, most religious sculpture was made
in stone or wood, but by about 1400 the soft and easily worked
mineral alabaster was available from quarries in Derbyshire and the
surrounding area, and “alabastermen” were able to produce ready-
made devotional images such as these, which were usually cheaper
than stone or wood pieces. They would be set in a simple stone
or wooden frame made at the church. Workshops in Nottingham,
close to the major quarries, exported alabaster statues, reliefs and
altar panels across Europe. When the English Reformation led to
the widespread prohibition and destruction of religious images
in the mid-sixteenth century, this trade ceased and the alabaster
workshops turned to producing funeral monuments.
The pieces from Blunham still have traces of the paint and
gilding that often covered the alabaster, although the translucent
beauty of the stone was frequently allowed to remain visible across
large areas.
90 DESTRUCTION AND REFORMATION

2 PIETRO TORRIGIANO
(Florence, 1472–Seville, 1528)
John Colet, 1518

Plaster cast of bust, 83.8 x 65 x 26 cm
National Portrait Gallery, London
John Colet (1467–1519) was a humanist scholar, theologian and

Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, London. Through his great learning
and profound knowledge of Italian thinkers such as Pico della
Mirandola, he was influential on Erasmus when the latter came to
England. Although a devout Roman Catholic, Colet was a forerunner
of Reformation thinkers in his suspicion of clerical celibacy and
auricular confession. As Dean of St Paul’s, he used his position and
popular sermons to encourage modern attitudes towards religion,
and in 1512 founded St Paul’s School, still one of the leading schools
in Britain. His liberal views led him to be denounced as a heretic
by some, but he was supported by both King Henry VIII and the
Archbishop of Canterbury.
The Florentine sculptor Pietro Torrigiano was invited to
England to create the magnificent tomb of King Henry VII and his
queen Elizabeth of York in Westminster Abbey (1509–17). Following
this, he also made a huge altar, retable and baldachinno for the
Abbey, which was destroyed by iconoclasts in the 1640s. He asked the
Italian sculptor Benvenuto Cellini to come to England to assist him,
but the latter apparently was put off by Torrigiano’s violent manner –
it is said he broke Michelangelo’s nose in a fight – and by the English
whom he considered to be savages. The last years of Torrigiano’s life
were spent working in Seville and he died in an Inquisition prison
after destroying a sculpture of St Jerome that he had made.
91

3 HANS HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER
(Augsburg, 1497/8–London, 1543)
Sir Thomas Wyatt the Younger, ca. 1540–42

Oil on panel, 32 cm diameter
Private Collection. Courtesy of The Weiss Gallery, London
This profile portrait by Hans Holbein is the first fully all’antica portrait
in English painting and is the only known surviving portrait from
Holbein’s English period still in private hands. It was accepted as a
genuine Holbein by the The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) vetting
committee in 2007.
Wyatt’s father, Thomas Wyatt the Elder, was a famous poet,
classicist and courtier who owned an antique cameo ring with a profile
of Julius Caesar that may have inspired this painting. Working on
a Baltic oak support, Holbein used a double layer of the expensive
pigment azurite, which surrounds the sitter with a sharp contour.
The skin has a highly polished and enamel-like finish. Thomas Wyatt
(1521–54) was a soldier who fiercely opposed the proposed marriage
of the Catholic Queen Mary I to King Philip II of Spain. In 1554, he
led a rebellion in the strongly Protestant county of Kent, marching
on London, where he was defeated by government forces. Wyatt
was hanged on Tower Hill, considered by many who dipped their
handkerchiefs in his blood to be a martyr.
Holbein was born in Augsburg and trained in the studio of his
father. He worked in Basel as a portraitist and decorative artist,
painting three portraits of Erasmus in 1523. He settled in England in
1532 and until his death in 1543 painted many portraits of the royal
family, nobility and other major figures in English society, such as the
families of Thomas More and Wyatt.

93

4 NICHOLAS HILLIARD 5 ISAAC OLIVER
(Exeter, 1547– London, 1619) (Rouen, before 1568– London, 1617)
Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, 1590 A Lady, formerly called Catherine,

Countess of Suffolk, ca. 1600
Watercolour on vellum, 5.4 cm diameter
National Portrait Gallery, London Watercolour on vellum, 5.1 cm high
With kind permission of The Duke of Buccleuch & Queensberry KBE
Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke (1561–1621), a cousin of Lucy

Harington [CAT. 9], was a major writer and patron of the arts. Like
As is the case with most miniatures, this image of an unknown
Lucy, she had a Calvinist upbringing and a strong humanist education,
woman suggests a world of extraordinary refinement and delicacy.
which enabled her to translate a work by Petrarch, among other
Many miniatures were given or exchanged as gifts by members of
Continental authors. She also set up a chemistry laboratory at her
the court, usually hidden within a piece of jewellery. In his treatise
country home, Wilton House in Wiltshire, an important centre for
The Art of Limning, unpublished at the time of his death in 1619,
scientists, writers and intellectuals. She suggested to her brother Philip
Nicholas Hilliard insisted on the miniaturist working in a dust-
Sidney that he write his famous long pastoral prose work “Arcadia”
free environment and wearing only silk to prevent dust sticking to
(1590) and he dedicated it to her, having written much of it at Wilton.
his clothes. There should also be no smoke, noise or smell and the
She produced her own revised version in 1593. She also worked with
painter should be a gentleman in his manners. The greatest care
Philip on a metrical translation of the Psalms. He died fighting in the
was required in the choice of pigments and fine brushes. The word
Netherlands in 1586 and became a national hero. Mary’s elegy to him
miniature in fact comes from the Latin word “minium”, which is the
includes the lines:
layer of red lead paint on vellum pasted to card onto which the artist
applied his jewel-like colours.
There thousand birds all of celestiall brood,
Oliver was the son of French Huguenots who moved to London
To him do sweetly caroll day and night:
in 1568 to escape the persecution of Protestants. He married the
And with straunge notes, of him well vnderstood,
sister of Marcus Gheeraerts in 1602. He trained under Hilliard and
Lull him asleepe in Angel-like delight:
his later work shows the influence of French and Italian art in its use
Whilest in sweet dreame to him presented bee
of chiaroscuro, a technique that was anathema to Hilliard. During the
Immortall beauties, which no eye may see.
reign of King James I, his work was much in demand and he painted
(“The Dolefull Lay of Chlorinda” (1595), lines 73–78, in Mary Sidney portraits of Queen Anne of Denmark, Henry Prince of Wales and
Herbert Pembroke, The Triumph of Death and Other Unpublished and
other leading figures at court.
Uncollected Poems. Ed. G.F. Waller. Salzburg: Institut für Englische
Sprache und Literatur, 1977, 176–79.)
In this miniature, Mary appears to be wearing an unusual necklace, the

white beads of which are dotted with black, which is actually a string of
pearls. Hilliard painted pearls with burnished silver highlights and the
silver has oxidised and turned black.

95

6 MARCUS GHEERAERTS II 7 ROBERT PEAKE THE ELDER (Lincolnshire, ca. 1551–
(Bruges, 1561/2– London, 1636) London, ca. 1619) and studio
Anne, Lady Pope with her children, 1596

Catherine Carey, Countess of Nottingham, ca. 1597
Oil on canvas, 203.6 x 121.7 cm
Private Collection courtesy of Nevill Keating Pictures Oil on canvas, 198 x 137 cm
Private Collection. Courtesy of The Weiss Gallery, London
Anne Pope (1561–1625) was the daughter of Owen Hopton, Lieutenant

of the Tower of London. He was in charge of the most important Once thought to represent Queen Elizabeth I, this painting of the First
prisoners of the age, supervised all torture and controlled the Lady of the Bed Chamber is perhaps the most spectacular of all known
armoury. Anne is shown, aged thirty-five, with her three children, Elizabethan female full-length portraits. The costume is embroidered
Thomas, Henry and Jane from her first marriage to Henry, 3rd Baron in multicoloured threads, including gold and silver, and is decorated
of Wentworth. She wears a white bodice and sleeves with an open with many different insects, flowers and leaves as well as emblematic
sleeveless black gown. The year before this portrait was commissioned, images such as obelisks and snakes. Much of this detail may have been
Anne had married William Pope of Wroxton, later 1st Earl of Downe. painted by a specialist craftsman. Many of the jewels may have come
Anne is pregnant, presumably with William Pope, her first child from the Queen’s wardrobe. Catherine Carey (ca. 1547–1603) was the
with her second husband, her profusion of pearls emphasising her eldest daughter of the Queen’s first cousin Henry Carey, 1st Baron
condition. The portrait celebrates Anne’s fertility and new family Hunsdon and a favourite of Elizabeth. She married Charles Howard,
connections. Pregnancy was a perilous condition for women in this later 2nd Baron Howard of Effingham and 1st Earl of Nottingham, one
period and the portrait would also serve to record her likeness in the of the most important military and political figures of the time, who was
event of her death during childbirth. Gheeraerts specialised in such in command of the English fleet at the time of the Spanish Armada in
images in a country that, more than others, celebrated pregnancy in 1588, and who in 1596 led the Cadiz Expedition against King Philip II
portraits. of Spain. In recognition of these victories, he was created Earl of
Gheeraerts was born in the Low Countries and was a Protestant Nottingham in 1597, the year this portrait was probably painted. The
refugee from the Duke of Alva’s religious suppression. He moved to anchor jewel in Catherine’s hair certainly refers to her husband’s career.
London in 1558 with his father who was also an artist. He was part of an Robert Peake was trained at the Goldsmiths’ Company in the
important group of refugee artists and intellectuals in London and may 1570s and was appointed painter to the heir to the throne, Prince
have been a sympathiser with the religious sect known as “The Family of Henry, in 1604, and Serjeant Painter to the latter’s father, King James
Love”. Gheeraerts became the leading elite portrait painter in England I, in 1607. Peake was close to Marcus Gheeraerts II [CAT. 6] and to
in the 1590s, painting many full-length single and group portraits. Isaac Oliver [CAT. 5] and with them was one of the most successful
Although, no doubt, the object of suspicion and envy of the members painters of the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, specialising in
of the Painter-Stainers’ Company who represented native artists, portraits of extraordinarily detailed complexity and finish. A designer
Gheeraerts was made a freeman of the company later in his career. of court entertainments, Peake commissioned a translation of
Books I–V of Sebastiano Serlio’s Architettura, which he dedicated
to Prince Henry in 1611.

8 WILLIAM LARKIN 9 Unknown artist
(London, ca. 1580/5–1619)
Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford, ca. 1620
Jane, Lady Thornhagh, 1617
Oil on canvas, 222 x 150 cm
Oil on panel, 114 x 84 cm Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.
Private Collection. Courtesy of The Weiss Gallery, London Purchased by a donation from Dr David Fyfe, 2010
In this unusually well preserved panel painting, the sitter’s left Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford (1580–1627), was one of the
hand over her stomach may indicate that she is pregnant with her greatest patrons of the arts of the Jacobean period. She supported
first child Francis, who was born in the year of this painting. British writers such as John Donne and Ben Jonson, appearing in elaborate
artists frequently celebrated pregnancy in portraits of this period court masques such as The Masque of Blackness (1605) and The
[CAT. 6]. The motifs on the elaborately embroidered costume include Masque of Beauty (1608), written by the latter. Although a committed
sea monsters, maritime birds and flora, emerging from ripples of Calvinist, she was a great beauty who is said to have performed bare-
water. The bodice is decorated with crimson-crested woodpeckers, breasted in some of the masques. She was also patron of the great
insects, grapes, and flowers with silver spangles and swirling patterns composer John Dowland, who dedicated his Second Book of Songs
of golden thread, and the neckline is low to reveal the milky skin and (1600) to her. She left a considerable library of her own and her
blue veins. Lady Thornhagh (ca. 1600–61) was the eldest daughter brother John’s books to his puritan Cambridge college, Sidney Sussex,
of John Jackson, an attorney to King James I, and his wife Elizabeth of which her father was a founder and major benefactor.
Savile. She married Francis Thornagh, who became High Sheriff of This painting, by an unknown Anglo-Netherlandish artist of
Nottinghamshire. During the civil war, he was a Parliamentarian and the kind who supplanted Gheeraerts from his dominant position
raised a horse regiment. He died in 1643. in the 1610s, shows the Countess in sober maturity in the study at
William Larkin is a mysterious figure about whom little is known. her house in Twickenham, near London. She is depicted as widely
He was born in London and was a member of the Painter-Stainers’ read, intellectual and even melancholy, as is suggested by her head
Company but never held an official position at court. He was once resting on her right hand and her sombre black dress. The garden seen
known as “The Curtain Master” on account of the rich curtains and through the window, which she designed, was the location for one
carpets that appear frequently in his paintings. He worked in a style of John Donne’s most famous poems, “Twickenham Garden”, which
almost miniaturist in its detail, slight modelling and surface brilliance. begins:
Like Nicholas Hilliard and Robert Peake, Larkin died in 1619 bringing
to an end the aesthetic of the Elizabethan age, shortly before the Blasted with sighs, and surrounded with tears,
arrival of Van Dyck, which transformed portraiture in England. Hither I come to seek the spring …
(E.K. Chambers, ed. Poems of John Donne.

London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896, 29–30.)
97

6 MARCUS GHEERAERTS II Anne, Lady Pope with her children, 1596

7 ROBERT PEA KE THE ELDER and studio Catherine Carey, Countess of Nottingham, ca. 1597

8 WILLIAM LARKIN Jane, Lady Thornhagh, 1617

9 Unknown artist Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford, ca. 1620

10 MILEMETE WORKSHOP 14 C O R N E L I U S B O E L (Antwerp, ca. 1580–ca. 1621)
Psalter, including folio 153 showing SS Etheldreda, Catharine, Frontispiece in THE HOLY BIBLE, Containing the Old
Margaret and Agatha, England (Oxford?), ca. 1330–35 Testament, AND THE NEW: Newly Translated out of
the Original tongues: & with the former Translations
Parchment 27.2 x 18.9 x 6.2 cm (overall)
diligently compared and revised, by his Majesties special
Commandment, 1611 (1612 edition)
This Psalter was most probably illuminated in Oxford ca. 1330–35 by Etching and engraving, 23.7 x 18.7 x 8 cm (overall)
artists of the Milemete workshop for a client in the diocese of Exeter, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge
Devon, as indicated by the presence in the Litany of the rare Devonian
saints, Petroc, Brannoc and Sativola. Each of the main divisions of The “King James Bible” was commissioned by King James I in
the Psalter has a border featuring one of the classes of the heavenly 1604 and translated from the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek
hierarchy. Shown here are the virgin saints, including Etheldreda, New Testament by a committee of forty-seven scholars. Its purpose
Catharine, Margaret and Agatha (with severed breasts). The script is was to provide a translation for use in churches that met with the
gothic bookhand (textualis). approval of both conservative and radical Protestants. With Foxes
The iconoclasm of the Reformation in England led to the The Book of Martyrs and the royal coat of arms, the title page by
destruction of an enormous amount of religious art [CAT. 1]. In this Cornelius Boel was perhaps the most common visual feature in
case, a Protestant owner literally defaced all the figures and deleted all English churches until the nineteenth century. It shows at the top
invocations of saints in the Litany to prevent the book from being used St Peter and St Paul under the Tetragrammaton and the dove of the
for “idolatrous” worship. Typically, eyes were a main target of such Holy Spirit, surrounded by the apostles. On either side of the text
attacks, it being believed that they might dangerously attract the gaze are Moses and Aaron.
of the vulnerable and superstitious worshipper.
11 Unknown artist
Ninth Book, in John Foxe, Acts and Monuments

(The Book of Martyrs), 1563–70 (1632 edition)
Woodcut, 36.5 x 24.5 x 7 cm (overall)
John Foxe (1517–87), an exile during the reign of Queen Mary I,

published his Acts and Monuments in 1563 and became an overnight
literary celebrity. The enormous book with its often gruesome images
focuses on the sufferings of the Protestant martyrs during Mary’s
reign. A chained copy was placed in parish churches to strengthen
support for the new Anglican church and to act as a warning against
Catholicism. In a culture so highly suspicious of religious iconography,
the woodcut images were hugely influential and among the most
familiar to English people until the nineteenth century. This image
from the ninth book shows the young King Edward VI presiding over
iconoclasm and the “purification” of the churches.

10 11
14
103

12 Unknown artist standing in the water shows a variety of fishing techniques, such as
night fishing with a fire to attract the fish, the use of nets and of spears
April, in Edmund Spenser, The Shephearde’s Calendar, barbed with fish bones, as well as weirs and traps. De Bry included a
catfish, a burrfish, a hammerhead shark, a loggerhead turtle and king
London: Hugh Singleton, 1579 (1581 edition), folio 12
crabs, among other aquatic creatures.
Woodcut, 20 x 15 x 1 cm (overall)
The British Library, London
The Shephearde’s Calendar, dedicated on the title page to the poet 15 J O D O C U S H O N D I U S (Wakken, 1563–Amsterdam, 1612)
and soldier, Philip Sidney, was Spenser’s (1522–99) first major poem
and is a pastoral indebted to Virgil’s Eclogues, which is based on the
Map of Cambridgeshire, in John Speed, The Theatre of the
life of the shepherd Colin Clout through the months of the year. It
Empire of Great Britain. London: William Hall and John Beale,
was written in a deliberately archaic style, intended to promote the
idea of a national literary mode, which is also reflected in the rustic 1611–12
simplicity of most of the woodcuts that illustrate each month. It is not Engraving, 385 x 525 mm (image), 405 x 527 mm (sheet)
known who made the woodcuts, although they are almost certainly Private Collection
English. Three different hands are discernible, mainly in a style
typical of Flemish designs of the 1540s. The image for “April”, the John Speed (1542–1629) was one of the greatest of the early British
month of the goddess Venus, with the astrological figure of Taurus map makers, following the work of his predecessors Christopher
in the sky, shows “Eliza” (that is, Queen Elizabeth) in her elaborate Saxton and John Norden. While making a living as a tailor in
kirtle with eleven attendants, four of whom play musical instruments. London, he joined the Society of Antiquaries late in life and with the
On the left, Clout plays a wind instrument by a fountain, his song encouragement of the historian William Camden and the support of
explained to the Queen by the shepherds Thenot and Hobbinol. In Queen Elizabeth began to research British history and topography.
the foreground, a single plant in flower announces Spring. His The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain, published shortly
Edmund Spenser was one of the leading poets of the Elizabethan after his The Historie of Great Britaine, comprises maps of England,
period, best known for his chivalric allegorical epic poem in praise Scotland, Wales and Ireland and each county, mostly adapted from
of Queen Elizabeth, The Faerie Queene, the first part of which other map makers. The latter included detailed town maps and rivers
was published in 1590 and the second in 1596. Educated at the (although no roads); it was the first volume of maps to divide the
University of Cambridge, Spenser was actively involved in the counties into their “hundreds”. On the back of each sheet, Speed added
subjugation of Ireland and recommended a drastic programme of topographical, administrative and historical information, as well as
coercion to reform Irish religion and society. general comments on local architecture and products. The work,
engraved by the great Flemish engraver and cartographer Jodocus
Hondius, went into many folio and miniature editions and helped to
shape the British idea of the nation. The map of Cambridgeshire, one
13 T H E O D O R D E B R Y (Liège, 1527/8– Frankfurt am Main, 1598) of the most elaborate produced by Speed, includes a map of Cambridge
after J O H N W H I T E (London, 1540–Kilmore?, Country Cork, and the border carries the royal coat of arms and those of the ancient
Ireland, 1593) colleges of the University and the Earls of Cambridge. Four academic
figures, one of whom holds a compass and measuring stick to show the
“Their Manner of fyshynge in Virginia”, in Thomas Harriot, map’s scale, decorate the plate.
A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia.
Frankfurt, 1590
Engraving, 460 x 560 mm (sheet)
John White’s drawings of North American Indians, their way of life

and local flora and fauna (see p. 18) were the basis for the Liège-
born Protestant engraver Theodor de Bry’s remarkable illustrations
for Thomas Harriot’s account of White’s journey to Virginia in
1585. De Bry had close connections with England through the poet
and soldier Philip Sidney and the travel scholar Richard Hakluyt.
The latter may have persuaded him to make the engravings for
Harriot’s book, which was published in four languages and was the
first of many travel books by De Bry and his sons. De Bry’s images
in a A true report were used in many different publications for over
a century. He adapted White’s more scientific drawings to promote
an idea of Protestant destiny and prosperity in the New World. The
engraving of the Indians in their cypress log dug-out canoes and

12 13
15
105


REVOLUTION
AND THE BAROQUE
1620–1720
Under King Charles I, there was a resurgence of royal patronage that had its roots in the activities of ANTHONY VAN DYCK
aristocratic collectors such as the Earl of Arundel during the reign of Charles’s father, King James I. WILLIAM DOBSON
Such men were viewed with great suspicion by the puritan and parliamentary factions who were to
JOHN HOSKINS
go to war against the king in 1642.
SAMUEL COOPER
The Flemish painter, diplomat and wealthy landowner Peter Paul Rubens was commissioned in
the early 1630s to paint a grand ceiling at the new Banqueting House on Whitehall; the centrepiece PETER LELY
is an apotheosis of James I, celebrating his wise government and role as peacemaker in Europe. JAN SIBERECHTS
The key figure, however, was the Antwerp-born Anthony van Dyck, who settled in London in GODFREY KNELLER
1632. Van Dyck brought a sophisticated painterly style to England that shows the impact of Titian’s
JAMES THORNHILL
painting. Charles’ remarkable collection of art, much of it acquired from the Duke of Mantua in
INIGO JONES
1628, included many works by Titian. Van Dyck’s silvery-toned portraits of the king and queen and
the leading figures in English society remind us of a brilliant but enclosed world that was becoming CRISPIN VAN DER PASSE THE ELDER
dangerously cut off from large and resentful swathes of society. WENCESLAUS HOLLAR
The great court “masques” of the 1630s, designed by the architect Inigo Jones, with their
FRANCIS BARLOW
complex scenery and lighting effects, cost enormous sums of money and had about them the taint
ROBERT HOOKE
of a foreign and Catholic culture that was deeply unpopular.
When civil war broke out in 1642, Charles moved his court to Oxford. The other major JOHANNES KIP
university town, Cambridge, was to become a stronghold for the parliamentary forces. One major LEONARD KNYFF
native artist who emerged during this period of exile was the painter William Dobson. His portraits
show the influence of Van Dyck in their confident, loose brushwork, but they also have a direct and
more vigorous quality. While Dobson was painting Charles’ supporters, the iconoclast William
Dowsing was commissioned by Parliament in 1643 to remove systematically proscribed images
from churches in the eastern counties.
Into the chaos of the 1640s, the Westphalian portrait painter Peter Lely arrived. He painted
the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell during the Republican rule of the 1650s and, following the
Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, dominated the portrait scene until his death in 1680. His
images of the luscious female beauties of Charles II’s court evoke a world of pleasure and, for many,
of licentiousness and corruption. His successor as leading portraitist, the German Godfrey Kneller,
introduced a more sober, plain style with which he recorded not only aristocrats, but also leading
writers, artists, scientists and other public figures.
Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the first signs of a commercial art world can be seen
and with it the diversification of forms of art. Jan Siberechts’ landscapes give a detailed picture of
a nation with a thriving economy and a growing political and military confidence. This confidence
also was expressed in the grand decorative schemes commissioned for two of Christopher
Wren’s baroque buildings: St Paul’s Cathedral and the Royal Naval Hospital, both executed by
an Englishman, James Thornhill.
Anthony van Dyck,

Queen Henrietta Maria, 1632.
107 [detail CAT. 16]

108

REVOLUTION
AND THE BAROQUE
1620 – 1720
Since Aristotle numbereth graphice, generally taken for whatever is done with the pen or pencil (as
writing, fair drawing, limning and painting) among those his generous practices of youth in a well-
governed commonwealth, I am bound also to give it you in charge for your exercise at leisure, it being
a quality most commendable and so many ways useful to a gentleman. For should you, if necessity
required, be employed for your country’s service in following the war, you can describe no plot,
manner of fortification, form of battalia, situation of town, castle, fort, haven, island, course of river,
passage through wood, marsh, over rock, mountain etc. (which a discreet general doth not always
commit to the eye of another) without the help of the same. In all mathematical demonstrations
nothing is more required in our travel in foreign regions. It bringeth home with us from the furthest
part of the world in our bosoms whatever is rare and worthy of observance, as the general map of the
country, the rivers, harbours, havens, promontories, etc., within the landscape of fair hills, fruitful
valleys, the forms and colours of all fruits, several beauties of their flowers; of medicineable simples
never before seen or heard of; the orient colours and lively pictures of their birds, the shape of their
beasts, fishes, worms, flies etc. It presents our eyes with their complexion, manner and their attire.
It shows us the rites of their religion, their houses, their weapons and manner of war. Besides it
preserveth the memory of a dearest friend or mistress. And since it is only the imitation of the surface
of nature, by it as in a book of golden and rare-limned letters, the chief end of it, we read a continual
lecture of the wisdom of the Almighty Creator by beholding, even in the feather of a peacock, a
miracle, as Aristotle saith.
Thomas Peacham, The Compleat Gentleman. London, 1622.

(Quoted in Bernard Denvir, From the Middle Ages to the
Stuarts: Art, Design and Society before 1689. London and
New York: Longman, 1988, 166–67.)
And all crucifixes, images and pictures, of any one or more persons of the Trinity, or of the Virgin
Mary, and all other images and pictures of saints, or superstitious inscriptions in or upon any of the
said churches, or other places belonging to the said churches, or churchyards, or in any other open
place shall before the said first of November be taken away and defaced by the proper officers that
have care of such churches.
An Ordinance for the utter demolishing, removing and

taking away of all Monuments of superstition or Idolatry,
28 August 1643. (Quoted in C.H. Firth and R.S. Rait, Acts
and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660. 3 vols.
London: HMSO, 1911, vol. 1, 265–66.)

Whereas by an ordinance of the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament bearing date the
28th of August last, it is amongst other things ordained yt. all Crucifixes, Crosses & all Images of
any one or more psons of the Trinity, or of the Virgin Marye, & all other images & pictures of Saints
& superstitious inscriptions in or upon all & every Churches or Chapells or other place of publique
prayer, Churchyards or other places of publique praier belonginge, or in any other open place
shall be before November last be taken away and defaced, as by the said Ordinance more at large
appeareth. And whereas many such Crosses, Crucifixes, other superstitious images and pictures are
still continued within the associated Counties in manifest contempt of the sd. Ordinance, these are
therefore to will and require you forthwith to make your repaier to the several associated counties
& put the sd. Ordinance in execution in every particular, hereby requiring all Mayors, Sheriffs,
Bayliffs, Constables head boroughs & all other his Majesties Officers and lovelinge subjects to be
ayding and assisting you, whereof they may not faile at their peril. Given under my hand and seale
this 19th of December 1643.
Manchester.
To Willm. Dowsing Gent.
& to such as hee shall appoint.
Commission from Edward Montagu, Earl of Manchester

to William Dowsing, 19 December 1643. (Quoted in
Bernard Denvir, From the Middle Ages to the Stuarts:
Art, Design and Society before 1689. London and New
York: Longman, 1988, 206–07.)
Teversham [Cambridgeshire], March 26 [1644]. I broke a crucifix in the chancel, and there was
Jesus written in great capital letters on six arches in the church, and in 12 places in the chancel,
and steps there, the pavement digged up. The 6 Jesus in the church I dig out, and six in the chancel,
and the other six I could not reach, but gave orders to do them out. There was one side of the altar
written Phil. ii. 10 and on the other side, Psalm XCV. Come let us worship and kneele, etc. and four
suns painted; within the first writt, God the Father; and in the second, the Son; and in the third, the
Holy Ghost; and in the 4th, Three Presons and One God. (page 283)
Benacre [Suffolk], April 6 [1644]. There was 6 superstitious pictures, one crucifix, and the Virgin
Mary twice, with Christ in her arms, and Christ lying in the manger, and the 3 Kings coming to
Christ with their presents, and a Katherine nice [twice] pictured; and the priest of the parish [—]
materna Johannem Christi guberna, O Christ govern me by thy mother’s Prayers! – And three Bishops
with their mitres; and the steps to belevelled within 6 weeks. And 18 Jesus’s, written in capital
letters on the roof, which we gave order to do out; and the story of Nebuchadnezzar; and Orate pro
animabus, in a glass window. (page 293)
(Both quoted in Trevor Cooper, ed. The Journal of

William Dowsing: Iconoclasm in East Anglia during
the English Civil War. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The
Ecclesiological Society, The Boydell Press, 2001.)
VI

11 November 1647
COLONEL WHALEY
I have been so civilly used by you and Major Huntingdon that I cannot but by this parting farewell
acknowledge it under my hand, as also to desire the continuance of your courtesy, by your
protecting of my household stuffe and moveables of all sorts, which I leave behind me in this house
[Hampton Court] that they be neither spoiled or embesled; only there are three pictures here which
are not mine that I desire you to restore; to wit my wives picture in blew, sitting in a chair you must
send to Mistris Kirke; my eldest daughter’s picture copied by Belcam to the Countess of Anglesey,
and my lady Stannop’s picture to Cary Rawley [Carew Raleigh]. There is a fourth which I had almost
forgot, it is the original of my eldest daughter (it hangs in this chamber over the board next to the
chimney) which you must send to Lady Aubigny. So being confident that you wish my preservation
and restitution, I rest,
Your friend CHARLES R.
PS I assure you it was not the letter you shewed me today that made me take this resolution, nor
any advertisement of that kinde. But I confess that I am loath to be made a close prisoner under
pretence of securing my life. I had almost forgot to desire you to send the black grew bitch to the
Duke of Richmond.
Note from Charles I to Colonel Whaley, his

Parliamentary captor, 1 November 1647. (Quoted
in Bernard Denvir, From the Middle Ages to the
Stuarts: Art, Design and Society before 1689. London
and New York: Longman, 1988, 209.)
VII

109

16 ANTHONY VAN DYCK
(Antwerp, 1599– London, 1641)
Queen Henrietta Maria, 1632

Oil on canvas, 109 x 86.2 cm
Lent by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
Henrietta Maria (1609–69) was the daughter of King Henry IV of

France and Marie de Medici. She was a Catholic who married the
Protestant King Charles I in 1625 by papal dispensation. The Pope
hoped she that would be a spearhead for the return of England to
Rome. Because of her Catholicism and poor command of English,
she was unpopular and was never crowned in an Anglican service.
The marriage was a happy one after the death of Charles’ favourite,
the Duke of Buckingham, in 1628, and was ended only by the king’s
execution in 1649. Henrietta Maria died in France where she had
been exiled during the English civil war. This portrait was hung in
the king’s bedchamber and shows her in a silvery-grey dress against a
dark green curtain, with pinkish-scarlet ribbons and her hand on pink
roses by a small imperial crown. The painting was popular and was
repeated on a number of occasions with slight variations, Van Dyck
managing to make a plain woman appear to be very pretty. Princess
Sophia remarked that although “so beautiful in her picture”, she had
“crooked shoulders, and teeth protruding from her mouth like guns
from a fort” (Memoirs of Princess Sophia, Electress of Hanover, 1630–
1680. Trans. H. Forester. London: Richard Bentley, 1888, 13).
Van Dyck was born in Antwerp and first came to England in the
1620s. He settled in London in 1632 and became the most important
painter of his times, painting many royal portraits and establishing
a pattern for elite portraiture in Britain that survived into the
twentieth century. His studio was a large operation, the artist himself
painting the sitters’ heads and leaving the rest of the canvas to
assistants. He died in London having remained a Catholic.
110 REVOLUTION AND THE BAROQUE

17 WILLIAM DOBSON
(London, 1611–46)
Portrait of a Family, Probably that of Richard Streatfeild,

ca. 1645
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven
This family portrait is believed to show Richard Streatfeild, a wealthy

ironmaster from Chiddingstone, Kent, with his wife and children. The
four skulls on the broken column at which the father looks wistfully
are probably a reference to children of his who had already died. The
column itself is a traditional symbol of fortitude. It is likely that the two
children on the left were finished by another artist.
Dobson was trained by the German painter and tapestry designer
at the royal tapestry works at Mortlake, Francis Cleyn. Through his
access to the Royal Collection he acquired a Venetian style and is
generally considered to be the most talented native English artist
of the seventeenth century. He became Serjeant Painter to King
Charles I after Van Dyck’s death in 1641 and joined Charles at Oxford
when he was forced to move there at the start of the civil war in 1642.
There Dobson painted a number of Charles’ closest political allies
and soldiers, known as “cavaliers”, bringing a sophisticated colouring
and brushwork to his robust representations of the English subjects.
Charles left Oxford early one morning in April 1646 and the city fell to
the parliamentary forces in May. A month later, most of the court left
for London. Dobson, having been imprisoned for debt, died in poverty
in London, undoubtedly a victim of his Royalist association. The diarist
John Evelyn called him “the most excellent painter that England hath
yet bred” (Andrew Clark, ed. Brief Lives, chiefly of contemporaries, set
down by John Aubrey. 2 vols. London, 1898, vol. i, 78).

113

18 JOHN HOSKINS 19 SAMUEL COOPER
(Wells, Somerset, ca. 1590– London, 1665) (London, 1609–72)
Frances Cranfield, Countess James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth

of Dorset, ca. 1637 and Buccleuch, K.G., ca. 1670
Watercolour on vellum, 15.2 x 10.2 cm Watercolour on vellum, 7.6 cm high
With kind permission of The Duke of Buccleuch & Queensberry KBE With kind permission of The Duke of Buccleuch & Queensberry KBE
Frances Cranfield (ca. 1623–87) was the daughter of Lionel Cranfield, James Scott (1649–85) was an illegitimate child who was said to have
1st Earl of Middlesex, a major figure in Jacobean politics. She married been the offspring of King Charles II and his mistress Lucy Walter,
Richard Sackville, 5th Earl of Dorset in the 1630s, with whom she born while the Stuarts were in exile in the Netherlands. He was made
had seven sons and six daughters. The family lived at Knole, Kent, a 1st Duke of Monmouth in 1663. He married Anne Scott, Countess of
National Trust property today, which has a fine collection of paintings, Buccleuch and took her surname. The couple were made the Duke
including a full-length portrait of Frances by Anthony van Dyck. This and Duchess of Buccleuch a day after their wedding. Scott became
miniature was painted during the Interregnum, when the family was a successful military commander during the wars against the Dutch
a victim of persecution by Parliament. At the Restoration, the Earl in the 1660s and 1670s. As a Protestant he was favoured by many as
of Dorset’s fortunes improved dramatically. This portrait is one of heir to the throne, but Charles II supported his Catholic son James,
Hoskins’ finest with its superb detail and a charming dreamlike blue Duke of York. When the king died in 1685, Monmouth led a rebellion
landscape in the background. Lady Frances wears a fashionable French against the new king but was defeated at the Battle of Sedgemoor
“hurluberlu” coiffure, that is, a mop of downward-pointing curls in Somerset that year. He was executed shortly after on Tower Hill,
arranged thickly at the back of the head and neck, below a section of London.
straight hair. Samuel Cooper was the nephew of John Hoskins, with whom he
John Hoskins became the leading miniature painter in England trained as a miniaturist, and he spent the early part of his career in
in the 1620s after the deaths of Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver, Holland and France. He was well connected and was a friend of the
painting King Charles I, Queen Henrietta Maria and many other great diarist Samuel Pepys whose wife he painted in 1668. He was
important figures of the period. It is not known where he trained, but highly regarded during his lifetime and painted both Oliver Cromwell
his work from the 1630s shows clearly the influence of his neighbour in and Charles II. As with Hoskins’ portraits, Cooper frequently set his
London, the court painter Van Dyck. sitters against a blue landscape background

115

20 PETER LELY
(Soest, Westphalia, 1618– London, 1680)
Diana Kirke, later Countess of Oxford, 1665–70

Diana Kirke (d. 1719), a celebrated actress, married her lover, Aubrey
de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, in 1673, and had five children by him.
He had been a Royalist during the civil war and was generously
rewarded for his loyalty by King Charles II. Depicted here while still
de Vere’s lover, Diana is wearing a loose “deshabille” Roman dress in
the fashionable court colour of the time, amber, and exposes her left
breast. She holds a rose, which, appropriately, may be a reference to
Venus. Such images were popular in Restoration England after the
severe religious and moral restrictions of the 1650s.
Peter Lely came to England from Westphalia, via Haarlem, in
the early 1640s and not only painted historical landscapes but also
the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, who allegedly requested that
he paint him “pimples, warts and everything as you see me” (quoted
in Oliver Miller, Sir Peter Lely 1618–80. Exh. cat. National Portrait
Gallery, London, 1978, 47). By the 1670s, however, he had become
the most fashionable portrait painter in England, running a large and
efficient practice from his studio in Covent Garden. Typically, sitters
would choose a pose and costume from a portfolio of engravings and
then Lely would make a rapid chalk drawing for approval. He would
paint the face, while the draperies and backgrounds were painted
by his assistants. The dispersal of his enormous art collection at his
death was the “sale of the century” after that of King Charles I.

21 JAN SIBERECHTS Siberechts’ patrons were local businessmen rather than the
(Antwerp, 1627– London, ca. 1700) aristocrats who had previously been the main commissioners of
landscape painting. Behind Siberechts’ paintings lies a network of
Henley from the Wargrave Road, 1698 local landowners, Thames merchants, City lawyers and financiers.
It is likely that the Draper family, which owned an estate south-east
Oil on canvas, 88 x 119 cm of Henley, commissioned this work. The viewpoint adopted, from a
River and Rowing Museum, Henley-on-Thames lock looking towards Henley, was on the Draper estate, and celebrates
the family’s land and wealth. Siberechts’ minute attention to every
The Flemish landscape painter Jan Siberechts painted a number detail appealed to the merchants, bankers and estate-managers who
of views of Henley and the River Thames. They are remarkably bought his paintings. Another view of Henley, in the Tate collection,
naturalistic and focus on the everyday working life of Henley with its has a remarkable double rainbow, reminding us of the growing interest
wharves, market and malt houses, and the local countryside with its in the scientific study of the natural world, which was seen as so
fields, lush pastures and woodland. The Thames is shown as an artery important to Britain’s economic growth.
of trade with its varied locks, barges and cargoes.

22 GODFREY KNELLER 23 GODFREY KNELLER
(Lübeck, 1646– London, 1723) (Lübeck, 1646– London, 1723)
Arnold Joost van Keppel, 1st Earl of Albemarle, ca. 1700 Charles D’Artiquenave, ca. 1702
Oil on canvas, 64.8 x 55.9 cm Oil on canvas, 108 x 80 cm
National Portrait Gallery, London National Portrait Gallery, London
Keppel (1670–1718) was a Dutch-born soldier and courtier during D’Artiquenave (1664–1737) was an epicure and humorist thought by
the reign of his fellow-countryman King William III. Like many of the some to be the natural son of King Charles II. Most probably, however,
king’s Dutch favourites, he was the object of great envy and animosity he was a descendant of French Huguenot religious refugees. Like most
among William’s English courtiers who resented the lavish gifts of of Kneller’s “Kit-Kat” sitters, he was a Whig who was well rewarded for
money and land that he received, as well as his titles. It was said that his loyalty to the party by various grants and sinecures. He was a close
Keppel was the king’s lover by the age of 16 and he was renowned for friend of Tory political opponents, the poet Alexander Pope and the
his good looks and charm. He fought under the Duke of Marlborough writer Jonathan Swift, who said D’Artiquenave was a “man who knows
during the War of Spanish Succession (1701–14) and is shown here everything and that every-body knows” (from Jonathan Swift, Journal
wearing armour, as well as a large wig, which it was claimed he used to Stella, quoted in Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 14. London:
to cover a birthmark on his face. His direct descendants today include Smith, Elder and Co., 1885–90, 69–70). A professional drinker and
Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, the second wife of Prince Charles. gourmet, he contributed to The Tatler magazine, the forerunner to
Godfrey Kneller was a German artist trained in Holland and Italy, The Spectator, including Letter 252, “On the Pleasures of Modern
who succeeded Peter Lely as the dominant portrait painter in England Drinking” (Richard Gough and John-Bowyer Nicholls, eds. The
in 1680. He also had a studio in the fashionable area of Covent Garden Spectator, vol. IV (London, 1786): 291–94).
in London’s growing West End and charged the very high sum of fifty Kneller’s portraits, suggestive in their intimate style of the new
pounds for a full-length portrait. Like Anthony van Dyck and Lely, world of “men-about-town” and the coffee houses and clubs that they
he was knighted. His small “Kit-Kat” portraits, like this one, were frequented, established an informal format of portraiture, which
commissioned by the publisher Jacob Tonson for a West End club provided a pattern for those of William Hogarth and other painters in
patronised by members of the Whig political party and their supporters, the eighteenth century. Kneller was highly successful commercially
including writers such as the The Spectator editor Joseph Addison and and was appointed Principal Painter to the Crown. His Academy in
the dramatist William Congreve. The pies sold at the club were known London, which ran from 1711 to 1716, was the first professional training
as “Kit-Kats”, which gave the club and the portraits their name. centre for British artists.
119

22 GODFREY KNELLER Arnold Joost van Keppel, 1st Earl of Albemarle, ca. 1700

23 GODFREY KNELLER Charles D’Artiquenave, ca. 1702

24 JAMES THORNHILL 25 JAMES THORNHILL
(Woolland, Dorset, 1675/6– Stalbridge, Dorset, 1734) (Woolland, Dorset, 1675/6– Stalbridge, Dorset, 1734)
St Paul Preaching at Athens, ca. 1710 Sketch for a Ceiling Design, 1700–20
Oil on canvas, 82 x 73.7 cm Oil on canvas, 62 x 58 cm
Tate. Lent by the the Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s Cathedral 1989 The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Presented by G. McN. Rushforth, 1937
[Not in exhibition]
The commissioning of the murals for the dome of Christopher Wren’s The subject of this sketch for a ceiling is uncertain and there is no
baroque masterpiece, St Paul’s Cathedral, which opened over forty known mural related to it. It is a characteristic baroque composition
years after the catastrophic Great Fire of London of 1666, was highly of Thornhill’s with its complex and energetic arrangement of deities
controversial (see p. 22). This coloured oil sketch for what was to be a in the swirling, cloudy heavens. It possibly depicts Mars, in a red
grisaille painting was probably painted in 1709 or 1710 as Thornhill’s cloak, presenting a warrior to Vulcan, who stretches out his right
submission for the competition when he was short-listed along with hand in welcome, while Venus attempts to distract him. Below
the Italian painter Antonio Pellegrini. Thornhill’s scheme comprised them, the female figure of History is writing on the back of Time,
eight sections divided by trompe-l’oeil architectural decoration. It who is identified by his wings and a scythe. It has been suggested
bears only a partial resemblance to the finished work and shows the that the sketch shows Mars pleading with Jupiter for the deification
importance to Thornhill of the Raphael cartoons, which then hung in of Romulus as recounted in Book XIV of Ovid’s Metamorphoses
Hampton Court Palace. The painter and writer Jonathan Richardson (completed AD8). A sketch such as this would have been one of a
had said of Raphael’s portrayal of this subject: number for a scheme to decorate a large house and allowed the artist
to work out his ideas and also have something for his client to approve.
There I see a Person, Face, Air, and Action, which no Words Thornhill was apprenticed to a decorative artist in 1689 and
can sufficiently describe, but which assure me … that that Man his career coincided with the great military victories of the Duke of
must speak good Sense. Marlborough and the growth of Britain into a major world power.
(Jonathan Richardson, An Essay on the Theory of Painting. His painted hall at the Royal Naval Hospital, Greenwich was a vast
London, 1715, 96–97.) celebration of the succession of King William III and King George I.
However, most of Thornhill’s work was done for private houses across
Thornhill’s version is closely styled on Raphael’s. Paul is positioned Britain, usually for the powerful Whig magnates of the time. Surviving
on the left preaching with outstretched arms to the Athenians below major examples of his baroque decorative schemes include those at
him. The gesture of the seated figure on the far right, with his raised Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, Hanbury Hall, Worcestershire and
hand, directly quotes Rapahel’s composition. Near the end of his Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire.
life, Thornhill made sets of copies of the cartoons as well as studies
of heads, hands and feet that he intended publishing in a manual for
young artists. Like his contemporary Godfrey Kneller, Thornhill was
knighted and set up his own short-lived Academy in London.

123

26 I N I G O J O N E S (London, 1573–1652) This image by an unknown engraver is typical of the crude graphic
propaganda prints produced during the civil war. The state of
Design for the Catafalque for James I, ca. 1630 England following the conflict is symbolised by a storm-tossed
ship, “preserv’d and almost safe at land”. The ship, or “England’s
Pen and wash on paper, 600 x 435 mm Ark”, is divided into three sections: “House of Lords”, “House of
The Provost and Fellows of Worcester College Oxford Commons” and “Assembly” (that is, the Westminster Assembly set
up in 1643 to reform the English Church according to Presbyterian
Inigo Jones was the foremost classical architect in Britain in the early principles). Six parliamentary generals are shown in the medallions,
seventeenth century. He travelled in Italy and France and became including Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell. Drowning in the sea
familiar with the architecture and ideas of Andrea Palladio. His most are the Royalists and their sympathisers, including King Charles I
famous buildings are the Queen’s House, Greenwich (1616–35) and the and Queen Henrietta Maria, Archbishop William Laud (?), Prince
Banqueting House on Whitehall, London (1619–22), which Rubens Rupert, who slashes at the ship with his sword, and the Earl of
decorated in the early 1630s. Jones also designed many “masques” Strafford, who fires a gun at it. The print is accompanied by a long
or court entertainments for the Stuart court and introduced the poem by the obscure John Lecester.
proscenium arch and movable scenery to Britain. This catafalque, in
part a response to Domenico Fontana’s catafalque for Pope
Sixtus V (1590), both summarises his career as chief architect to
the king and announces a self-consciously restrained and “pure”
29 W E N C E S L A U S H O L L A R (Prague, 1607–London, 1677)
Protestant aesthetic.
Spring, 1641
Etching, 246 x 179 mm
27 CRISPIN VAN DER PASSE THE ELDER (Arnemuiden, ca. 1564– Collection of David and Diana Wood
Utrecht, 1637)
A young woman stands before an open window and points with her
Illustrations in George Wither, A Collection of Emblemes, right hand at a vase of flowers, including irises, lilies, tulips and roses,
on a table covered with a cloth. In her left hand, she holds a bunch
Ancient and Moderne. London, 1635, 90–91
of tulips and her left arm rests on an open box from which there is a
Etching, 31 x 20 x 3 cm (overall) fur muff protruding, suggesting the end of winter when such items
The British Library, London would be packed away. Through the window can be seen a country
house and formal garden under a lightly clouded sky. The verse at
George Wither (1588–1667) was a poet and satirist who wrote in a the bottom tells us “beauty’s quarter now is coming on”. This image
deliberately archaic style indebted to the poetry of Edmund Spenser. is from a series depicting the four seasons. In 1643–44, Hollar made
He was a zealous Protestant and sided with Parliament during the a full-length series of the same subject, with detailed and identifiable
English civil war. Educated at the University of Oxford and the backgrounds, including London settings.
London law courts, Wither also wrote on politics, composed hymns Wenceslaus Hollar was born in Prague into a Protestant family
and translated the Psalms. After the Restoration of the monarchy and left Bohemia during the Thirty Years War, in 1627, to avoid
in 1660, he moved towards the dissenting Quakers in his religious religious persecution. He worked for various publishers in Stuttgart,
sympathies. Strasbourg, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Cologne as a draughtsman
A Collection of Emblemes was based on the German poet Gabriel and printmaker. In 1636, he entered the service of Thomas Howard,
Rollenhagen’s Nucleus Emblematum Selectissimorum quae Itali vulgo the Earl of Arundel, and moved to London. Hollar worked on a
impresas vocant, [1611]–1613. The 200 plates in Rollenhagen’s book wide range of subject matter, including architecture, monuments,
were designed by the Dutch publisher and engraver, Crispin van der landscape, topography, religion, natural history, fashion and
Passe. Wither divided them into four books and added to the mottoes portraiture. During the civil war, he fled Britain for Antwerp in 1644
and epigrams of each emblem thirty lines of his own explanatory and worked there until his return to London in 1652. Renowned for
verse. A “Lotterie” at the end of each book provided a further way into his subtle and precise line, Hollar also made maps and panoramic
the moral and theological meanings of the emblems. views of London and other towns, which are a primary historical
source for mid-seventeenth-century England. He was a pioneer of
the scientific observation of the natural world in Britain and died
just as he was about to complete an illustrated history of the county
28 Unknown artist
of Nottinghamshire by Robert Thoroton.
England’s Miraculous Preservation Emblematically Described,

Erected for a Perpetuall Monument to Posterity. London: John
Hancock, 1647, 107
Engraving, 218 x 308 mm (image), 462 x 330 mm (printed area)


26 27
28 29
125

30 W E N C E S L A U S H O L L A R (Prague, 1607– London, 1677) after 32 J O H A N N E S K I P (Amsterdam, 1653– London, 1722) after
F R A N C I S B A R L O W (?1626–1704) L E O N A R D K N Y F F (1650–1722)
Bustards, ca. 1655 Althorp in the County of Northampton, from Britannia

Illustrata: Or Views of Several of the Queen’s Palaces, as Also
Collection of David and Diana Wood
of the principal Seats of the Nobility and Gentry of Great Britain,
curiously engraved on 80 Copper plates, London, 1708–15,
On the left, a fierce cock bustard with long plumes curving down plate 27
from his mouth stands in the foreground. On the right, the hen stands
Etching, 46.2 x 31.9 x 6.6 cm (overall)
looking downwards. In the tree on the left are four birds, including a Erddig, The Yorke Collection (The National Trust)
cockatoo, and overhead an unidentified bird flies above the hen. In the
distance, seen between the two bustards, is old St Paul’s Cathedral, Althorp, now the home of the Spencer family, was owned by the Duke
London. Bustards have powerful legs and prefer running to flying. of Sunderland when this image was engraved for the publisher David
They make their nests on the ground, which makes them vulnerable to Mortier, who financed the project through subscription. It was an
predators. Bustards died out in Britain in 1832 but have recently been Elizabethan house altered in 1665–68 to Italianate designs. The two
re-introduced. large skylights of the new great staircase can be seen at the rear of the
The drawing is by the naturalist artist and etcher, Francis Barlow, roof. A panoramic landscape includes figures, deer, horses and dogs,
with whom Hollar worked on a number of projects. Other birds drawn and avenues of trees, formal walled gardens, and grand entrance gates.
by Barlow and etched by Hollar between the 1650s and 1670s and In the late eighteenth century, the landscape was radically remodelled
published in various editions as Diversae avium species, include eagles, to conform to the more natural aesthetic first developed fully at
doves, turkeys, pheasants, peacocks, ostriches, owls and swans. Stourhead [CAT. 77 and p. 25].
The Britannia Illustrata engravings were produced by the Dutch
painter Leonard Knyff and the engraver and print dealer Kip, who
31 R O B E R T H O O K E (Freshwater, Isle of Wight, 1635–London, 1703) had come to England after the accession of King William III in 1688.
They employ the popular bird’s-eye view to present the houses and
Micrographia (Observation LIV, “Of a louse”, Scheme XXXV), buildings depicted in a wide-angle landscape setting emphasising the
London: Jo. Martyn and Ja. Allestry, 1665 landowners’ extensive estate. The Dutch painter Jan Siberechts used a
Etching, 30.6 x 21 x 4.3 cm (overall)
similar approach in his paintings [CAT. 21].
University of Glasgow Library. Special Collections
The illustrations to Micrographia were made for King Charles II

when the polymathic Robert Hooke was Curator of Experiments
at the Royal Society, founded in 1660 to encourage scientific
experimentation. Microscopes were popular instruments at the
time and Hooke’s pioneering illustrations became fashionable items
of interest. Hooke invented the word “cell” for minute biological
organisms, suggested to him by the resemblance of plant cells to
monk’s cells. The book also included images seen through a telescope
and revolutionary ideas on combustion. Micrographia shows the close
links between the sciences and arts that existed at the time, as Hooke’s
work as an architect and draughtsman suggests.

30 31
32
127


SOCIETY
AND SATIRE
1720–1800
William Hogarth’s famous print series of the 1730s and 1740s have established him as the first major WILLIAM HOGARTH
native British artist. His Harlot’s Progress of 1732– 3 set the pattern for a narrative art that captured LOUIS-FRANÇOIS ROUBILIAC
the imagination of audiences across Europe. His aim was to tell stories about contemporary social
ALLAN RAMSAY
types and problems and to perform the role of a moral commentator, somewhat in the manner of his
ARTHUR DEVIS
friend, the novelist Henry Fielding. Typically, Hogarth’s tales end in tragedy as innocents and fools are
lured into evil ways, heavy layers of symbolism pointing to the inevitability of the unfolding disaster. FRANCIS HAYMAN
Hogarth’s art was both revolutionary and highly fashion-conscious and was much influenced by ANTONIO CANALETTO
the taste for French and Italian “conversation pieces”, as well as by the life around him in London. JOHAN ZOFFANY
His art was shown along with that of friends such as Francis Hayman at venues like the Vauxhall
JOSHUA REYNOLDS
Pleasure Gardens, run by the entrepreneur Jonathan Tyers, and at the Foundling Hospital for
orphans. These sites were the first public art galleries in Britain, where fashionable society could THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
mix and see the latest painting and sculpture. Hogarth’s legacy can be seen later in the century in JOHN HAMILTON MORTIMER
the work of artists such as the social satirist Thomas Rowlandson and the political cartoonist James JOHN-FRANCIS RIGAUD
Gillray. Their work was eagerly bought by a large middle-class audience, along with the novels and
THOMAS ROWLANDSON
other printed material with which they filled their libraries and drawing rooms.
JAMES GILLRAY
By the middle of the eighteenth century, there was a growing demand for full professional
recognition of artists in Britain. Hogarth’s Copyright Act of 1734 gave artists greater control over the THOMAS LAWRENCE
reproduction of their work, while the calls for an officially sanctioned academy led to the founding JOHN HOPPNER
of the Royal Academy in 1768. Dominated by Joshua Reynolds, the Academy gave artists status, a JOSEPH NOLLEKENS
prestigious exhibition space and training facilities. Inevitably, the new organisation and those who
SIMON GRIBELIN
ran it became the targets of satirists and those who felt excluded from its success.
JOHN CLOSTERMAN
Reynolds’ lectures to the Academy students stressed the importance of “history painting”,
ambitious works that dealt with grand themes from literature and history. However, the demand GERARD VAN DER GUCHT
for portraits was far greater and, by the end of the century, landscape as well was a more important JOHN VANDERBANK
genre than historical subjects. Portraiture was a hugely successful business involving a whole CHARLES GRIGNION
economy of artists, dealers, framers, copyists, engravers and transport companies. Artists such
SAMUEL WALE
as Thomas Gainsborough and Thomas Lawrence commanded high prices for their work. The
epicentre of the trade was London and artists from other parts of Britain, such as the Scottish
painter Allan Ramsay, needed to work there to sustain their practice.
Portrait sculpture grew in popularity from the 1730s, when the work of the French rococo
sculptor Louis-François Roubilliac became as successful as that of his painter colleagues. He made
busts of many of the great figures of the period, including Hogarth and the German composer
George Frideric Handel. In the 1770s, the Academician Joseph Nollekens became the dominant
portrait sculptor, creating a neo-classical style in keeping with the new taste of the time.
Thomas Rowlandson,
Exhibition Stare Case. Visitors to
the Royal Academy struggle up and
down the steeply curving staircase of
Somerset House, ca. 1811.

130

SOCIETY AND SATIRE
1720 – 1800
If gentlemen were lovers of painting, and connoisseurs, this would help to reform themselves, as their
example and influence would have the like effect on the common people. All animated beings naturally
covet pleasure, and eagerly pursue it as their chief good; the great affair is to chose those that are worthy
of rational beings, such as are not only innocent, but noble and excellent. Men of easy and plentiful
fortunes have commonly a great part of their time at their own disposal, and the want of knowing how
to pass those hours away, in virtuous amusements, contributes perhaps as much to the mischievous
effects of vice, as covetousness, pride, lust, love of wine, or any other passion whatsoever. If gentlemen
therefore found pleasure in pictures, drawings, prints, statues, intaglias, and the like curious works of
art; in discovering their beauties and defects; in making proper observations thereupon, and in all the
other pans of a connoisseur, how many hours of leisure would here be profitably employed, instead of
what is criminal, mischievios and scandalous! I confess I cannot speak experimentally, because I have
not tried those; nor can any man pronounce upon the pleasures of another; but I know what
I am recommending is so great a one that I cannot conceive the other can be equal to it, especially if the
drawbacks of fear, remorse, shame, expence & c to be taken into the account.
Second, our common people have been exceedingly improved, within an age or two by being taught
to read and write; they have also made great advances in mechanicks, and in several other arts and
sciences; and our gentry and clergy are more learned, and better reasoners than in times past; a further
improvement might yet be made, and particularly in the acts of design: If, as children are taught other
things, they together with these, learned to draw, they would not only be qualified to become better
painters, carvers and engravers, and to attain the like arts inmediately and evidently depending on
design, but they would thus become better mechanicks of all kinds.
And if to learn to draw, and to understand paintings and drawings were made a part of the education
of a gentleman, as their example would excite others to do the like, it cannot be denied but that this
would be a further improvement, even of this part of our people; the whole nation would, by these
means be removed some degrees higher into the rational state, and make a more considerable figure
amongst the polite nations of the world.
Jonathan Richardson, A Discourse on the Dignity, Certainty,

Pleasure and Advantage of the Science of a Connoisseur. London,
1715. (Quoted in Bernard Denvir, The Eighteenth Century:
Art, Design and Society 1689–1789. London and New York:
Longman, 1983, 70–71.)
The active mind is ever bent to be employed. Pursuing is the business of our lives, and even abstracted
from any other view gives pleasure. Every arising difficulty, that for a while attends and interrupts the
pursuit, gives a sort of spring to the mind, enhances the pleasure, and makes what else would be a toil
and labour become sport and recreation.
Wherein would consist the joys of hunting, shooting, fishing and many other favourite diversions,
without the frequent turns and difficulties and disappointments that are daily met with in the pursuit?
IX

How joyless does the sportsman return when the hare has not had fair play! how lively and in spirits,
even when an old cunning one has baffled and out-run the dogs!
This love of pursuit, merely as pursuit, is implanted in our natures, and designed, no doubt, for
necessary and useful purposes. Animals have it evidently by instinct. The hound dislikes the game he
so ardently pursues, and even cats will risk the losing of their prey to chase it over again. It is a pleasing
labour of the mind to solve the most difficult problems; allegories and riddles, trifling as they are, afford
the mind amusement, and with what delight does it follow the well-connected thread of a play or novel,
which ever increases as the plot thickens, and ends most pleased when that is distinctly unravelled.
The eye hath this sort of enjoyment in winding walks and serpentine rivers, and all sorts of objects,
whose forms are composed principally of what I call the waving and serpentine lines.
Intricacy in form therefore I shall define to be that peculiarity in the lines which compose it, that
leads the eye a wanton kind of chase, and from the pleasure that gives the mind entitles it to the name of
beautiful; and it may justly be said that the cause of the idea of grace more immediately resides in this
principle than in the other five, except variety, which indeed includes this and all the others.
William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty. London, 1753.

(Quoted in Bernard Denvir, The Eighteenth Century: Art,
Design and Society 1689–1789. London and New York:
Longman, 1983, 75–76.)
And accordingly in fact, Face-Painting is no where so well performed as in England: I know not whether
it has lain in your way to observe it, but I have, and pretend to be a tolerable Judge. I have seen what is
done Abroad, and can assure you that the Honour of that Branch of Painting is justly due to us. I appeal
to the judicious Observers for the Truth of what I assert. If Foreigners have oftentimes, or even for the
most part, excelled our Natives, it ought to be imputed to the Advantages they have met with here, join’d
to their own Ingenuity and Industry, nor has any one Nation distinguished themselves so as to raise
an Argument in favour of their Country; but ’tis to be observed, that neither French nor Italians, nor
any one of either Nation, notwithstanding all our Prejudices in their Favour, have, or ever had, for any
considerable time, any Character among us as Face-Painters.
This Honour is due to our own Country; and has been so for near an Age: So that instead of going
to Italy, or elsewhere, one that designs for Portrait Painting ought to Study in England. Hither such
should come from Holland, France, Italy, Germany, & c. as he that intends to Practices any other kinds
of Painting, should go to those Parts where ’tis in greatest Perfection. ’Tis said the Blessed Virgin
descended from Heaven to sit to St Luke; I dare venture to affirm, that if she should desire another
Madonna to be Painted by the Life, she would come to England; and am of Opinion that your present
President, Sir Godfrey Kneller, from his Improvement since he Arrived in this Kingdom, would perform
that Office better than any Foreigner living.
The Spectator, London, 6 December 1712. (Quoted in Bernard

Denvir, The Eighteenth Century: Art, Design and Society
1689–1789. London and New York: Longman, 1983, 119–20.)
And thus, after all, the most natural beauty in the world is honesty and moral truth. For all beauty is
Truth. True features make the beauty of a face, and true proportions of the beauty of architecture, as
true measures that of harmony and musick. In poetry, which is all fable, truth is the perfection. And

whoever is scholar enough to read the ancient philosopher, or his modern copyists, upon the nature of a
dramatick and epic poem, will easily understand this account of the truth.
A painter, if he has any genius, understands the truth and unity of design; and he knows he is even
then unnatural, when he follows nature too close, and strictly copies life. For his art allows him not to
bring all nature into his piece, but a part only. However, his piece, if it be beautiful, and carries truth,
must be a whole, by itself complete, independent, and withal as great and comprehensive as he can make
it. So that particulars, on this occasion, must yield to the general design; and all things be subservient
to that which is principal; in order to form a certain easiness of sight, a simple, clear and united view,
which would be broken by the expression of anything peculiar or distinct.
Now the variety of nature is such as to distinguish everything she forms by a peculiar, original
character, which, if strictly observed, will make the subject appear unlike to anything extant in the world
besides. But this effect the good poet and painter seek industriously to prevent. They hate minuteness,
and are afraid of singularity, which would make their images, or characters appear capricious and
fanatical. The mere face-painter, indeed, has little in common with the poet, but like the mere
historians, copies what he sees, and minutely traces every feature and odd mark. ’Tis otherwise with
the men of invention and design. ’Tis from the many objects of Nature, and not from a particular one
that these genius’s form the idea of their work. Thus, the best artists are said to have been indefatigable
in studying the best statues, as esteeming them a better rule than the most perfect human body could
afford … .
Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury,
Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times,
in Three Volumes. vol. 1. London, 1711. (Quoted in Bernard
Denvir, The Eighteenth Century: Art, Design and Society
1689–1789. London and New York: Longman, 1983, 123.)
As to the notion that a portrait-painter can, when called upon, paint history, and that he can, merely
from his acquaintance with the map of the face, travel with security over other regions of the body,
every part of which has a peculiar and different geography of its own; this would be too palpably
absurd to need any refutation. He may indeed, by reading and conversation, beg, borrow, collect or
steal opinions, and he may make out general theories; but even in the way of theory, what he mixes
of his own head will be at best loose and vague, as it cannot be confirmed by the result of his own
observation, from repeated and familiar practice. It is easy to collect eulogiums upon Michael Angelo
and the other great fathers of historical excellence; but we ought to be careful how we add to them. I
repeat this because of a wild opinion which has got into circulation, and must be attended with very
mischievous consequences should any young artist regulate his practice by it. The opinion is, that
the grand style, and an attention to exactness in the minuter parts of the body are incompatible; and
Michael Angelo is mistakenly held out as the example of a style of art consisting of all genius and soul,
and which was above attending to an exactness in the minutiae and detail of his figures. This is false,
both in the precept and the example. Michael Angelo is, of all men, one of the most remarkable for this
precision, and this attention to the detail, or smaller parts of his figures; there is actually more work,
and “making out” (as the artists call it) in one arm or leg executed by this great man, than is to be found
in two entire figures of these vague, slovenly theorists.
James Barry, Inquiry into the Real and Imaginary

Obstructions to the Acquisition of the Arts in England.
London, 1774. (Quoted in Bernard Denvir, The Eighteenth
Century: Art, Design and Society 1689–1789. London and
New York: Longman, 1983, 127.)
XI

131

PLATE 1
33 WILLIAM HOGARTH Moll Hackabout arrives in London as an innocent country girl hoping
(London, 1697–1764) for employment as a servant. However, she is waylaid by a (real-life)
procuress, Mother Needham, who intends leading her into a life of sin,
A Harlot’s Progress, 1732–33 in league with her accomplice, the notorious rapist Francis Charteris,
who fondles himself as he leers at Moll. Toppling buckets, a dead goose
Series of six engravings and an unaware priest on horseback looking at a letter of introduction
Etching and engravings on paper, each 322 x 392 mm to an important churchman, indicate the tragic ending of the story.
Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando.
Calcografía Nacional, Madrid PLATE 1I
Moll is now in the richly furnished town house, mistress of a wealthy
Hogarth’s fame rests on his satirical and moralising series such as A Jew. She is already debauched and her young lover is shown leaving
Harlot’s Progress and Marriage A-la-Mode (1745), which were visually the room as Moll kicks the table over to distract her keeper, who has
and symbolically complex narratives about contemporary British returned unexpectedly. His gesture refers to the Jew’s small manhood.
society. Mixing fact and fiction, they were best known through the The painting on the right shows Uzzah being stabbed in the back; on
prints etched and engraved by the artist after original paintings, which the left, Jonah represents Moll’s naive overestimation of her security.
Hogarth in effect used as advertisements for his print sales. Again, everything is toppling to the ground.
PLATE 1II
Cast out of her grand home, Moll is now a prostitute in a slum in
Covent Garden, an area full of brothels. She looks out at the viewer
holding a stolen watch, seemingly unaware that time is against her.
The black patches on her face and the bottles of medicine suggest
that she has syphilis, while the witches hat and birch on the wall show
the degrading games she has to play for her clients. A local Justice of
the Peace enters who, although obviously tempted sexually, will soon
arrest her.
PLATE IV
Moll is in Bridewell Prison and shown beating hemp rather than
clients, and is also being beaten by a warder for laziness. At the lower
right, a prostitute laughs at her and behind Moll another mocks her
fine clothing while winking at us. To her left, a bankrupt gambler also
beats hemp under a whipping post inscribed with the words “The
Wages of Idleness”.
PLATE V
Moll is back in her garret dying from syphilis and wrapped in blankets
suggesting a shroud. The two “quack” doctors argue over their
respective bogus cures, one of them the real-life Dr Richard Rock who
sold anti-venereal disease pills. Moll’s illegitimate son reaches for food
before the fire, emphasising the danger he will face in life.
PLATE VI
Moll lies dead in her coffin, aged twenty-three, surrounded by diseased
prostitutes. One on the right is touched by the undertaker, while she
steals his handkerchief; on the left, another is fondled by a parson who
symbolically spills his drink in excitement. Moll’s son is left alone
playing with a toy. As the prostitute on the left looks cynically out at us,
we realise that the characters are trapped in a vicious cycle.
132 SOCIETY AND SATIRE

34 LOUIS-FRANÇOIS ROUBILIAC
(Lyon, 1702– London, 1762)
Alexander Pope, 1741

Marble, 63.5 x 32.2 cm
Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead
Alexander Pope (1688–1744) was one of the major authors of the

early eighteenth century, best known for his satirical poetry such
as The Dunciad (1728), an attack on the British literary scene, and
his translations of Homer’s Iliad (1715–20) and Odyssey (1726). His
poems were written using heroic couplets. A brilliant classical scholar
and wit, he was born a Catholic, which prevented him from attending
university, and was self-taught. He was crippled by illness as a child
and suffered acute pain throughout his life, was hunch-backed and
only 1.37 metres tall. When Roubiliac made the model from the life for
this celebrated sculpture in 1738, Pope had nearly finished his writing
career and was only six years from his death at his villa in Twickenham,
where he had made a famous garden with an elaborately designed
grotto. This marble version, showing Pope with short hair and wearing
a robe in the classical style, is one of a number made variously in
terracotta, plaster and bronze. In 1741, Pope purchased busts of four
British authors, including John Milton, on behalf of his friend the
entrepreneur Ralph Allen, who installed them in the library at his new
Palladian villa at Prior Park, Bath.
Roubiliac was born in Lyon, France and moved to England around
1730 having converted to Protestantism. His first major commission
was from the proprietor of Vauxhall Gardens, Jonathan Tyers, for
a large sculpture in a relaxed rococo style of the composer George
Frideric Handel, which was placed in the centre of the Gardens in
1738 and was hugely popular. Roubiliac had a large studio with many
assistants off St Martin’s Lane, near Slaughter’s Coffee House, where
he mixed with prominent artists and writers. He produced busts of
famous contemporaries, such as William Hogarth, and from the later
1740s made numerous monuments, which can be found in churches
and cathedrals throughout Britain. He was highly regarded for his
naturalism and psychological insight and, with reference to his bust of
Pope, Joshua Reynolds wrote:
Roubiliac, the Statuary, who made a bust of him [Pope] from life,
observed that his countenance was that of a person who had been
much afflicted with headache, and he should have known the fact
from the contracted appearance of the skin above the eyebrows,
though he had not been otherwise apprised of it.
(James Prior, Life of Edmond Malone. London: Smith, Elder & Co.,
1860, 429.)

36 ARTHUR DEVIS 37 FRANCIS HAYMAN
(Preston, 1712– Brighton, 1787) (Exeter, 1708– London, 1776)
Mr and Mrs Hill, 1750–51 Jonathan Tyers and his daughter Elizabeth and
her husband John Wood, 1750–52
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven Oil on canvas, 99.1 x 86.4 cm
Yale Center for British Art. Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven
This is a fine example of the very distinctive work of Arthur

Devis, probably showing the eccentric Tory lawyer George Hill Jonathan Tyers (d. 1767) was a brilliant entrepreneur and impresario
(ca. 1716–1808) and his wife Anna Barbara (ca. 1720–1800) of best known as the proprietor from 1729 of Vauxhall Gardens, London’s
Northamptonshire in a fashionable but plain, almost bare, drawing most popular pleasure gardens throughout the eighteenth century.
room, which was perhaps an invention of the artist’s. Anna is seated This elegant outside group portrait was probably painted to celebrate
next to the elegant table on which afternoon tea is served, while his youngest daughter’s marriage. Tyers’ gesture towards the pug dog, a
the husband stands in front of the fireplace with its Italianate oval symbol of fidelity, and the sculpture on a plinth of a dolphin and putto
overmantel painting and large Chinese vase, his hand inside his with a dove, symbols of long life, love and peace, are all appropriate for
waistcoat. This and the position of his feet were the kind of pose a wedding portrait. The style is that of the popular French rococo, the
recommended at the time for correct etiquette. The seven delicately small figures and prominent landscape suggestive of Antoine Watteau’s
painted cups and saucers indicate that five guests are expected to fêtes galantes.
arrive shortly. Devis’ technique is almost like that of a miniaturist and Francis Hayman began his career as a scenery painter in the
creates a strangely airless and even surreal atmosphere. London theatres before turning to portrait painting and book
Devis was born in Preston in north-west England where he illustration. Influenced by the London-based French artist Hubert
established a highly successful practice producing “conversation Gravelot, Hayman designed an extensive series of decorative pictures
pieces”, group portraits of exquisite doll-like figures set in middle- of games and pastimes for the fifty-three supper boxes at Tyers’
class interiors or in the landscape. He moved to London in 1745 but Vauxhall Gardens, which show his background in theatrical painting.
by the 1760s his style was considered out of date by comparison Hayman was a friend and collaborator of William Hogarth with whom
with the work of younger artists such as Joshua Reynolds and Johan he was a founder-member of the St Martin’s Lane Academy in 1735,
Zoffany. a precursor of the Royal Academy.
135

36 ARTHUR DEVIS Mr and Mrs Hill, 1750–51

37 FRANCIS HAYMAN Jonathan Tyers and his daughter Elizabeth and her husband John Wood, 1750–52
137

35 ALLAN RAMSAY
(Edinburgh, 1713– Dover, 1784)
Flora Macdonald, 1749

The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Transferred from the Bodleian Library, 1960
Flora Macdonald (1722–90) was the daughter of a farmer in South

Uist, an island in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. She helped the
“Pretender” Prince Charles Edward Stuart to escape to Skye after
his defeat at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. From that date, the
Stuart dynasty lost any hope of returning to the throne in Britain.
This portrait was painted after Flora had been released from the
Tower of London and shortly before she married Allan Macdonald of
Kingsburgh in 1750, member of one of the major Scottish clans. She is
wearing a white rose in her hair, a Jacobite emblem, while the flowers
in her hand refer to her Christian name.
Allan Ramsay was born in Edinburgh, Scotland and with little
formal training moved to London, where he studied at the St Martin’s
Lane Academy, and then to Rome, in 1736, where he studied at the
French Academy, which accounts in some degree for his distinctive
technique and style. He returned to London in 1738 and was patronised
by the resident Scottish aristocracy, while also maintaining a studio
in Edinburgh. His work had a major influence on the young Joshua
Reynolds in the 1750s,but, in turn, he recognised the new direction
in Reynolds’ work and in 1754 returned to Rome to further study
Old Master painting and ancient art. He was a talented antiquarian
researcher and writer and also an ardent exponent of the abolition
of slavery. In 1761, he was appointed Principal Painter in Ordinary to
the new king, George III, concentrating on the many royal portraits
required to present to foreign dignitaries. He gave up painting in 1770
after dislocating his arm and focused on his literary pursuits.

139

38 ANTONIO CANALETTO of illicit sexual encounters and of prostitution. They provided one of
(Venice, 1697–1768) the first public exhibition spaces in London, where artists such as
William Hogarth and Francis Hayman displayed their work. The
Vauxhall Gardens: The Grand Walk, ca. 1751 French sculptor Louis-François Roubiliac’s large sculpture of Handel
presented the musical superstar of the age. Canaletto’s painting
Oil on canvas, 51 x 76 cm shows the orchestra building on the right and the supper boxes where
Compton Verney House Trust (Peter Moores Foundation) paintings were hung, which are on both sides of the tree-lined central
Grand Walk.
Vauxhall Gardens had been a popular destination for Londoners since The Venetian painter Canaletto worked in London from 1746 to
the late seventeenth century, but it was the entrepreneur Jonathan 1755 and painted panoramic views of the city. He had been influenced
Tyers [CAT. 37] who radically transformed it in the early 1730s into when in Rome by the veduti artist Giovanni Paolo Pannini and began
a fashionable resort where people of all classes mixed, taking boats painting his detailed views of the canals and palaces in Venice in the
from Westminster Pier in the evening in order to eat, drink, picnic, 1720s. He produced many pictures for English tourists and when the
promenade and listen to music by George Frideric Handel as well as War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48) disrupted this trade he
popular songs by British composers. The gardens were also the site moved to London.

39 JOHAN ZOFFANY 1770s wasting his time drinking and gambling (John Ingamells,
(Frankfurt-am-Main, 1733– Strand-on-the-Green, London, 1810) A Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy, 1701–1800.
New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997, 668).
The Sondes Children, 1760 Zoffany was born in Frankfurt, Germany, initially training as a
sculptor before turning to painting and settling in London in 1760.
Oil on canvas, 96.5 x 122 cm He quickly became a favourite painter of “conversation pieces” for
Collection James Saunders Watson the royal family. A founding member of the Royal Academy as well
as a prominent Freemason, Zoffany painted many scenes from the
The portrait shows the three sons of Lewis Monson-Watson and his popular drama of the day, featuring all the greatest actors such as
wife Grace [CAT. 40]. The eldest child walks forward with a cricket bat David Garrick. Later in his career, Zoffany painted highly complex
and holds up a ball to remind his brother that they should be playing. groups, among the most famous being The Tribuna of the Uffizi
The latter leans against a tree and helps the youngest boy, in infant’s (1772–77) and The Academicians of the Royal Academy (1771–72)
dress, to feed nuts to a pet squirrel. The boys are silhouetted against (p. 27). Zoffany also worked in India in the 1780s (p. 30). On his
the dark background, which contrasts with the light of the distant return to England, he was shipwrecked off the Andaman Islands
view along a winding river. A statue can be seen in the left background and was among those forced by starvation to eat a young sailor after
indicating that this is the family estate at Lees Court, Faversham in lots were drawn. He is so far the only Academician to have been
Kent. The eldest boy was later recorded on the Grand Tour in the a cannibal.
141

40 JOSHUA REYNOLDS
(Plympton, Devon, 1723– London, 1792)
Lady Sondes, 1764

Fundación Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid
The sitter is Grace Watson (née Pelham), Lady Sondes (ca. 1731–77),
wife of Lewis Monson-Watson who was created Baron Sondes in 1760.
Grace, a niece of the Duke of Newcastle, came from one of the most
powerful political dynasties in Britain. She is shown in a white muslin
dress, a pink ermine-lined cloak, pearl earrings and pearls in her hair.
She sat for the portrait in Reynolds’ studio on three occasions in May
and June 1764. In Lady Sondes’ plaited hair and dress there is an
oriental touch that was fashionable at the time. She was the mother of
the children shown in Johan Zoffany’s portrait [CAT. 39].
Reynolds’ portrait practice was immensely successful and works
such as this commanded prices of up to fifty guineas, while full-length
portraits would cost a hundred guineas. Through his portraits of the
most wealthy and powerful people in Britain and his presidency of
the Royal Academy, Reynolds was the dominant figure in British art
during his lifetime. His studio was a fashionable meeting place where
sitters arriving for their sessions were greeted by music, coffee and
gossip. As a theorist, Reynolds stressed the classical concept of a
Platonic ideal in art, which expressed itself in a generalisation of form
and a suppression of detail: “The art which we profess has beauty for
its object; this it is our duty to discover and express; but the beauty
of which we are in quest is general and intellectual; it is an idea that
subsists only in the mind; the sight never beheld it, nor has the hand
expressed it.” (“Discourse IX”, in Robert R. Wark, ed. Discourses on
Art. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1975, 171). William
Blake disagreed entirely with this and wrote in his annotations to
the “Discourses” that “this man was hired to depress art” (Geoffrey
Keynes, Blake: Complete Writings. London, Oxford, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1972, 445).

143

41 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
(Sudbury, Suffolk, 1727– London, 1788)
Sir Edward Turner, 1762

Wolverhampton Art Gallery
Edward Turner had recently come into a fortune and was painted
by Gainsborough in the artist’s painting room in his house in Abbey
Street, Bath, a fashionable spa town to which Gainsborough had
moved in 1759 and where he established a highly successful portrait
practice. Something of the absurdity of the city’s culture is evident in
Richard Graves’ comic novel, The Spiritual Quixote (1773), where men
such as Turner are lampooned for their dedication to the latest modes
and for their vanity. As with a number of portraits painted in the room,
a landscape is visible through the window rather than the city, which
was the actual view. Many of Gainsborough’s portraits emphasised a
natural setting, perhaps indicating both his own deep love of nature,
as opposed to society, as well as the tradition of such backdrops. The
sitter’s great pleasure in his recently acquired fortune is evident in
his extremely flamboyant attire and confident, relaxed pose. Turner’s
suit is made of grey French silk embellished with white, gold and
black brocading, all painted with the utmost care by Gainsborough.
A mezzotint of the painting was engraved by James McArdell at the
sitter’s request and no doubt it was made available to his friends and
others in polite society.
Having trained under Hubert-François Gravelot in London,
Gainsborough worked in Ipswich and London in the 1740s and 1750s,
before moving to Bath where he became the most popular society
portraitist of his generation. His delicate and lively brushwork,
sometimes created using a very long brush and manipulating the paint
with odd instruments such as spoons, was best viewed at a distance for
likeness and yet equally entranced viewers when viewed close-up. He
became bored with portraiture and devoted much of the final years of
his career to painting landscapes.

42 JOHN HAMILTON MORTIMER (1722–1803) is seated in the foreground apparently about to carve into
(Eastbourne, 1740– London, 1779) an oyster. Others may include the composer Thomas Arne (1710–78),
the painter Richard Wilson (1714–82) and the novelist Laurence
A Caricature Group, 1766 Sterne (1713–68). Such caricatures were painted by a number of artists,
including Joshua Reynolds who poked fun at the dissolute aristocrats
Oil on canvas, 83.8 x 106.7 cm that he saw on the Grand Tour in Italy.
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven Mortimer trained in the studio of the portrait painter Thomas
Hudson for three years from 1757, where he met Joseph Wright [CAT.
This painting may show members of the Howdalian Society, a drinking 58]. He was a brilliant draughtsman and decided to become a history
club started by an artillery officer, Captain Howdell, which met at painter, exhibiting work at the immediate forerunner to the Royal
Munday’s Coffee House in Covent Garden. The high-living Mortimer Academy, the Society of Artists, in the 1760s and 1770s. Mortimer was
was at one time President of the Society. Such groups were manifold elected President of the Society in 1774. His works included scenes
during the eighteenth century, meeting at taverns and coffee houses. from British history, from mythology and from the works of William
Absent members are represented by portraits on the walls. Only two Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser and Cervantes. The wild lifestyle
of the figures at this oyster supper can be identified with certainty: the that led to his early death was reflected in his fascination with the
artist is the figure seated on the far left and the sculptor Joseph Wilton fashionable banditti subject matter of some of his paintings.

43 JOHN-FRANCIS RIGAUD
(Turin, 1742– Coleshill, Warwickshire, 1810?)
Vincenzo Lunardi with his Assistant George Biggin,

and Mrs Letitia Anne Sage, in a Balloon, ca. 1785
Oil on copper plate, 36 x 31 cm
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
Vincenzo Lunardi (1759–1806) was an Italian who came to

England as secretary to the Neapolitan Ambassador. He was an
enthusiast for the new ballooning craze and made the first balloon
ascent in England in 1784 from an artillery field in London,
accompanied by a dog, cat and caged pigeon and watched by a huge
crowd, which included the Prince of Wales and many members of
the nobility. Rigaud’s painting on copper shows a second London
flight organised by Lunardi in 1785, which took off from St George’s
Fields in south London. His partner George Biggin and the actress
and society beauty Letitia Anne Sage are shown on the left. Lunardi
lifts his hat on the right, although in fact due to weight restrictions
he did not accompany his companions. The balloon fabric was an
enormous Union Jack. The two balloonists ate lunch in the air
and then landed in a field and were assaulted by an angry farmer
before being rescued by local schoolboys. Mrs Sage later published
her experience as Britain’s first female aeronaut. Rigaud painted
this work as the basis for a print intended to cash in on the public’s
fascination with the event.
Rigaud was born in Turin of French Huguenot descent. He
trained in Florence, Bologna and Rome before moving to Paris in
the company of his friend James Barry [CATS. 62, 63]. In 1771, he
settled in London where the art trade was booming and became
a successful painter of history paintings, portraits and decorative
schemes. He also contributed to John Boydell’s Shakespeare
Gallery in 1788 and was a member of the Royal Academy.
147

44 THOMAS ROWLANDSON Wales, can be seen in a blue coat mounted on a horse on the right of this
(London, 1756–1827) large watercolour. Certainly the Prince was a notorious gambler and
backed the Jewish boxer Daniel Mendoza in his successful fight against
The Prize Fight, 1787 Sam Martin on Barnet Common in 1787, the year this image was
painted by Rowlandson. As with many of Rowlandson’s pictures, the
Watercolour with pen in black and gray ink over graphite crowd is as important as the event being watched and horses rearing
on beige, laid paper, 460 x 695 mm and large groups falling to the ground in disarray provide much of the
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, interest. Peasants, thieves, soldiers, prostitutes, priests and members of
New Haven the middle and upper classes of both sexes, crowd in on the stage to get
a view of the action.
Rowlandson drew many popular outdoor activities, including Rowlandson was a brilliant watercolourist and cartoonist whose
ice skating, boxing, duelling, fox-hunting, horse racing, fairs and line has an extraordinary expressive fluency. Trained at the Royal
picturesque sketching tours [CAT. 81]. By the 1780s, boxing fights Academy, he was a friend of James Gillray but his own work was far
were patronised by wealthy aristocrats who trained and supported gentler in character. His engraving of members of the royal family
the pugilists and then betted on them. The famous soldier Prince among the crowds at Vauxhall Gardens was a huge success in 1784. He
William, the Duke of Cumberland, was one of the most enthusiastic produced many book illustrations, particularly for the Anglo-German
such patrons and is said to have lost £10,000 on one boxer, John “Jack” bookseller and publisher Rudolf Ackerman, as well as a large number
Broughton, in 1750. Such a patrician figure, perhaps the Prince of of erotic drawings.

45 THOMAS ROWLANDSON
(London, 1756–1827)
Exhibition Stare Case. Visitors to the Royal Academy

struggle up and down the steeply curving staircase
of Somerset House, ca. 1811
Hand-coloured etching, 484 x 317 mm
The British Museum, London
The Royal Academy at Somerset House on the Strand had

been built between 1776 and 1796 by the Scottish architect
William Chambers. It is a magnificent building but was
considered by many to be very impractical. The spiral
staircase leading up to the exhibition room was particularly
awkward and King George IV in his stout old age was unable
to attend the exhibitions because of it. The problems of
the staircase during the crowded viewings are abundantly
evident here as the visitors fall back down it. Women’s
legs, buttocks and more are displayed as they tumble, their
skirts revealing a lack of underwear. At the foot of the
stairs, two couples embrace inadvertently while lecherous
old men look on with delight, one using his spyglass to get
a closer look. The naked statue in the niche looks on in
amusement. The title puns on the word “stare”, meaning
to gaze fixedly or intently. The Academy exhibitions were
widely considered to be an opportunity for sexual as well as
aesthetic encounters.
149

46 JAMES GILLRAY 47 JAMES GILLRAY
(London, 1756–1815) (London, 1756–1815)
French Liberty. British Slavery. The Gout, 14 May 1799, 1799

A design in two compartments. 21 December 1792, 1792
Hand-coloured etching and aquatint, 260 x 355 mm
Hand-coloured etching, 247 x 350 mm The British Museum, London
Gillray creates a simple contrast. On the left, a starving and Gout, often known as “podagra” when it affects the big toe, is an
emaciated French “sans culotte”, a bowl of live snails on a table extremely painful inflammatory disease caused by high levels
behind him, eats raw onions and speaks of his gratitude for his of uric acid in the blood that crystallises in joints and tendons.
“liberté”, tax-free life and the “Assemblé Nationale”. In his stone- In the eighteenth century, gout was associated with the heavy
floored and decaying room, a map of French conquests hangs above alcohol consumption of wealthy men and known as “the rich
his fireplace in which a few faggots are burning. His toenails are man’s disease”.
grotesquely overgrown and his clothes are mere rags. On the right, Gillray represents the disease as a fantastic small demon who
a hugely corpulent and well-dressed Briton of the “John Bull” type sinks his teeth into the affected area of the metatarsal-phalangeal
eats an enormous piece of beef, the national meal, and drinks from joint, emitting flames and arrows while pushing his claws into
a frothing tankard of ale. He complains about the high taxes that the victim’s foot. His tail is poised to strike a final agonising blow.
he pays for the war against the French, and that the government is Gout usually strikes older men at night and Gillray shows the foot
making slaves of his fellow countrymen and starving them to death. resting on a mattress, attacked by the dark and nightmarish demon.
The floor is carpeted, the chair is sumptuous and on the wall is the Gillray’s art is full of references to the physical, psychological,
explanation for this comfort – the strength of “Britannia”, who ruled cultural and even political effects of food, from his skinny
the waves, and of the pound sterling. Frenchmen and fat Britons, to obscene scatological images of
Gillray was brought up as a Moravian (a religious sect) in London defecation and the horrors of the alleged cannibalism of the
and trained as a writing engraver, specialising in banknotes and French revolutionaries. The “fat” and the “thin” is a central
certificates. He entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1778 and dialectical trope of Gillray’s imagination as seen in French
studied engraving with Francesco Bartolozzi. By 1779, he was selling Liberty. British Slavery [CAT. 46].
his prints through the well-known publisher Hannah Humphrey and
during the 1780s, after attempting a more serious type of imagery,
developed his highly distinctive satirical style. In the 1790s, he was
living above Humphrey’s shop in Old Bond Street, the pair both
business partners and lovers. From 1797 until 1801, Gillray was paid
a £200 annual pension by William Pitt’s government for his satirical
contributions to The Anti-Jacobin journal. He died insane having
been nursed through his illness by Humphrey.

151

48 THOMAS LAWRENCE
(Bristol, 1769– London, 1830)
Miss Martha Carr, ca. 1789

Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
Martha Carr (b. 1757) was the daughter of William Carr, an Irish
gentleman who lived in Parson’s Green, London. Martha married the
Essex landowner Thomas Chinnall Porter in 1789 and it seems likely
from the sitter’s appearance as a young woman in her early thirties
that this portrait celebrates the match. The couple had two daughters.
Lawrence shows Martha seated in a chair with a landscape visible
through drawn curtains. She wears a black velvet choker around her
neck, which sets off her pale skin and white dress. The brushwork
is very lively and captures various brilliant light effects. Lawrence
had exhibited his first works at the Royal Academy two years before
this portrait was painted and was noticed immediately as the natural
successor to Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough.
Thomas Lawrence was a talented child artist who trained at the
Royal Academy Schools and became the leading portrait painter in
Britain after the death of Reynolds. Although, like Reynolds, a truly
“establishment figure” – he painted the royal family and other major
figures such as the Duke of Wellington, and was elected President of
the Royal Academy in 1820 – Lawrence was admired greatly across
Europe for his bravura skills and artists such as Eugène Delacroix
visited him in London. He took great care in the choice of dress and
surroundings for each portrait, often overriding the wishes of his
sitters to ensure the exact effect that he sought. Although he was
the most famous and successful portraitist in Europe at his death,
Lawrence had tortuous love affairs, never married and died in debt.

153

49 JOHN HOPPNER
(London, 1758–1810)
Anne Isabella Milbanke (later Lady Byron), ca. 1800

Ferens Art Gallery, Hull Museums
This charming and very poignant portrait was commissioned by the

girl’s father, Ralph Milbanke, when she was about eight years old.
Anne Isabella Milbanke (1792–1860), a highly gifted only child, was
born in County Durham. She was tutored by a Cambridge graduate,
William Frend, in classics, philosophy and mathematics, excelling in
particular in the latter subject – her future husband, the poet Lord
Byron, called her a “princess of parallelograms”. She met and was
pursued obsessively by Byron in 1812 and married him in 1815. Byron
was already a heavy drinker subject to violent mood swings and
although the couple soon produced an only child, Ada, he had already
begun an affair with a chorus girl. His wife kept a detailed account of
his behaviour and accused him of sodomising her, of incest with his
half-sister and of homosexuality. The couple were legally separated
in 1816 and Anne was haunted by the memory of her husband for the
rest of her life, praying for his soul while bringing up their daughter.
Ada became a brilliant mathematician and, through her close working
relationship with Charles Babbage, the inventor of “The Difference
Engine”, a calculating machine, a pioneer of the ideas that led to
computer programming. She became a prison reformer and strong
opponent of slavery.
John Hoppner was of German descent and a chorister at the Chapel
Royal where King George III noticed his drawing talent and encouraged
him to become a painter. By the 1790s, he was one of the leading
portrait painters in England and had developed a very successful
free colouristic style. Hoppner had a brilliant intellect, was a noted
conversationalist and translated a number of Arabic verse fables as
Oriental Tales in 1805. He travelled in Britain and France on sketching
tours and his landscape techniques influenced J.M.W. Turner.

50 JOSEPH NOLLEKENS
(London, 1737–1823)
Charles James Fox, ca. 1800

Marble, 72.7 x 52 x 30 cm
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
This is a version of Nollekens’ second marble bust of the Whig

statesman Charles James Fox (1749–1806). Nollekens made at least
two busts of Fox and this one was exhibited at the Royal Academy in
1802. Many replicas of both versions were produced and Catherine the
Great of Russia was said to have owned twelve of the earlier version
of 1791. Fox was the main rival of the Tory William Pitt the Younger.
During the American War of Independence (1774–1883), Fox became
very radical and anti-monarchical in his views, which he expressed in
brilliant speeches in Parliament. Believing in the liberty of individual
and religious conscience, he was strongly opposed to slavery and
supported the leaders of the French Revolution. An inveterate
traveller, Fox was attacked by opponents not only for his political
views but also for his womanising, gambling and love of everything
foreign. Fat and dishevelled in his later years, he was called by fellow
Whigs “The Eyebrow” because of the hairy eyebrows above his puffy
eyes. He is shown here in a Roman toga and without his wig.
Joseph Nollekens was the son of a painter and studied under the
London-based Flemish Roman Catholic sculptor Peter Scheemakers
as well as receiving drawing lessons from Michael Spang [CAT. 57].
He travelled in Italy in the 1760s before returning to London where he
became the most successful portrait and tomb sculptor of his times.
Nollekens was a founder-member of the Royal Academy in 1768.
His practice employed many assistants and was virtually a factory
in its operations, producing endless copies of his famous sitters’
neo-classical busts. Allegedly a miser, Nollekens left the astonishing
fortune of £200,000 in his will.

157

51 S I M O N G R I B E L I N (Paris or Blois, 1661–London, 1733) after the Spanish text was Lord Carteret’s in 1738. The British responded to
JOHN CLOSTERMAN (Hannover, 1660–London, 1711) the absurd humour and eccentricity of Cervantes’ (1547–1616), novel,
perhaps more so than did the Spanish.
Frontispiece in Anthony Ashley Cooper, Characteristicks John Vanderbank was of Dutch origin. He studied at Kneller’s
Academy from its opening in 1711 and started his own breakaway
of men, manners, opinions, times, 1711 (1723 edition), 78–79
art school in 1720. From the mid-1720s, he became a prolific book
Etching and engraving, 209 x 139 mm illustrator and in particular drew and painted many scenes from
University of Glasgow Library. Special Collections Don Quixote, purportedly some of which were made during a stay
in the Fleet debtors’ prison. Vanderbank’s illustrations, drawn in
Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713), was the 1720s, adorned Carteret’s edition in 1738 and Charles Jarvis’
educated as a child by the philosopher John Locke and was influenced translation of 1742. The latter carried sixty-eight plates engraved
by his ideas on freedom and by his deism. His Characteristicks is one by Gerard van der Gucht.
of the most important philosophical books of the eighteenth century
and had a considerable impact on writers such as Joshua Reynolds,
David Hume and the thinkers of the French Enlightenment.
Shaftesbury stressed the importance of honesty and the idea of
53 C H A R L E S G R I G N I O N (London, 1710–1810) after
beauty as truth. A balanced individual and society required a harmony
guided by innate good taste. The artist’s work should constitute F R A N C I S H A Y M A N (Exeter, 1708–London, 1776)
an independent wholeness derived from a prolonged study of art
that ordered the details of nature. The frontispiece is an engraving Frontispiece and title page in Robert Dodsley, ed. The
after John Closterman’s portrait of Shaftesbury, showing him as a Preceptor: Containing a General Course of Education Wherein
descendant of the great Greek philosophers and as a man of rank. the First Principles of Polite Learning are Laid Down …
The round title page image is a complex emblem concerning the light for … the Instruction of Youth. London, 1748, col. 1, vol. 2
of nature, the senses and a stoical concept of the mind.
Etching and engraving, 21,6 x 14 x 5 cm (overall)
The Preceptor, by playwright and publisher Robert Dodsley (1704–64),

52 G E R A R D V A N D E R G U C H T (London, 1696–1776) after
was first published in two volumes in 1748 and was one of the most
J O H N V A N D E R B A N K (London, 1694–1739)
popular of the numerous educational and “improving” manuals that
were widely read from the early eighteenth century. Many of the
“Membrino’s Helmet”, in Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, leading British artists illustrated a variety of books at the time. Samuel
The Life and Exploits of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote Johnson wrote the Preface to The Preceptor and also contributed a
de la Mancha. Translated from the original Spanish of Miguel short allegorical story. His biographer, James Boswell, described it as
Cervantes de Saavedra by Charles Jarvis, Esq. 2 vols. London: “one of the most valuable books for the improvement of young minds”.
J. and R. Tonson and R. Dodsley, 1742, vol. 1, 108–09 It comprised twelve chapters on various arts and sciences and other
areas of learning, including Chapter VI “On Drawing”, which carried
Etching and engraving, 29 x 25 x 6 cm (overall)
drawings by Francis Hayman [CAT. 37], illustrating the passions, that
Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid
were engraved by Charles Grignion. Quotes from the French academic
theorists Charles Le Brun and Roger de Piles explained the “Motions
Don Quixote, published in Spain in 1605, had a huge impact in Britain of the Soul” (vol. 1, 408) behind the faces depicted. Hayman also
from the time it was translated into English in 1612. The English designed the frontispieces to each volume. Here, as the accompanying
translation was the first complete one from Spanish; the first foreign verse explains, Youth is shown being lured by Pleasure into her “soft
reference to the novel was in Britain in George Wilkins’ play The courts” where she is corrupted by Disease and Remorse and driven
Miseries of Enforced Marriage (1606); and the first critical edition of into Infamy’s “dread cave”.
158 SOCIEDAD Y SÁTIRA

51 52
53
159

54 C H A R L E S G R I G N I O N (London, 1710–1810) after 55 WILLIAM HOGARTH
S A M U E L W A L E ( Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, 1721–London, 1786) (London, 1697–1764)
Analysis of Beauty, 1753, plate I

The Foundling Hospital, Holborn, London: a Perspective View
Etching and engraving, 391 x 499 mm
Looking North-east at the main Building, with Penitent Mothers Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando.
Arriving beside a Statue of Fortune, 1749 Calcografía Nacional, Madrid
Etching and engraving, 372 x 485 mm

Wellcome Library, London Hogarth’s Analysis of Beauty is the first major aesthetic statement
by a British artist and was influential on Continental theories of art
The Foundling Hospital was founded in 1741 by the sailor and in the eighteenth century. Its main ideas were that the artist should
philanthropist Captain Thomas Coram. It cared for children brought work from nature; should capture the dynamism of contemporary life
in by destitute women and trained them for adult life, the boys often by developing his memory; and should employ what Hogarth called
for service at sea, and the girls usually for domestic work. Many artists the “serpentine line”, to express the innate complexity and beauty
such as the childless William Hogarth, who designed the children’s of the natural world. This plate shows a London sculptor’s yard with
uniforms visible in this engraving and fostered some of the children, variously correct and incorrect forms of the “line of beauty”. Around
were Governors and the hospital became one of the first public venues the design are further examples of the line, from being too slack to
for the display of contemporary British art. While a complementary being too taut. Hogarth’s concepts were also linked to concerns about
print shows fashionable “patrons kind and great” watching happy polite behaviour.
children dancing, this one engraved after Samuel Wale has penitent
mothers arriving near a statue of Fortune. The final lines of the verses
below the image read:
See where the Pious Guardians Publick Care

Protects the Babe and calms the Mothers Fear
Inspired by Bounty, raises blest Retreats
Which Fortune dooms, but Charity compleats.

54
55
161

162 PAISAJES DE LA MENTE

LANDSCAPES OF THE MIND
1760–1850
The early development of British landscape art was influenced greatly by the aristocratic taste RICHARD WILSON
for the classical work of the seventeenth-century French painter Claude Lorraine. The Welsh MICHAEL HENRY SPANG
artist Richard Wilson travelled to Italy in the 1750s to study the Campagna region near Rome and
JOSEPH WRIGHT OF DERBY
returned to Britain where he painted canvases in a Claudian style of both Italian scenery and that
GEORGE STUBBS
of England and Wales.
By the late eighteenth century, new forms of landscape became popular. Edmund Burke’s THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
Philosophical Enquiry published in 1757 had drawn an aesthetic distinction between the “beautiful” THOMAS BANKS
and the “sublime”, the latter being an experience of the power of nature that overwhelms the JAMES BARRY
viewer. While such ideas influenced artists such as J.M.W. Turner and John Martin, others turned
THOMAS GIRTIN
to the “picturesque” landscape popular with the growing numbers of tourists sightseeing in Britain.
Watercolour painters such as John Sell Cotman and John Crome focused on the rough textures of WILLIAM BLAKE
trees, crumbling buildings and the varied forms of clouds to create a gentle and reassuring rural world. JOHN SELL COTMAN
Thomas Gainsborough’s late landscape paintings can be described as “picturesque”, but so also can JOHN CROME
those of the Romantic artist Samuel Palmer, who invested his pastoral scenes with a deep spirituality.
HENRY FUSELI
There was a strong scientific tendency in late eighteenth-century art. George Stubbs’ famous
J.M.W. TURNER
paintings of horses were based on his equine dissections for the Anatomy of the Horse (1766) and
his compositions have a strong geometrical and classical structure. Joseph Wright of Derby was one JOHN CONSTABLE
of the few painters to create images of the Industrial Revolution and of the scientific advances of SAMUEL PALMER
the age, and many of his works employ a distinctive chiaroscuro that reveals a fascination with the JOHN MARTIN
dramatic effects of artificial lighting.
JOHN RUSKIN
Opponents of the Royal Academy and establishment taste were often committed to the idea
FRANÇOIS VIVARES
of history painting and to its display in public buildings. The most outspoken radical was the
republican Irish artist James Barry, who was expelled from the Academy during the Napoleonic WARRE BAMPFYLDE
Wars. Barry’s supporter William Blake held similar opinions, although he was more interested in JAMES FITTLER
spiritual matters as his many biblical images show. In the case of Henry Fuseli, we find a polymathic GEORGE ROBERTSON
foreign artist who proclaimed himself a republican in politics but a conservative in art. Like Barry
ALEXANDER COZENS
and many other artists, Fuseli produced large paintings for John Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery in
Pall Mall, which were made popular through engravings. WILLIAM GILPIN
The neo-classical sculptor Thomas Banks, a friend of Fuseli, who carved a huge relief sculpture THOMAS ROWLANDSON
of Shakespeare with the allegorical figures of Painting and Poetry for Boydell’s gallery, also made DAVID LUCAS
powerful carvings using the naked human form and inspired by classical literature. Another
JOHN FLAXMAN
prominent neo-classicist was the sculptor and draughtsman John Flaxman, perhaps best known
JOAQUÍN PI Y MARGALL
now for his remarkable line engravings for editions of Homer and Dante. During his lifetime,
however, his designs for the jade and basalt ware made by Josiah Wedgwood’s Midlands’ pottery BENJAMIN SMITH
company found their way into households across Europe. GEORGE ROMNEY
John Martin,
Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still
upon Gibeon, 1848.

164

LANDSCAPES
OF THE MIND
1760 – 1850
Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort
terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source
of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling. I
say the strongest emotion, because I am satisfied the ideas of pain are much more powerful than those
which enter on the part of pleasure. Without all doubt, the torments which we may be made to suffer, are
much greater in their effect on the body and mind, than any pleasures which the most learned voluptuary
could suggest, or than the liveliest imagination, and the most sound and exquisitely sensible body could
enjoy. Nay I am in great doubt, whether any man could be found who would earn a life of the most
perfect satisfaction, at the price of ending it in the torments, which justice inflicted in a few hours on the
late unfortunate regicide in France. But as pain is stronger in its operation than pleasure, so death is in
general a much more affecting idea than pain; because there are very few pains, however exquisite, which
are not preferred to death; nay, what generally makes pain itself, if I may say so, more painful, is, that it is
considered as an emissary of this king of terrors. When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable
of giving any delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they
may be, and they are delightful, as we every day experience.
The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is
Astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with
some degree of horror. In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain
any other, nor by consequence, reason on that object which employs it. Hence arises the great power of
the sublime, that far from being produced by them, it anticipates our reasonings, and hurries us on by
an irresistible force. Astonishment, as I have said, is the effect of the sublime in its highest degree; the
inferior effects are admiration, reverence and respect.
Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of

our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful. London, 1757.
(Quoted in Charles Harrison, Paul Wood and Jason Gaiger,
eds. Art in Theory, 1648–1815: An Anthology of Changing
Ideas. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000, 516–17.)
I conceive, that this method al blotting may be found to be considerable improvement to the arts of
design in general; for the idea or conception of any subject, in any branch of the art, may be first formed
into a blot. Even the historical, which is the noblest branch of painting, may be assisted by it; because it
is the speediest and the surest means of fixing a rude whole of the most transient and complicated image
of any subject in the painter’s mind.
There is a singular advantage peculiar to this method; which is, that from the rudeness and
uncertainty of the shapes made in blotting, one artificial blot will suggest different ideas to different
persons; on which account it has the strongest tendency to enlarge the powers of invention, being more
effectual to that purpose than the study of nature herself alone. For instance, suppose any number of
persons were to draw some particular view from a real spot; nature is so precise, that they must produce
XIII

nearly the same ideas in their drawings; but if they were one after the other, to make out a drawing from
one and the same blot, the parts of it being extremely vague and indeterminate, they would each of them,
according to their different ideas, produce a different picture. One and the same designer likewise may
make a different drawing from the same blot; as will appear from the three several landscapes taken from
the same blot, which are given in the four last plates or examples.
To the practitioner in landscape it may be farther observed, that in finishing a drawing from a
blot, the following circumstance will occur, viz. in compositions where there are a number of grounds
or degrees of distance, several of them will be expected in the sketch by little more than tracing the
masses that are in that blot, the last ground of all perhaps requiring only an outline: for the greatest
precision of forms will be necessary in the first or nearest ground; in the next ground the precision
will be less and so on.
Alexander Cozens, A New Method of Assisting the Invention

in drawing original Compositions of Landscape. London,
1785. (Quoted in Bernard Denvir, The Eighteenth Century:
Art, Design and Society 1689–1789. London and New York:
Longman, 1983, 262–63.)
It is not easy to define in what this great style consists; nor to describe, by words, the proper means of
acquiring it, if the mind of the Student should be at all capable of such an acquisition. Could we teach
taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius. But though there neither are, nor can
be, any precise invariable rules for the exercise, or the acquisition of these great qualities, yet we may
truly say, that they always operate in proportion to our attention in observing the works of nature, to
our skill in selecting, and to our care in digesting, methodizing, and comparing our observations. There
are many beauties in our art, that seem, at first, to lie without the reach of precept, and yet may easily be
reduced to practical principles. Experience is all in all; but it is not every one who profits by experience;
and most people err, not so much from want of capacity to find their
object, as from not knowing what object to pursue. This great ideal perfection and beauty are not to be
sought in the heavens, but upon the earth. They are about us, and upon every side of us. But the power of
discovering what is deformed in nature, or in other words, what is particular and uncommon, can
be acquired only by experience; and the whole beauty and grandeur of the art consists, in my opinion, in
being able to get above all singular forms, local customs, particularities, and details of every kind.
All the objects which are exhibited to our view by nature, upon close examination will be found to
have their blemishes and defects. The most beautiful forms have something about them like weakness,
minuteness, or imperfection. But it is not every eye that perceives these blemishes. It must be an eye
long used to the contemplation and comparison of these forms; and which by a long habit of observing
what any set of objects of the same kind have in common, has acquired the power of discerning what
each wants in particular. This long laborious comparison should be the first study of the painter, who
aims at the greatest style. By this means, he acquires a just idea of beautiful forms; he corrects nature
by herself, her imperfect state by her more perfect. His eye being enabled to distinguish the accidental
deficiencies, excrescences, and deformities of things, from their general figures, he makes out an
abstract idea of their forms more perfect than any one original; and what may seem a paradox, he learns
to design naturally by drawing his figures unlike to any one object. This idea of the perfect state of
nature, which the Artist calls the Ideal Beauty, is the great leading principle by which works of genius
are conducted. […]
Joshua Reynolds, Discourse III (14 December 1770), in

Discourses on Art. London, 1791. (Quoted in Charles
Harrison, Paul Wood and Jason Gaiger, eds. Art in Theory,
1648–1815: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Oxford:
Blackwell, 2000, 653.)
XIV

Hampstead, October 23rd, 1821
… My dear Fisher, I am most anxious to get into my London painting-room, for I do not consider myself
at work unless I am before a six-foot canvass. I have done a good deal of skying, for I am determined
to conquer all difficulties, and that among the rest. And now talking of skies, it is amusing to us to see
how admirably you fight my battles; you certainly take the best possible ground for getting your friend
out of a scrape (the example of the old masters). That landscape painter who does not make his skies
a very material part of his composition, neglects to avail himself of one of his greatest aids. Sir Joshua
Reynolds, speaking of the landscapes of Titian, of Salvator, and of Claude, says: “Even their skies seem
to sympathize with their subjects”. I have often been advised to consider my sky as “a white sheet thrown
behind the objects”. Certainly, if the sky is obtrusive, as mine are, it is bad; but if it is evaded, as mine are
not, it is worse; it must and always shall with me make an effectual part of the composition. It will be
difficult to name a class of landscape in which the sky is not the key note, the standard of scale, and the
chief organ of sentiment. You may conceive, then, what a “white sheet” would do for me, impressed as I
am with these notions, and they cannot be erroneous. The sky is the force of light in nature, and governs
everything; even our common observations on the weather of every day are altogether suggested by it.
The difficulty of skies in painting is very great, both as to composition and execution; because, with all
their brilliancy, they ought not to come forward, or, indeed, be hardly thought of any more than extreme
distances are; but this does not apply to phenomena or accidental effects of sky, because they always
attract particularly. I may say all this to you, though you do not want to be told that I know very well
what I am about, and that my skies have not been neglected, though they have often failed in execution,
no doubt, from an over-anxiety about them, which will alone destroy that easy appearance which nature
always has in all her movements.
John Constable, letter to John Fisher, 23 October 1821.
eds. Art in Theory, 1815–1900: An Anthology of Changing Ideas.
Oxford: Blackwell, 1998, 118.)
Pure as Italian air, calm, beautiful and serene springs forward the works and with them the name of
Claude Lorrain. The golden orient or the amber-coloured ether, the midday ethereal vault and fleecy
skies, resplendent valleys, campagnas rich with all the cheerful blush of fertilization, trees possessing
every hue and tone of summer’s evident heat, rich, harmonious, true and clear, replete with all the aerial
qualities of distance, aerial lights, aerial colour, where through all these comprehensive qualities and
powers can we find a clue towards his mode of practice? As beauty is not beauty until defin’d or science
science until reveal’d, we must consider how he could have attained such powers but by continual study
of parts of nature. Parts, for, had he not so studied, we should have found him sooner pleased with simple
subjects of nature, and [would] not [have], as we now have, pictures made up of bits, but pictures of bits.
Thus may be traced his mode of composition, namely, all he could bring in that appear’d beautifully
dispos’d to suit either the side scene or the large trees in the centre kind of composition. Thus his
buildings, though strictly classical and truly drawn from the Campo Vaccino and Tivoli, are so disposed
of as to carry with them the air of composition.
But in no country as in England can the merits of Claude be so justly appreciated, for the choicest of
his work are with us, and may they always remain with us in this country. […]
J.M.W. Turner, Backgrounds, Introduction of Architecture

and Landscape, lectures delivered at the Royal Academy,
London, 1811–28. (Quoted in Charles Harrison, Paul Wood and
Jason Gaiger, eds. Art in Theory, 1648–1815: An Anthology of
Changing Ideas. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000, 1093.)
XV

I speak of Spiritual Things, Not of Natural, Of Things known only to Myself & to Spirits Good & Evil,
but Not Known to Men on Earth. It is the passage thro these Three Years that has brought me into my
Present State, & I know that if I had not been with You I must have Perish’d. Those Dangers are now
Passed & I can see them beneath my feet. It will not be long before I shall be able to present the full
history of my Spiritual Sufferings to the Dwellers upon Earth, & of the Spiritual Victories obtaind for
me by my Friends – Excuse this Effusion of the Spirit from One who cares little for this World which
passes away, whose Happiness is Secure in Jesus our Lord, & who looks for Sufferings til the time of
complete deliverance. In the mean While, I am kept Happy as I used to be, because I throw Myself &
all that I have on our Saviours Divine Providence. O What Wonders are the Children of Men! Would to
God that they would Consider it, That they would Consider their Spiritual Life Regardless of that faint
Shadow Calld Natural Life, & that they would Promote Each others Spiritual Labours, Each according
to its Rank & that they would Know that Receiving a Prophet As a Prophet is a Duty which If omitted
is more Severely Avenged than Every Sin & Wickedness beside. It is the Greatest of Crimes to Depress
True Art & Science. I know that those who are dead from the Earth & who mockd & despised the
Meekness of True Art (and such I find have been the situations of our Beautiful Affectionate Ballads),
I Know that such Mockers are Most Severely Punished in Eternity. I know it for I see it & dare not help.
– The Mocker of Art is the Mocker of Jesus. Let us go on Dear Sir following his Cross; let us take it up
daily Persisting in Spiritual Labours & the Use of that Talent which it is Death to Bury, & of that Spirit
to Which we are Called […]
William Blake, letter to William Hayley, 11 December 1805.

XVI

165

56 RICHARD WILSON Richard Wilson was a Welsh artist who trained as a portrait
(Penegoes, Montgomeryshire, 1713– Colomendy, Denbighshire, 1782) painter before his trip to Italy, which turned him towards landscape.
He became immensely popular with the wealthy aristocrats on
Ruin in a Clearing, 1753 their Grand Tours and on his return to Britain increasingly painted
the British, and often specifically Welsh, landscape in an Italianate
Oil on canvas, 122.1 x 172 cm manner. He used the many drawing studies that he had made in and
Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums Collections around Rome to create a large body of poetic and ideal landscapes.
Wilson’s ordered universe embodied an ideal of taste and morality well
This work was painted during Wilson’s stay in Italy from 1750 to expressed in this passage from The Royal Magazine:
1757. Typically, Wilson’s paintings present a view towards a subtly
painted distant horizon seen beyond foreground figures and fragments Good taste is an habitual love of order, and influences the manners
of classical sculpture and architecture, framing groups of trees and as well as the several productions of genius. A symmetry of parts
perhaps a large plain or lake in the middle distance. The effect is between themselves, and with the whole, is as necessary to the
one of a deliberately controlled and calm beauty. This was a formula conduct of moral action, as to a piece of painting.
that he developed from his study of the work of the French classical (Anon., ‘On the importance of forming the mind early and the
painter Claude Lorraine. However, some of his paintings are set in methods necessary to be taken’, The Royal Magazine, vol. III
woods, as here where the rustic figures and stone fragments are made (November 1760): 233.)
more prominent and the enclosed space suggests a more mysterious
narrative. Wilson’s aim was to stage landscape settings full of quiet Considered to be the “father” of British landscape painting, Wilson’s
reverie in which the viewer is invited to enter into contemplation art was hugely influential on younger generations of artists, including
of an ordered and spiritually resonant world. J.M.W. Turner [CATS. 70, 73].
166 LANDSCAPES OF THE MIND

57 MICHAEL HENRY SPANG
(fl. ca. 1750– London, d. 1762)
Anatomical figure, ca. 1761

Bronze, 25.3 cm height
At the heart of academic training was the study of the human body,
first from drawings and casts and then from the live model. Anatomical
figures such as this, highlighting the muscles of the human body, had
been used to teach both medical and art students since the sixteenth
century. This well-known and widely used example was probably cast
in bronze from a wax model by the Anglo-Danish sculptor Michael
Henry Spang, after a plaster cast of the flayed body of an executed
criminal. The body is curved to the right, the right arm is raised and
the left leg is bent and rests on a stump, exposing as much of the
musculature as possible.
The wax model is still in the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow. The
large cast was used by William Hunter, Professor of Anatomy, for his
lectures at the Royal Academy (p. 26). Small models such as this could
be moved around easily, some artists taking them abroad on their
travels. The sculptor Edward Burch was awarded a premium for a
bronze Cast of an anatomy figure, after Spang at the Society of Arts in
1767. Burch was a gem-engraver, medallist and sculptor, and was the
Librarian at the Royal Academy from 1794 to 1812.
167

58 JOSEPH WRIGHT OF DERBY
(Derby, 1734–97)
Academy by Lamplight, 1770

In a dark vaulted room, six boys of various ages surround a copy

of 1685–86 by Charles Antoine Coysevox of the famous classical
sculpture, Nymph with a Shell, the original of which was then in the
Villa Borghese in Rome and which is now in the Louvre, Paris. Looking
or drawing, the young students are lit by a hanging lamp concealed by
a curtain. In the background is a cast of another well-known ancient
sculpture, The Gladiator, the muscular male torso contrasting with the
gentle curves of the female figure. In the centre, the eldest boy rests his
left hand on the plinth, perhaps about to speak as he looks out to our
left. The scene, a rather mysterious and timeless “conversation piece”,
is based on an unidentified art academy and suggests a fascination with
the chiaroscuro produced by lamplight, education and the illumination
of aesthetic and spiritual revelation through study. The boys’ focus on
the nude sculpture has a muted erotic undercurrent, their curiosity
only in part prompted by their purely artistic gaze.
Joseph Wright was born in Derby, in the rapidly industrialising
Midlands, where he was associated with various intellectual and
artistic figures deeply interested in science and modern life. Although
trained as a portrait painter in London and having studied classical
and Renaissance culture in Italy, he is best known for his scenes of
scientific experiments, industrial enterprise and literary subjects
drawn from both classic and modern authors. He was concerned
particularly with representing the complex effects of both natural and
artificial light and created various devices to assist him in achieving
his uniquely powerful results. His uneasy relationship with the Royal
Academy and life beyond the metropolis meant that he was one of the
great outsiders of his time in British art.

59 GEORGE STUBBS sixteenth century. Stubbs seems to have painted the figures from life
(Liverpool, 1724– London, 1806) and has created a fresh and natural plein air quality. It has often been
pointed out that the workers seem unusually smartly dressed and show
The Haymakers, 1783 few signs of the fatigue and dirt that would be expected in harvesting.
However, although the frieze-like classical composition invokes
Oil and enamel on oak panel, 91.8 x 139 cm a sense of order, the scene is presented directly and realistically,
Upton House, The Bearsted Collection (The National Trust) eschewing the bucolic sentimentality adopted by many artists for
such subjects.
This oil on wood panel depicts four agricultural labourers gathering George Stubbs was born in Liverpool, studied anatomy and made
hay onto a wagon at an unidentified location. It forms a pair with an his name as a painter of horses [CAT. 76]. He travelled in Italy in the
identically sized panel showing four workers and an estate manager on 1750s and developed a strong neo-classical style, which he used to
a horse reaping hay and was one of seven known harvesting scenes that paint equestrian subjects for a wide range of aristocratic patrons.
Stubbs produced, three of which were painted in enamel on large oval However, Stubbs was also a successful painter of other animals,
Wedgwood ceramic tablets. The harvest had been a popular subject including dogs and exotic creatures such as the rhinoceros and lion. He
in art since medieval books of hours had established an iconography painted many portraits and had a particular interest in the working life
developed by artists such as Pieter Breughel and others during the of country people as is shown by The Haymakers.

61 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH the woman with the broom, the husbandry of the shepherd and the
(Sudbury, Suffolk, 1727– London, 1788) nurturing role of motherhood seen in the woman cradling a baby. The
three pigs suggest a world of basic, natural needs. The composition
Cottage Door with Girl and Pigs, 1786 owes more to Claude Lorraine than most of Gainsborough’s
landscapes, which were generally indebted to Dutch and Flemish
Oil on canvas, 98 x 124 cm painting. Many of Gainsborough’s landscapes were inspired by small
Colchester and Ipswich Museums Service models of twigs, grass and other materials, which he made to stimulate
his imagination in his candle-lit London studio.
The Morning Herald reported on 24 May 1786 that “Mr. Gainsborough Gainsborough was trained by the French engraver Hubert-
is, at this time, engaged upon a beautiful landscape, in the foreground François Gravelot in London, where he knew artists such as Francis
of which the trio of pigs, that are so highly celebrated by the Hayman and William Hogarth. He practised as a portrait painter in
connoisseurs, are introduced; together with the little girl, and several the West End and also worked on the decoration of the new Foundling
other rustic figures” (quoted in Gainsborough. Eds. Michael Rosenthal Hospital in 1748 [CAT. 54]. Gainsborough returned to his native
and Martin Myrone. Exh. cat. Tate Britain, London. London: Tate county of Suffolk in East Anglia to paint portraits and also landscapes
Publishing, 2002, 226). This painting is typical of the rustic scenes that in the Dutch style. In 1759, he settled in the fashionable spa town
Gainsborough produced in the final decade of his life. He frequently of Bath, where he was much in demand as a portraitist. A founder
painted images of the rural poor and brought urchins into his London member of the Royal Academy in 1768, Gainsborough grew tired of
studio to model for him. The figures near the simple thatched cottage portraits and turned increasingly to landscape.
represent different aspects of country life: the domestic work of
171

60 THOMAS BANKS
(London, 1735–1805)
The Falling Titan, 1786

Marble, 84.5 x 90.2 x 58.4 cm
Royal Academy of Arts, London
The Titans were giant deities descended from Uranus and Gaia
and included among their number Cronos, Hyperion, Phoebe and
Prometheus. They were cast from the heavens by a younger race of
gods, the Olympians, after a ten-year war or “Titanomachy”. Some
ancient versions of the myth attribute the origins of humans to the
aftermath of the war, the body being derived from the remains of
Titans and the soul from a divine source. The version of the myth
best known in the eighteenth century was that of Hesiod in his
narrative poem Theogony (8th to 7th century BC). Promethean
themes were common in Romantic art and literature and are
closely linked to those of John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) with
its rebellious Satan expelled from Heaven. In this marble sculpture,
presented by Banks as a Diploma work to the Royal Academy,
a struggling Titan is shown falling through tumbling rocks, his
immense size contrasted with a tiny satyr and goat attempting to
escape. He had tried to return to Olympus and overthrow Jupiter by
piling up enormous boulders.
Thomas Banks, who was first trained as a wood carver, travelled
to Rome in 1772 on a scholarship from the Royal Academy. Although
his living was made predominantly through portrait busts and
funeral monuments – there are a number of examples of the latter in
St Paul’s Cathedral – his passion was for classical art and literature.

173

62 JAMES BARRY 63 JAMES BARRY
(Cork, 1741– London, 1806) (Cork, 1741– London, 1806)
Satan and his Legions Hurling Defiance Satan, Sin and Death, 1792–95
Toward the Vault of Heaven, 1792–95
Etching, 746 x 504 mm The British Museum, London
The subject is taken from John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost The subject is taken from Paradise Lost (1667), Book II, lines 648–726.
(1667). Satan rallies his forces to hurl defiance at God after his rout Satan, attempting to pass up to Heaven, is shown standing at the gates
by God, with Azazel unfurling their banner. Barry’s engraving draws of Hell with a raised spear and sword and with his back to the viewer,
on two passages in Book I, the first from lines 531–49 and the second confronting Death, a skeleton in a dark winding sheet on the left, and
from lines 663–69. He adapts this famous scene, which Edmund Burke Sin, a woman with naked breasts, who has the key to Hell’s gate around
referred to in his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), in a her waist and hellish hounds emerging from her womb. Sin, unable to
unique way. The angels wave not “flaming swords” but spears; the light control her constantly shifting shape, attempts to separate Satan and
is not a “sudden blaze” from the swords, but comes from the fires of Death who are, respectively, her father and son. Sin was born directly
Hell below, emphasising the power of Satan with his Michelangelo- out of Satan’s lustful thoughts of power at his rebellious assembly in
esque physique and pent-up aggression. Satan stands head and Heaven and was then raped by him, leading, ironically, to Death’s birth.
shoulders above the surrounding angels, with flaming hair sweeping The three are finally united in their hatred of Heaven. Hogarth had
back and wearing a crown: painted the same subject in the 1730s, an image used by Gillray and,
in turn, perhaps, adapted here by Barry, showing the episode’s strong
He, above the rest hold on the artistic imagination.
In shape and gesture proudly eminent, Artists responded to John Milton’s texts in many different ways.
Stood like a tower. Barry’s plan differed from that of many earlier illustrators of Paradise
(Book I, lines 589–91)
Lost in that he did not choose simply one scene from each book: for
instance, he made four illustrations for Book II but none for Book III.
The Irishman Barry was among many artists and writers of the Henry Fuseli’s aim for his failed Milton Gallery project in 1799 was
Romantic period, from William Blake and Henry Fuseli to John to organise the pictures so that they created their own inter-textual
Martin and Percy Bysshe Shelley, who were obsessed with Milton’s relationships. By the end of the eighteenth century, Paradise Lost had
Paradise Lost. Over one hundred editions of the poem were published become the supreme exemplary literary expression of the aesthetic of
in the eighteenth century, many of them illustrated. In particular, the sublime, first theorised in detail by Edmund Burke.
they were fascinated by the figure of Satan, whose energy, courage
and defiance of authority embodied their own rebellious creativity
and political ideals. Blake famously said of Milton that he was “a true
Poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it” (William Blake,
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, in Geoffrey Keynes, ed. The
Complete Writings of William Blake. London: Oxford University
Press, 1966, 149–50).

175

64 THOMAS GIRTIN
(London, 1775–1802)
Bamburgh Castle, Northumberland, ca. 1797–99

Watercolour, gouache and pencil on paper, 549 x 451 mm
Tate: Presented by A.E. Anderson in memory of his brother
Frank through the Art Fund 1928
The medieval Bamburgh Castle lies on the coast of Northumbria

and is one of the largest inhabited fortifications in Britain. Girtin
made a number of tours of Northumbria, North Yorkshire and the
Scottish borders in the late 1790s and produced watercolours of the
great castles at Durham, Jedburgh, Dunstanburgh and Warkworth,
as well as the abbeys at Fountains, Rievaulx and Egglestone, the
priory at Lindisfarne and the cathedral at Durham. These sites
were enormously popular with tourists and Girtin focused on their
sublime visual qualities as well as their historical and contemporary
associations. During the period of the Napoleonic Wars, such coastal
strongholds had a powerful emotional and patriotic appeal. This image
is unusual in its close, vertical viewpoint of the Norman tower instead
of the more popular horizontal aspect along the coastline. Rather than
scratch out the surface, Girtin used white body colour to depict the
seagulls on the left and also extended the image to the left to give it
greater breadth.
Thomas Girtin was the same age as J.M.W. Turner but died very
young in 1802. Turner claimed that had Girtin survived he, Turner,
“would have starved” (quoted in Walter Thornbury, The Life of J.M.W.
Turner, R.A. London: Chatto and Windus, 1877, 71). The two artists
were topographical painters in watercolour at the outset of their
careers and toured England making images of the landscape. In 1794,
they began paid work for the amateur painter Dr Thomas Monro, a
specialist in mental disorders, studying his collection, with Girtin
drawing outlines after works by other artists, in particular John Robert
Cozens, and Turner applying washes of monochrome colour. Cozens
was also a member of the “Sketching Society”, founded in 1799, who
called themselves the “Brothers”, anticipating the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood half a century later. They met once a week in the evening
to make imaginative landscape sketches from contemporary literature,
such as the poetry of William Cowper.

177

65 WILLIAM BLAKE and conflagrations. Blake had painted two watercolours early in his
(London, 1757–1827) career that were depictions of the Great Plague of London of 1665
and continued making works on similar themes up to about 1805. The
Pestilence, ca. 1795–1800 historical background of European wars underlies some of Blake’s
motivation, but his imagination drew largely on the Bible and in
Watercolour on paper, 323 x 484 mm particular for such works on the Book of Revelation. Precedents for
Bristol Museums & Art Gallery this imagery, which Blake would have known through engravings,
included Raphael’s Plague of Phrygia (ca. 1512–13) and Nicholas
In a desolated city, a woman on the left is mourning over a shrouded Poussin’s The Plague of Ashdod (1630). The setting thus combines a
body on a stretcher and a husband in front of her holds his dying wife, scene from the ancient world with seventeenth-century London and
their dead child lying on her lap. On the right, a gravedigger collapses contemporary Europe in an apocalyptic image of the results of man’s
over dead bodies, a gravestone beneath him inscribed with the word fallen condition and the wars to which it inevitably leads. While Blake’s
“pestilence”. In the background, desperate worshippers at a church unorthodox Christian vision was often one of the Paradise to come, he
raise their hands to plead for mercy from God. Blake’s art was much balanced such spiritual optimism with a dark sense of the violence and
preoccupied with human suffering and this work is one of a series suffering out of which it grew.
made over many years dealing with biblical plagues, wars, famines

66 WILLIAM BLAKE
(London, 1757–1827)
The Raising of Lazarus, 1800

Pencil, pen, ink and watercolour on paper, 407 x 296 mm
Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums Collections
The subject is from the Gospel of John, which tells of Jesus raising
Lazarus of Bethany from the dead four days after he had died:
And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice,

Lazarus, come forth.
And he that was dead, came forth, bound hand & foot with
grave-clothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin.
Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.
(John 11, 43–44)
The raising of Lazarus, represented frequently in Christian art, is

seen by many theologians as one of the most important miracles
performed by Jesus, as it leads to his crucifixion and resurrection
and the revelation of him as the Son of God. Blake uses a free-flowing
neo-classical line, highly symmetrical composition and pale colours to
show the moment of the resurrection and the various looks of wonder
and terror of the witnesses, who include some of Jesus’ disciples and
Martha, the sister of Lazarus.
Between the late 1790s and 1809, Blake produced 135 biblical
watercolours for his patron, the civil servant Thomas Butts. Blake
viewed the Bible as the most important source for artists as it
contained the whole history of mankind, from the beginning to the
end of time. He wrote: “The Hebrew Bible & the Gospel of Jesus are
… Eternal Vision or Imagination of All that Exists” (William Blake, “A
Vision of the Last Judgement”, quoted in David V. Erdman, ed. The
Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake. Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1982, 554).
179

67 JOHN SELL COTMAN immediacy and freshness. The light and shadows, and pleasing old tiles
(Norwich, 1782–1842) and red brick chimneys in the foreground, conform to a “picturesque”
aesthetic in the rough and varied effects that Cotman achieves with
Norwich Castle, ca. 1808–9 his brush.
John Sell Cotman was the leading watercolourist of the Norwich
Pencil and watercolour on paper, 324 x 472 mm School of painters. He was born in Norwich, the son of a wealthy
Norfolk Museums & Archaeology Service silk and lace merchant, and moved to London in 1797–98 where he
worked for Dr Thomas Monro as a copyist and met J.M.W. Turner and
This is an unusual image for the time of the medieval castle at Thomas Girtin. He went on sketching tours to Wales before returning
Norwich, as it is taken from the north-west. Most artists chose a to Norwich in 1807, where he was elected President of the Norwich
viewpoint from the south to include a recently built gaol by the famous Society of Artists in 1811. He was an influential teacher and significant
architect John Soane. Cotman instead shows the castle over the antiquarian and also made drawings and etchings of a wide range
rooftops of houses as if seen from a high window looking upwards, with of architecture and ancient monuments in East Anglia and, later, in
the eighteenth-century Shirehouse to the left. The effect of surprise Normandy. In the 1830s, he taught at King’s College School, London,
is reminiscent of a snapshot and gives the watercolour a great sense of where his pupils included Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

68 JOHN CROME fascination with the figures of the impoverished dwellers, created a
(Norwich, 1768–1821) strong market that sustained many artists. Crome, a colleague of John
Sell Cotman and also considered to be the founder of the Norwich
The Blacksmith’s Shop, Hingham, Norfolk, ca. 1807–11 School of painters, exhibited four watercolours of the subject at the
Norwich Society between 1807 and 1811, and also two oil paintings of
Watercolour on paper, 541 x 442 mm blacksmith’s shops at the Royal Academy and the British Institution.
Norfolk Museums & Archaeology Service This picture is certainly an exhibition watercolour.
Crome came from a humble background in Norwich and was first
The gable-ended and decrepit blacksmith’s shop in this painting is apprenticed to a sign painter. He began sketching the local landscape
typical of the rural picturesque subjects that many artists painted and had access to some art collections where he discovered the work
in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Thomas of the seventeenth-century Dutch landscape artists, in particular that
Gainsborough’s later landscapes used such imagery, as did J.M.W. of Meindert Hobbema, and of the Welsh classical landscape painter
Turner early in his career. The rather nostalgic love of ancient Richard Wilson [CAT. 56]. His own work is characterised by a concern
and ruinous buildings, suggestive of a passing way of life, and the with naturalistic detail and the evocation of a strong local atmosphere.
181

69 HENRY FUSELI
(Zurich, 1741–London, 1825)
The Death of Cordelia, 1810–20

Frankfurter Goethe-Haus
The works of Shakespeare became enormously popular from the mid-

eighteenth century when he was seen as the quintessential English
writer. John Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery exploited this public
interest from 1786 until its collapse due to the wars with France at the
end of the 1790s. Shakespeare’s tragedy King Lear was famous for its
final scene with the mad Lear weeping over the death of his favourite
daughter Cordelia. Fuseli was fascinated by the kind of extreme
psychological condition that the episode offered his painting. The lines
represented here are:
Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones:

Had I your tongues and eyes, I’ld use them so
That heaven’s vault should crack. She’s gone for ever!
I know when one is dead, and when one lives;
She’s dead as earth. Lend me a looking-glass;
If that her breath will mist or stain the stone,
Why, then she lives.
(Act V, Scene III.)
Fuseli (Füssli) was a polymathic Swiss painter from Zurich and at

first trained to be a Zwinglian minister, although he was also taught
drawing and art history by his father. He was deeply interested in
contemporary Enlightenment and scientific thought, neo-classicism,
republican political theory and English literature. A friend of the
Swiss poet Johann Kaspar Lavater, famous for his Physiognomische
Fragmente (1775–78), Fuseli met the philosopher Jean Jacques
Rousseau in 1766. He travelled to Rome to study painting where he
met the sculptor Thomas Banks [CAT. 60] and settled in London
in 1778. With his painting The Nightmare (1781), Fuseli became
one of the most famous painters in Europe. He was a contributor to
the Shakespeare Gallery [CAT. 87] from 1788, writing anonymous
reviews praising extravagantly his own works. Fuseli set up the Milton
Gallery in London in 1799 to show his paintings based on the English
poet’s work. He was an influential Professor of Painting at the Royal
Academy from 1799.

183

70 JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER
(London, 1775–1851)
Apullia in Search of Appullus vide Ovid, exhibited 1814

Oil on canvas, 148.5 x 241 cm
Tate: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner’s subject is taken from the Latin poet Ovid’s series of

mythological poems, Metamorphoses (completed AD8). Book XIV tells
how a shepherd named Appullus has been turned into an olive tree
as a punishment for mocking some dancing nymphs. Turner invents
a mythical wife for him, Apullia, the name deriving from a district in
Italy. While looking for her husband, she is shown the olive tree on
which his name is carved. The work is very close in composition to
Claude Lorraine’s Jacob with Laban and his Daughters (1676), which
was owned by Turner’s patron Lord Egremont. Turner submitted it to
the British Institution, a prominent exhibition space in London where
prizes were awarded.
Turner, by this time the leading landscape painter in Britain, was a
complex and highly political man. It has been suggested that his choice
of subject for this painting was an attack on the British Institution
and that the central nymph who looks out at us mockingly reveals a
deliberate gesture of defiance, as did the painting’s late delivery. In
his own imitation of Claude, Turner was attacking the Institution’s
encouragement of the imitation of Old Masters. Turner exhibited a
personal reinterpretation of Claude at the Royal Academy the same
year, Dido and Aeneas.

185

71 JOHN CONSTABLE waistcoat working it. Lead white highlights create a pool of reflected
(East Bergholt, Suffolk, 1776– London, 1837) light in the foreground. In the background are the mill, a granary,
wharves and employees’ cottages.
Dedham Lock and Mill, ca. 1817 Constable’s father intended John to run the family business, in
spite of the latter’s wish to become a professional painter. His death
Oil on canvas, 54.6 x 76.5 cm the year before this painting was probably executed led to John’s
Tate: Bequeathed by George Salting 1910 brother Abram taking over the business and allowed the artist an
inheritance enabling him to concentrate on painting. He had also
This unfinished oil sketch, used in his studio as the basis for three just married his girlfriend Maria Bicknell. From this time onwards,
finished paintings, was made en plein air and gives a powerful insight Constable worked on the drawings, oil sketches and the large canvases
into Constable’s working methods and materials. The view is of one of that he exhibited at the Royal Academy. His struggle to maintain
the flour mills on the River Stour, owned and operated by the artist’s in the latter the freshness in paintings such as this became his
father. A wealthy yeoman farmer, Golding Constable’s interests career obsession. Although he received little recognition in Britain,
included milling, shipping, coal trading and property. Horse-drawn Constable’s paintings were awarded prizes at the Paris Salon and had
barges full of flour travelled down the Stour to a wharf at Mistley in an important impact on the aesthetics of the plein air oil sketch, which
Essex and then on to London. Coal was brought back on the return led to the Impressionist revolution of the 1870s.
trip. We are looking at the entrance to the lock, with a man in a red

72 SAMUEL PALMER
(London, 1805– Redhill, Surrey, 1881)
A Cornfield Bordered by Trees, ca. 1833–34

Oil on panel, mounted as a drawing, 17.5 x 14.9 cm
The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Purchased 1947
This is a rare example of an oil and tempera sketch by Samuel Palmer,

painted on a prepared wooden panel. By the time Palmer painted
it in the 1830s, he had moved away from the archaic style that he
had developed in the 1820s, when he was the leading figure among
the group of artists known as “the Ancients” (p. 33) He was by now
living mainly alone in the Kent village of Shoreham and his style had
become more naturalistic. This view is typical of Palmer’s work in the
1830s in the pastoral subject matter and in the size of the panel – it
is in fact his smallest surviving oil. Palmer created in his work of this
period a reassuring and intimate world of shepherds, wagons, winding
paths, flocks and harvests, which convey his deep love of the English
countryside and its traditional life.
Palmer was born in London, the son of a bookseller. He was taught
by an obscure painter, William Wate, and exhibited work at the Royal
Academy from the age of fifteen. After his years in Shoreham, Palmer
travelled in Wales and Italy and settled in Surrey in the 1860s. He
was a radical in his art in many respects but a conservative in politics.
His pamphlet “An Address to the Electors of West Kent” of 1832 was
published in response to the Reform Act that year, which widened
the franchise and abolished the supremacy of the Church of England.
Palmer felt threatened by the agricultural riots that were taking place
in the countryside around Shoreham and urged his readers to vote for
the Tory candidate William Geary in the General Election to preserve
Britain’s constitution and traditions. Palmer’s writing was intemperate
and reactionary in tone and Geary came bottom of the poll. Towards
the end of his life, Palmer painted images from John Milton’s poetry
and completed a translation of Virgil’s Eclogues (42–39BC) in 1872 for
which he also produced etchings.
187

74 JOHN MARTIN
(Hexham, Northumberland, 1789– Douglas, Isle of Man, 1854)
Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still upon Gibeon, 1848

Kirklees Museums and Galleries, Dewsbury Town Hall
This painting, a full-size copy of a work that Martin first exhibited in

1816, illustrates an episode in the Old Testament:
Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD
delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he
said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and
thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.
(Joshua X, 10–12)
Martin’s technique in this later version, exhibited at the British

Institution in 1849, is looser than that of the original, perhaps in
response to J.M.W. Turner’s controversial late landscapes, but he
retains his hallmark sublime theatricality. It was commissioned by
a wealthy Roman Catholic Lancashire landowner and patron of the
artist, Charles Scarisbrick, for his recently completed neo-gothic house.
Martin, a devout evangelical Christian, was born in north-east
England and moved to London where he became a successful painter
of large canvases depicting dramatic and apocalyptic biblical scenes.
Works such as Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion (1812), The
Fall of Babylon (1819) and Belshazzar’s Feast (1820) [CAT. 89]were
shown individually in galleries hired by the artist and became known
widely through the fine prints that he engraved in mezzotint. He
produced illustrated editions of John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1825–27)
and The Bible (1831–32) [CATS. 88-89]. His work was also plagiarised
by the diorama makers of the time, and in 1833 Martin failed to have
closed a 190-square metre version of Belshazzar’s Feast at the British
Diorama in London. The early American film-maker D.W. Griffith
is thought to have been influenced by Martin’s paintings in his film
Intolerance (1916). Martin also designed ambitious urban engineering
projects for sewers, docks and railways in London, none of which were
realised.

189

73 JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER 75 JOHN RUSKIN
(London, 1775–1851) (London, 1819–Brantwood, Cumbria, 1900)
Sunset (?Sunrise), ca. 1835–40 Cloud Effect over Coniston Old Man, 1880
Watercolour on paper, 254 x 394 mm Pencil and watercolour on paper, 205 x 385 mm
Tate: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856 Ruskin Foundation (Ruskin Library, Lancaster University)
As the uncertain title suggests, this may be an image of dusk or dawn, The view is of “Coniston Old Man”, a fell 803 metres high in the
the ambiguity perhaps typical of Turner’s later work. The brushwork Lake District in the north-west of England near where Ruskin lived
is rapid and seeks to capture an experience as it passes, a few light at Brantwood. Ruskin’s diary carries weather notes that were also a
strokes in the foreground suggesting a vessel perhaps, and creating record of his own unstable mental condition and his sense of what he
a powerful atmosphere with minimal means. Turner’s painting was called “the storm-cloud of the nineteenth century”, the physical and
greatly preoccupied not only with the naturalistic aspects of light but moral pollution of the industrial world (Dinah Birch, ed. John Ruskin,
also its symbolic and emotional significance. In particular, he sought Selected Writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, 267–78). On
to convey a sense of the overwhelming power of the sun, supposedly 1 March 1880, the year of this watercolour, he wrote, for instance:
having said on his deathbed that “the sun is God”.
Turner’s late watercolours are now probably the most famous The old story, wild wind and black sky, – scudding rain and roar – a
works that he produced. However, during his lifetime they were little climate of Patagonia instead of England, and I more disconsolate – not
seen except by a small group of collectors and admirers. His loosely in actual depression, but in general hopelessness, wonder, and disgust
painted late oils were considered by most to be unfinished or even than ever yet in my life, that I remember, as if it was no use fighting for
symptoms of mental illness. Turner made commercial landscapes for a world any more in which there could be no sunrise.
publication as engravings, but by the 1830s the market for such work (Helen Gull Viljoen, ed. The Brantwood Diary of John Ruskin.
was shrinking. Ever restless, he continued to travel on the Continent London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971, 226.)
where he allowed himself the freedom to work spontaneously in
response to the dramatic mountainous landscapes or Venetian light. Ruskin’s watercolours often seem to come close to the late works of
He used sponges and other unusual implements to apply his paint and J.M.W. Turner, the modern artist he admired above all.
created huge numbers of experimental works on paper of enormous Ruskin was the most important British art critic of the nineteenth
suggestive beauty. Turner was fascinated by recent scientific theories century, as well as a major writer on social and economic matters.
of light, but also believed that the artist went beyond observation He championed the work of Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites and was
to create independent worlds of sensation and emotion. Ironically, an influential theorist of art and architecture. His view of the inter-
Turner’s will, luckily overturned, required that only one hundred oils relationship of art and morals brought him into direct conflict with
be preserved after his death and no works on paper at all. the aestheticism of painters such as James Abbott McNeill Whistler
[CAT. 100 and p. 34].

191

76 G E O R G E S T U B B S (Liverpool, 1724– London, 1806) in his field at the time. He engraved this work after a drawing by
Copplestone Warre Bampfylde, a friend of Hoare and a regular
The Anatomy of the Horse. London: printed by visitor to Stourhead. Bampfylde was an amateur painter, architect
J. Purser for the author, 1766 (1815 edition), Tab. IV and landscape designer, who had created an ingenious cascade at his
house at Hestercombe in Somerset. In 1765, he designed the cascade
Etching, 372 x 485 mm at Stourhead, which falls into the lake below the dam; the same year,
Wellcome Library, London Flitcroft built the Temple of Apollo with a cast of the Belvedere
Apollo inside. Bampfylde made a number of drawings of Hoare’s
Stubbs studied human anatomy at the County Hospital in York in the landscape during the 1750s, which give us the earliest impression
1740s, where he made illustrations for John Burton’s Essay towards of its appearance.
a Complete New System of Midwifery (1751) and also taught himself
etching. During his time in York, he decided to research the anatomy
of the horse and, following a trip to Italy, in 1756 moved with his
common-law wife, Mary Spencer, to the remote hamlet of Horkstow
78 J A M E S F I T T L E R (London, 1758–1835) after G E O R G E R O B E R T S O N
in Lincolnshire, probably under the patronage of Lady Elizabeth
(London, 1746/49–Turnham Green, Middlesex, 1788)
Nelthorpe. He worked for eighteen months in a large barn, where
he made special equipment for winching up and manoeuvring the
dead horses that he slowly dissected in order to make his drawings.
The Iron Bridge, Coalbrookdale, from the Madeley side, 1788
Each horse might be in the barn for six or seven weeks. When he had Etching, 379 x 533 mm
completed the drawings, Stubbs took them to London to see who Courtesy of The Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust
could engrave them. However, he decided to teach himself engraving
and carried out the work over the next six years before publishing the The iron-master Abraham Darby III’s cast-iron bridge, spanning more
eighteen plates on laid paper. During this time, he also established than 30 metres over the River Severn at Coalbrookdale, Shropshire,
himself as the pre-eminent horse painter in Britain. Following was the first of its kind and became a major tourist attraction for
publication, Stubbs’ reputation was secured and the book remained travellers on the routes through Wales and the west of England. The
the standard authority on the subject for over a century, as well as combination of the flaming modern iron works, the spectacular bridge
a major document of naturalist aesthetics. At the end of his life, in and the great natural beauty of the local landscape brought together
1804–06, Stubbs published A Comparative Anatomical Exposition of both picturesque and sublime qualities that were exploited by many
the Structure of the Human Body with that of a Tiger and a Common artists and by which tourists were enthralled. Of all the engravings of
Fowl, another groundbreaking work of anatomy. George Robertson’s paintings of Coalbrookdale, this one emphasises
most effectively the dramatic relationship between the bridge and the
looming presence of the great heights beyond it.
77 F R A N Ç O I S V I V A R E S (Lodève, 1709– London, 1780) after

C O P P L E S T O N E W A R R E B A M P F Y L D E (Taunton, Devon, 1720–
Hestercombe, Devon, 1791) 79 A L E X A N D E R C O Z E N S (St Petersburg, 1717– London, 1786)
A View of the Lake and Pantheon and Temple of Apollo A New Method of Assisting the Invention in Drawing Original
at Stourhead, 1775 Compositions of Landscape. London: J. Dixwell, 1786
Engraving, proof state without inscription, 431 x 524 mm Aquatint, 320 x 260 mm
Stourhead, The Hoare Collection (The National Trust) University of Nottingham. Manuscripts and Special Collections
Henry Hoare II created the vast garden at his home in Stourhead, The watercolour painter Alexander Cozens was born in Russia and
Wiltshire from the early 1740s (see p. 25). Hoare was a banker who educated in London and Rome. He was a drawing master at Eton
profited enormously from loans to other landowners who were College and a keen art theorist. A New Method was published shortly
improving their estates at the time. He first built the Temple of Flora before his death and consists of thirty-three pages of text and twenty-
with its River God in a rocky arch below it facing onto the newly seven engraved plates. Of these latter, sixteen are reproductions of
created lake, designed by the architect Henry Flitcroft. The Pantheon aquatint ink “blots”, or accidental marks, which were intended to
was built in the 1750s and housed a statue of Hercules that Hoare had provide a stimulus for the composition of landscape images. Cozens’
commissioned from the sculptor Michael Rysbrack. The garden and its aim was to assist a more spontaneous and original approach by artists,
features are full of references to Virgil’s Aeneid (29–19BC) as well as to many of whom he felt were overly constrained by copying other artists
modern British writers such as John Milton and Alexander Pope, giving or by excessive empirical observation. Although the publication had a
the visitor a classical and literary experience as well as a visual one. very small print run, it influenced a number of artists, including John
This engraving is by the London-based French landscape Constable who in particular was fascinated by the cloud formations
engraver François Vivares, who was considered the finest practitioner in the book.

76 77
78 79
193

80 W I L L I A M G I L P I N (Cumberland, 1724–Boldre, Hampshire, 1804) 82 D A V I D L U C A S (Brigstock, Northamptonshire, 1802–Fulham,
Middlesex, 1881) after J O H N C O N S T A B L E (East Bergholt, Suffolk,
Three Essays: On Picturesque Beauty; on Picturesque Travel; 1776–London, 1837)
and On Sketching Landscape: To which is Added a Poem,
On Landscape Painting. London: R. Blamire, 1792, 78–79 Various Subjects of Landscape, Characteristic of English
Scenery, from Pictures Painted by John Constable, R.A.,
20.9 x 13.9 x 2.9 cm (overall)
University of Glasgow Library. Special Collections
1830–32 (1855 edition)
Mezzotint, 140 x 187 mm (image)
William Gilpin was an Anglican priest, teacher and amateur artist. He Tate Library & Archive
was a hugely influential pioneer of the concept of the “picturesque”
and wrote extensively on the relationship between art and landscape. Constable published twenty-two mezzotints of his works between
Gilpin was not a systematic thinker and most of his writing was 1830 and 1832, which became known simply as English Landscape.
descriptive of particular experiences rather than abstract ideas; it was Conceived in the period after his wife Maria’s death in 1828 and his
left to later writers such as Richard Payne Knight to develop a more eventual election to the Royal Academy in spite of opposition, they
comprehensive theory of the picturesque. His main audience was the were intended to show the range of his art, to establish his reputation
growing body of tourists who travelled throughout Britain searching as a major painter and to increase the sales of his work. The texts that
for an aesthetic experience. Gilpin published his Observations on the Constable wrote to accompany the plates were a defence of his own
River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc., relative chiefly to difficult career and in them he contrasted the mere imitator and the
Picturesque Beauty; Made in the Summer of the Year, 1770 in 1782, in innovator who reveals things in nature not seen before. The latter’s
which he gave clear instructions to the reader as to where to look and progress by definition would be slower and less easily appreciated.
how to look. Gilpin stressed the importance of “roughness” as opposed The mezzotints were the result of a very close collaboration
to the smooth beauty of classical art that he illustrated in Three Essays between Constable and the young engraver David Lucas (who died,
by contrasting flat and featureless landscapes with ones full of variety alcoholic and destitute, in a workhouse). One central intention of
and broken forms. the prints was to stress the importance to the artist of the concept of
“chiar’oscuro”, “the medium by which the grand and varied aspects of
Landscape are displayed, both in the fields and on canvass” (quoted
in Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable. Exh. cat. Tate
81 T H O M A S R O W L A N D S O N (London, 1756–1827) Gallery, London. London: Tate Gallery Publications, 1991, 319).
Constable saw “chiar’oscuro” as a general principle in landscape
Title page in William Combe, The Tour of Doctor Syntax painting that determined not only form and space but also light, mood
in Search of the Picturesque, 4th ed. London, St Ann’s Lane: and a deeper sense of the divine in nature. The freshness and depth of
Diggens, Printer, 1813 the prints is partly due to Lucas’ sensitivity to Constable’s needs and
to the artist returning to unfinished sketches from many years before
Hand-coloured etching, 24.5 x 15 x 2.5 cm (overall) and approaching them with a more mature vision. Working on the
Private Collection mezzotints indeed seems to have transformed Constable’s painting in
the last years of his life.
William Combe (1741–1823) was an adventurer and writer who was
commissioned by the publisher Rudolf Ackermann in 1809 to create
a verse narrative for the humorous aquatint images produced by
Thomas Rowlandson of the adventures of the Quixote-like priest,
teacher and amateur artist Doctor Syntax, clearly based on the figure
of William Gilpin [CAT. 80]. The lean and absent-minded Syntax
decides to undertake a picturesque tour of Britain in order to make his
fortune through the resulting publication and sets off with his horse
Grizzle on a journey that sees him chased by bulls, deceived by thieves,
falling frequently from his trusty steed, but nevertheless surviving
all such mishaps. Doctor Syntax was enormously popular and Combe
and Rowlandson collaborated on two more volumes about his later
adventures.

80
81 82
195

84 J O A Q U Í N P I Y M A R G A L L (Barcelona, 1830– Madrid, 1891) after
J O H N F L A X M A N (York, 1755– London, 1826)
Protegido por Minerva hiere Diomedes al dios Marte

(Protected by Minerva, Diomedes hurts god Marte),
in Homero, Ilíada L.V. Obras completas de Flaxman,
grabadas al contorno por Joaquín Pi y Margall
(Homer’s Iliad. The Complete Works of John Flaxman,
engraved by Joaquín Pi y Margall). Madrid: Manuel
Rivadeneyra, 1859–61
Line engraving, 117 x 208 mm
Calcografía Nacional, Madrid
85 J O A Q U Í N P I Y M A R G A L L (Barcelona, 1830– Madrid, 1891) after

J O H N F L A X M A N (York, 1755– London, 1826)
Júpiter y las musas (Jupiter and the muses), in Hesiodo,

83 Teogonía. Obras completas de Flaxman, grabadas al contorno
por Joaquín Pi y Margall (Hesiod’s Theogony. The Complete
works of Flaxman), engraved by Joaquín Pi y Margall.
Madrid: Manuel Rivadeneyra, 1859–61
83 J O H N F L A X M A N (York, 1755– London, 1826)
Line engraving, 95 x 201 mm
Self-Portrait, 1778
Calcografía Nacional, Madrid
Terracotta in high relief and gold painted wood, 18.8 cm diameter
John Flaxman’s neo-classical illustrations to works by Homer,
This terracotta roundel was modelled while Flaxman was a student Hesiod, Aeschylus and Dante were hugely influential across Europe
at the Royal Academy. It was acquired by William Hamilton, the in the early nineteenth century: artists such as Jacques-Louis
British ambassador to Naples, famous for his classical erudition and David, Ingres Baron Gros, Phillip Otto Runge, Francisco Goya,
his interest in ancient and contemporary art, and was first recorded in Theodore Gericault and Bertel Thorvaldsen all acknowledged their
1798, in Hamilton’s library at the Palazzo Sessa, Naples. debt to them. In fact, Flaxman saw the works as merely designs
Flaxman’s father was a moulder and retailer of plaster casts, for sculpture and not ends in themselves, and their simplicity and
which inspired his son’s interest in sculpture, and he entered the Royal clarity were intended for marble cutters working on the sacred and
Academy Schools in 1770 where he met his lifelong friend William civil buildings that Flaxman wanted to decorate. The drawings for
Blake. In 1775, he began working for the ceramics manufacturer Alexander Pope’s translation of the Iliad, engraved by Tommaso
Josiah Wedgwood, for whom he modelled classic friezes and Piroli, and those for the Theogony, engraved by Flaxman’s friend
plaques, ornamental vessels and medallion portraits. In his work for William Blake, were produced in Rome in 1793. Based on Flaxman’s
Wedgwood, Flaxman’s love of the Greek and neo-classical tradition study of ancient sarcophagi and Greek vases, as well as the sculpture
is evident in the exquisite lines of his silhouette designs. He was also of Donatello, they were austere, flat and disciplined in a way not
much in demand for his funeral monuments and wall plaques, which seen previously in European art. The Victorian artist George
can be found in many churches across England. Frederic Watts believed the images should be painted on the walls
In the 1790s, Flaxman worked on his internationally influential of Eton and other major British schools to encourage moral and
illustrations to Hesiod’s Theogony [CAT. 85], Homer’s Iliad [CAT. aesthetic purity.
84] and Odyssey, and in the following decade on ones for Dante’s After studying in Paris, where he could see and study the 1833
Divine Comedy. Flaxman was the only sculptor to whom Joshua edition of Flaxman’s drawings engraved by Achile Reveilm, the
Reynolds dedicated one of his Discourses, and he was appointed the Spanish artist Joaquín Pi y Margall engraved The Complete Works
first Professor of Sculpture at the Royal Academy in 1810, where he of John Flaxman, published between 1859 and 1861 by Manuel de
delivered lectures that were published posthumously. Rivadeneyra in Madrid, and this is the version reproduced here.

84
85
197

86 W I L L I A M B L A K E (London, 1757–1827) Many eighteenth-century artists experimented with the personification
of extreme emotions and Romney, a highly-strung individual inclined
Illustrations to Edward Young, The Complaint, and to melancholia, was especially drawn to such expression.
the Consolation, or, Night thoughts. London: Printed by George Romney was a successful portrait painter whose main
ambition was to make history paintings, many inspired by his
R. Noble for R. Edwards, no. 142 Bond Street,
fascination with the theatre and in particular Shakespeare. He was
MDCCXCVII [1797], 16-17
a friend of radical artists such as William Blake, James Barry and
Intaglio copper-plate engravings, 41.9 x 32.9 x 2.2 cm (overall) John Flaxman, was involved in the early development of Boydell’s
Senate House Libraries, University of London Shakespeare Gallery in 1786 and was an exponent of social reform.
Blake was trained as an engraver and most of his regular income came
from commercial illustrated work for a wide range of publications.
Edward Young (1683–1765) was a poet, playwright and priest whose 88 J O H N M A R T I N (Hexham, Northumberland, 1789–
Night thoughts, published in nine parts between 1742 and 1745, was an Douglas, Isle of Man, 1854)
early and popular example of sublime or “gothic” literature. Over the
course of 10,000 lines of blank verse, the poet broods on the death of
Bridge over Chaos, 1824–26
his wife and friends, the transience of life and the importance of the
hope of salvation. Mezzotint, 234 x 350 mm (sheet), 190 x 270 mm (image)
Blake was commissioned to illustrate the poem in 1795 and made Collection Alessandra and Simon Wilson
a series of 537 watercolour illustrations, intending to engrave about
200 for publication. The first volume carried forty-three engravings Among his engraved works [CAT. 89], John Martin’s most enduring
but was a commercial failure and the project was abandoned. Blake’s achievement is his set of twenty-four mezzotints illustrating John
powerful flowing neo-classical line encircles the text in a brilliantly Milton’s great epic poem, Paradise Lost (1667). In them, Martin’s
original fashion. fantasies of ancient architecture are matched equally by his visionary
landscapes – in this case of Hell. In the poem, which is based on the
Book of Genesis, Satan appears as a heroic figure. Here, he stands
poised in his winged glory, about to make the perilous crossing of
87 B E N J A M I N S M I T H (London, 1754–1833) after Chaos to reach his new domain of Earth. To facilitate this, his children,
G E O R G E R O M N E Y (Dalton-in-Furness, Lancashire, 1734–
Sin and Death, just visible in front of him, have built a bridge.
Kendal, 1802)
The Infant Shakespeare Attended by Nature

89 J O H N M A R T I N (Hexham, Northumberland, 1789–
and the Passions, 19 September 1799, 1799
Douglas, Isle of Man, 1854)
Line engraving and stipple, 630 x 490 mm (plate impression),
587 x 435 mm (image) Belshazzar’s Feast, 1835
Private Collection
Mezzotint and etching, 198 x 297 mm (sheet), 190 x 290 mm (image)
George Romney was commissioned by Alderman John Boydell to Collection Alessandra and Simon Wilson
paint this subject for his Shakespeare Gallery where it was exhibited in
1792. Romney, who also painted scenes from the plays for Boydell and John Martin achieved enormous popularity for his extraordinarily
drew hundreds of sketches of Shakespearean themes in the late 1780s imaginative and dramatic scenes from the Bible. His fame became
and early 1790s, had depicted earlier the baby Shakespeare nursed particularly widespread, in Europe as well as Britain, through
by Comedy and Tragedy, inspired by the poetry of Thomas Gray. The engravings of his paintings and the huge success of these. Unusually
engraving by Benjamin Smith (1754–1833) shown here, published for the time, Martin engraved the plates himself, in the technique of
some years after the painting, also drew on William Collins’ poem “The mezzotint, which perfectly suited his vision and of which he made
Passions: An Ode for Music” (1746). The engraving tells us that: “Nature himself a master. His mezzotints remain perhaps his most satisfying
is represented with her face unveiled to her favourite Child, who is works to modern eyes. This is a plate from his ambitious scheme to
placed between Joy and Sorrow. – On the Right-Hand of Nature are produce a set of forty engravings for an illustrated Bible. It exemplifies
Love, Hatred and Jealousy; on her Left-Hand, Anger, Envy and Fear”. his compelling visions of the ancient world.

87
86
88
89
199

200 REALISMO Y REACCIÓN

REALISM AND REACTION
1850–1900
The Victorian age saw a huge growth in the institutions of art in Britain. The National Gallery, DAVID ROBERTS
the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Tate Gallery, along with many major museums outside JOHN BRETT
London, were opened so that a wider audience might become acquainted with the fine arts. With
WILLIAM HOLMAN HUNT
the art and design schools that were also opened across the country, the new museums and galleries
JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS
were part of a mission to improve the taste of the nation and so, it was hoped, its morals and its
economic productivity. The Great Exhibition of 1851 held in Joseph Paxton’s vast Crystal Palace in JOHN FREDERICK LEWIS
Hyde Park, depicted in David Roberts’ painting of 1852, was a huge advertisement for British goods, FREDERIC LEIGHTON
one that in fact alerted many to the weakness of much British design and led to further efforts to EDWARD COLEY BURNE-JONES
improve taste.
GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS
Much nineteenth-century art matches the seriousness of these ambitions, from the Pre-
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Raphaelite concern with “truth to nature”, to John Ruskin’s and William Morris’ crusades to change
art and society, and to the extreme aestheticism of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, James Abbott McNeill ALFRED GILBERT
Whistler and others later in the century. The effects of industrialisation had made the issues at stake J.A.M. WHISTLER
even more complex and generated an ongoing and often furious debate about the function of art. ATKINSON GRIMSHAW
The Pre-Raphaelites, led by Rossetti, John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt,
WALTER LANGLEY
wanted to return British art to what they believed was the purer style of medieval art and to a new
seriousness of subject matter that they felt was lacking in the work of many contemporaries. Their JOHN SINGER SARGENT
first exhibitions caused great controversy around 1850, but within a decade they were accepted ROGER FENTON
as major artists: Millais’ paintings in particular courted popular taste to great effect. Many artists JOHN TENNIEL
followed the Pre-Raphaelite concern with naturalism, such as John Brett who painted British
HERBERT BOURNE
and Continental landscapes with photographic accuracy, and Atkinson Grimshaw who combined
FORD MADOX BROWN
naturalistic details with powerful atmospherics in his urban and industrial scenes.
The paintings of Lord Leighton and George Frederic Watts represent a Victorian grand style JULIA MARGARET CAMERON
with its roots in the history painting of the eighteenth century and made popular by engravings EDMUND EVANS
and the various art magazines that were now available. WALTER CRANE
Art criticism played an important role in the understanding of art among the educated classes
HUBERT VON HERKOMER
and the famous legal dispute between Whistler and Ruskin about morality and aesthetics divided
SAMUEL BUTLER
opinion about the meaning of art in the modern world.
The move away from religious to scientific and utilitarian ideologies throughout the Victorian era AUBREY BEARDSLEY
encouraged many artists towards a “religion of art”, evident in the move to aestheticism, Symbolism W.H. HOOPER
and, in the case of the short-lived Aubrey Beardsley, an exquisite and dark decadence. The American
Whistler was the most brilliant exponent of these ideas in his various writings on art, challenging
his critics to find beauty in form and colour without recourse to narrative or moral strictures.
Another American artist, John Singer Sargent was among the artists who had brought Impressionist
techniques to Britain and by the end of the century British art was poised fascinatingly on the cusp
of a new era.
John Singer Sargent,

Ena and Betty, Daughters of Asher
and Mrs Wertheimer, 1901.

202

REALISM AND REACTION
1850 – 1900
The diffusion of taste is not the same thing as the improvement of taste; but it is only the former of these
objects that is promoted by public institutions and other artificial means. The number of pretenders to
criticism and candidates for fame, is thus increased beyond all proportion, but the quality of genius and
feeling remains the same, with this difference, that the man of genius is lost in the crowd of competitors,
who would never have become such but from encouragement and example; and that the opinion of
those few persons whom nature intended for judges is drowned in the noisy decisions of smatterers in
taste. The principle of universal suffrage, however applicable to matters of government, which concern
the common feelings and common interests of society, is by no means applicable to matters of taste,
which can only be decided upon by the more refined understandings. It is throwing down the barriers,
which separate knowlege and feeling from ignorance and vulgarity, and proclaiming a Bartholemew-
fair-show of the fine arts; “And fools rush in where angels fear to tread”.
The public taste is therefore vitiated in proportion as it is public; it is lowered by every infusion
it receives of common opinion. The greater the number of judges, the less capable must they be of
judgement, for the addition to the number of good ones will always be small, while the multitude of bad
ones is endless, and thus the decay of art may be said to be the necessary consequence of its progress.
William Hazlitt, The Champion, London, 28 August 1814. (Quoted

in Bernard Denvir, The Early Nineteenth Century: Art, Design
and Society 1789–1852. London and New York: Longman, 1984,
73–74.)
Turner – glorious in conception – unfathomable in knowledge – solitary in power – with the elements
waiting upon his will, and the night and the morning obedient to his call, sent as a prophet of God to
reveal to men the mysteries of His universe, standing, like the great angel of the Apocalypse, clothed
with a cloud, and with a rainbow upon his head, and with the sun and the stars in his hand … But let
us take with Turner the last and greatest step of all. Thank heaven we are in sunshine again, and what
sunshine! Not the lurid, gloomy, plague-like oppression of Canaletti, but white, flashing fullness of
dazzling light, which the waves drink, and the clouds breathe, bounding and burning in intensity of joy.
The sky – it is a very visible infinity – liquid, measureless, infathomable, panting and melting through
the chasms in the long fields of snow-white, flaked slow-moving vapour, that guide the eye along their
multitudinous waves down to the islanded rest of the Euganean Hills. Do we dream, or does the white
forked sail drift nearer and nearer yet, diminishing the blue sea between us with the fullness of its
wings? It pauses now, but the quivering of its bright reflexion troubles the shadows of the sea, those
azure, fathomless depths of crystal mystery, on which the swiftness of the poised gondola, floats double,
its black beak lifted, like the crest of an ocean bird, its scarlet draperies flashing back from the kindling
surface, and its bent oar breaking the radiant water into a dust of gold.
John Ruskin, Modern Painters. London, 1844. (Quoted in

Bernard Denvir, The Early Nineteenth Century: Art, Design and
Society 1789–1852. London and New York: Longman, 1984, 134.)
XVII

A woman was present in his room, clad to the hands and feet with a green and grey raiment, fashioned
to that time. It seemed that the first thoughts he had ever known were given him as at first from her
eyes, and he knew her hair to be the golden veil through which he beheld his dreams. Though her hands
were joined, her face was not lifted, but set forward; and though the gaze was austere, yet her mouth
was supreme in gentleness. And as he looked, Chiaro’s spirit appeared abashed of its own intimate
presence, and his lips shook with the thrill of tears; it seemed such a bitter while till the spirit might be
indeed alone.
She did not move closer towards him, but he felt her to be as much with him as his breath. He was
like one who, scaling a great steepness, hears his own voice echoed in some place much higher than he
can see, and the name of which is not known to him. As the woman stood, her speech was with Chiaro:
not, as it were, from her mouth or in his ears; but distinctly between them.
“I am an image, Chiaro, of thine own soul within thee. See me, and know me as I am. Thou sayest
that fame has failed thee, and faith failed thee; but because at least thou hast not laid thy life unto riches,
therefore, though thus late, I am suffered to come into thy knowledge. Fame sufficed not, for that thou
didst seek fame: seek thine own conscience (not thy mind’s conscience, but thine heart’s), and all shall
approve and suffice. For Fame, in noble soils, is a fruit of the Spring: but not therefore should it be said:
‘Lo! my garden that I planted is barren: the crocus is here, but the lily is dead in the dry ground, and shall
not lift the earth that covers it: therefore I will fling my garden together, and give it unto the builders.’
Take heed rather that thou trouble not the wise secret earth; for in the mould that thou throwest up
shall the first tender growth lie to waste; which else had been made strong in its season. Yea, and even
if the year fall past in all its months, and the soil be indeed, to thee, peevish and incapable, and though
thou indeed gather all thy harvest, and it suffice for others, and thou remain vext with emptiness; and
others drink of thy streams, and the drouth rasp thy throat; – let it be enough that these have found
the feast good, and thanked the giver: remembering that, when the winter is striven through, there is
another year, whose wind is meek, and whose sun fulfilleth all.”
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “Hand and Soul”, The Germ, 1 January

1850. (Quoted in Charles Harrison, Paul Wood and Jason
Gaiger, eds. Art in Theory, 1815–1900: An Anthology of Changing
Ideas. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998, 432.)
Thus then in considering the state of art among us I have been driven to the conclusion that in its co-
operative form it is extinct, and only exists in the conscious efforts of men of genius and talent, who
themselves are injured, and thwarted, and deprived of due sympathy by the lack of co-operative art.
But furthermore, the repression of the instinct for beauty which has destroyed the Decorative and
injured the Intellectual arts has not stopped there in the injury it has done us. I can myself sympathize
with a feeling which I suppose is still not rare, a craving to escape sometimes to mere Nature, not
only from ugliness and squalor, not only from a condition of superabundance of art, but even from a
condition, of art severe and well ordered, even, say, from such surroundings as the lovely simplicity of
Periclean Athens. I can deeply sympathize with a weary man finding his account in interest in mere life
and communion with external nature, the face of the country, the wind and weather, and the course of
the day, and the lives of animals, wild and domestic; and man’s daily dealings with all this for his daily
bread, and rest, and innocent beast-like pleasure. But the interest in the mere animal life of man has
become impossible to be indulged in in its fulness by most civilized people. Yet civilization, it seems to
me, owes us some compensation for the loss of this romance, which now only hangs like a dream about
the country life of busy lands. To keep the air pure and the rivers clean, to take some pains to keep the
meadows and tillage as pleasant as reasonable use will allow them to be; to allow peaceable citizens
freedom to wander where they will, so they do no hurt to garden or cornfield; nay, even to leave here and
there some piece of waste or mountain sacredly free from fence or tillage as a memory of man’s ruder
XVIII

struggles with nature in his earlier days: is it too much to ask civilization to be so far thoughtful of man’s
pleasure and rest, and to help so far as this her children to whom she has most often set such heavy tasks
of grinding labour?
William Morris, “Art under Plutocracy”, a lecture to the Russell
Club, University College Hall, Oxford, 11 November 1883.
Nature contains the elements, in colour and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes
of all music.
But the artist is born to pick, and choose, and group with science, these elements, that the result
may be beautiful – as the musician gathers his notes, and forms his chords, until he bring forth from
chaos glorious harmony.
To say to the painter, that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player, that he may sit on
the piano.
That Nature is always right, is an assertion, artistically, as untrue, as it is one whose truth is
universally taken for granted. Nature is very rarely right, to such an extent even, that it might almost
be said that Nature is usually wrong; that is to say, the condition of things that shall bring about the
perfection of harmony worthy a picture is rare, and not common at all.
This would seem, to even the most intelligent, a doctrine almost blasphemous. So incorporated
with our education has the supposed aphorism become, that its belief is held to be part of our moral
being, and the words themselves have, in our ear, the ring of religion. Still, seldom does Nature
succeed in producing a picture.
The sun blares, the wind blows from the east, the sky is bereft of cloud, and without, all is of iron.
The windows of the Crystal Palace are seen from all points of London. The holiday-maker rejoices in
the glorious day, and the painter turns aside to shut his eyes.
How little this is understood, and how dutifully the casual in Nature is accepted as sublime, may
be gathered from the unlimited admiration daily produced by a very foolish sunset.
The dignity of the snow-capped mountain is lost in distinctness, but the joy of the tourist is to
recognize the traveller on the top. The desire to see, for the sake of seeing, is, with the mass, alone
the one to be gratified, hence the delight in detail.
And when the evening mist clothes the riverside with poetry, as with a veil, and the poor buildings
lose themselves in the dim sky, and the tall chimneys become campanili, and the warehouses are palaces
in the night, and the whole city hangs in the heavens, and fairy-land is before us – then the wayfarer
hastens home; the working man and the cultured one, the wise man and the one of pleasure, cease to
understand, as they have ceased to see, and Nature, who, for once, has sung in tune, sings her exquisite
song to the artist alone, her son and her master – her son in that be loves her, her master in that he
knows her.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler, “The Ten O’Clock Lecture”,
St James’ Hall, Piccadilly, London, 20 February 1885. (Quoted
in Charles Harrison, Paul Wood and Jason Gaiger, eds. Art in
Theory, 1815–1900: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Oxford:
To burn always with the hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. In a sense it
might even be said that our failure is to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world,
and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes any two persons, things, situations, seem
alike. While all melts under our feet, we may well grasp at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to
XIX

knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stiffing of the senses,
strange dyes, strange colours, and curious odours, or work of the artist’s hands, or the face of one’s
friend. Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the very
brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing of forces on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun,
to sleep before evening. With this sense of splendour of our experience and of its awful brevity, gathering
all we are into one desperate effort to see and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about
the things we see and touch. What we have to do is to be for ever curiously testing new opinions and
courting new impressions, never acquiescing in a facile orthodoxy of Comte, or of Hegel, or of our own.
Philosophical theories or ideas, as points of view, instruments of criticism, may help us to gather up what
might otherwise pass unregarded by us. “Philosophy is the microscope of thought.” The theory or idea or
system which requires of us the sacrifice of any part of this experience, in consideration of some interest
into which we cannot enter, or some abstract theory we have not identified with ourselves, or of what is
only conventional, has no real claim upon us.
Walter Pater, The Renaissance. London, 1888. (Quoted in

Charles Harrison, Paul Wood and Jason Gaiger, eds. Art in
Theory, 1815–1900: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Oxford:
XX

203

90 DAVID ROBERTS park, as can be seen in this painting. The view is of the transept of the
(Stockbridge, Edinburgh, 1796– London, 1864) building looking north, with a crystal fountain in the centre, on the
occasion of the opening of the exhibition at which 25,000 visitors
The Inauguration of the Great Exhibition: were present. The royal party can be seen under the baldacchino in
the centre. Prince Albert, the Chairman of the Royal Commissioners,
1 May 1851, 1854
is reading the Report of the Commissioners to the Queen. She is
Oil on canvas, 86.4 x 152.4 cm standing between their two eldest children, the Prince of Wales
Lent by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II wearing Highland costume, and the Princess Royal. Six million
visitors attended the exhibition.
The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations took David Roberts was a Scottish artist best known for his
place in Hyde Park, London, between May and October 1851. It “Orientalist” paintings. His first work was as a stage designer and in
was the first of the great nineteenth-century “World Fairs” of art, London he worked on the popular panoramas and dioramas. In the
culture and industry. It was organised by Prince Albert and the 1830s, he travelled in Spain and north Africa and published landscape
inventor, educator and civil servant Henry Cole, and held in a huge and architectural lithographs. He travelled in Egypt and the Middle
glass building, the “Crystal Palace”, designed by the gardener and East from 1838 to 1840 and from that journey produced the works for
architect Joseph Paxton. It was built around several trees in the which he is most famous.
204 REALISM AND REACTION

91 JOHN BRETT There & then [I] saw that I had never painted in my life,
(Reigate, Surrey, 1831–London, 1902) but only fooled and slopped; & thence-forward attempted
in a reasonable way to paint all I could see
The Wetterhorn, Wellhorn and Eiger, (quoted in Allen Staley and Christopher Newall, Pre-Raphaelite
Switzerland, 1856 Vision: Truth to Nature. Exh. cat. Tate Britain, London. London:
Tate Publishing, 2004, 151.)
Watercolour, 25.6 x 36.1 mm
Collection Kevin Prosser QC Alpine mountaineering had become very popular in Britain in the
1850s and Alfred Wills made the first ascent of the Wetterhorn in 1854.
This alpine view is from the hamlet of Gschwandtenmaad, below Wills’ book, Wandering Among the High Alps (1856), may have also
Rosenlaui, where Brett painted the glacier the same year. Looking inspired Brett. The watercolour was seen and admired at the Boston
south-west, Brett depicts the north-west flanks of the twin peaks Athenaeum by the Swiss pioneer of glaciation studies, Louis Agassiz,
of the Wellhorn and the Wetterhorn and, in the distance, the Eiger who was Professor of Geology at Harvard University.
above the Grosse Scheidegg pass, which runs on to Grindelwald. This Brett entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1853 and was
watercolour was painted on Brett’s first journey to Switzerland in the immediately influenced by John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites with
summer of 1856, inspired by reading the critic John Ruskin’s fourth their emphasis on “truth to nature” and on the moral aspects of art.
volume of Modern Painters, which had been published in April 1854 He had wide-ranging interests, including astronomy and geology, and
and stressed the importance of working directly from nature. When frequently painted landscapes in Switzerland and Italy. The owner of
he arrived in the mountains, Brett met the Pre-Raphaelite landscape a large schooner called Viking, Brett later painted many coastal views
artist John William Inchbold and seeing him at work wrote: around England, Wales and the Channel Islands.
205

92 WILLIAM HOLMAN HUNT
(London, 1827–1910)
The Festival of St Swithin (The Dovecot), 1866–75

The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Bequeathed by Thomas Combe, 1893
This painting was originally begun in 1865 as a design for the artist’s
sister Emily to complete when they were both living in Kensington,
London. Hunt bought the dovecot and pigeons and installed them
in the garden so they could be seen from a back window. After Emily
gave up the task, Hunt completed it himself, considering it to be the
most finished and detailed work that he had ever made. The feathers
of the birds are painted with astonishing verisimilitude, conforming
to the Pre-Raphaelite insistence on the detailed study of nature. The
festival of St Swithin, named after an Anglo-Saxon saint, refers to a
superstition that rain on 15 July heralds forty more wet days. Hunt
waited impatiently for the right meteorological conditions so that
he could paint the image from nature and capture the effects of rain.
He designed the frame, which is Jacobean in style with its formalised
leaves and flowers in gold leaf.
Hunt was one of the original members of the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood, founded in 1848, along with John Everett Millais
[CATS. 93, 94, 109] and Dante Gabriel Rossetti [CAT. 101]. He was
the most religiously devout of the group and remained faithful to the
ideals of “truth to nature”, complex symbolism and morally powerful
subject matter. He travelled in the Holy Land in the 1850s to gather
material for a series of religious pictures and later built a house in
Jerusalem. Hunt wrote extensively on art and aimed for his art and
ideas to reach the widest possible audience. Having abandoned
painting at the end of his life due to failing eyesight, Hunt’s late
“apologia” Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
(London and New York: Macmillan, 1905, 2 vols.) is an important
source for study of the movement.

207

93–94 J O H N E V E R E T T M I L L A I S representation of the playfulness, the innocence, and … the piety
(Southampton, 1829– London, 1896) of childhood.
(The Art Journal (London, 1863): 109.)
My First Sermon, 1863

It is not known if the Archbishop commented on the second painting
the following year, which is rather less pious. The model was Millais’
Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London
six-year-old daughter Effie, one of eight children that he had. His images
My Second Sermon, 1864 of children led to a huge “baby disease”, as it was known, of sentimental
paintings of little children at the Academy over the next two decades.
Millais had taken the famous Agnew’s as his dealer and began to paint
Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London
works for the market intended to fetch high prices. Engravings of his
This pair of works was among the first that made Millais probably the paintings made his work well known across Britain.
most widely popular painter in late Victorian Britain. The Art Journal Millais was a child prodigy who entered the Royal Academy Schools
described the impact of My First Sermon when it was displayed at the at the age of eleven. He was a founder of the rebellious Pre-Raphaelite
Royal Academy: Brotherhood with Dante Gabriel Rossetti [CAT. 101] and William Holman
Hunt [CAT. 92], and was a pioneer of Symbolism. He met the critic John
Nothing can be more delightfully simple or more thoroughly artistic than Ruskin [CAT. 75] and fell in love with his wife, marrying her in 1855 after
the face, attitude, and dress of this little girl seated in a church pew, eyes the couple’s divorce. Millais was enormously successful and a leading
riveted on the preacher, her infant mind drinking in every word. Pointing figure in the art world; he was created an hereditary baronet in 1885 and
to this picture, the Archbishop of Canterbury … said that the hearts of elected President of the Royal Academy in 1896. At his death that year,
us should grow enlarged and we should feel happier by the touching his annual income was £30,000.

95 JOHN FREDERICK LEWIS Pre-Raphaelites, to whom John Ruskin compared the artist, Lewis
(London, 1805 – Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, 1876) sought strict accuracy in detail and colour, creating a complex effect
of light and shade across the surface of the painting. He painted this
Study for The Courtyard of the Coptic Patriarch’s image from the many drawings that he made while in Cairo over a
decade earlier.
House in Cairo, ca. 1864
Lewis was the leading British “Orientalist” painter of his time.
Oil on wood, 36.8 x 35.6 cm He travelled extensively in Spain in the early 1830s and produced
Tate: Purchased 1900 many exhibited watercolours and two books of lithographs from the
sketches that he made there. In 1840, he travelled to Greece and the
The view is of the Cairo house of the leader of the Orthodox Levant and in 1841 settled in Cairo for the next ten years, living among
Christian Church in Egypt, the Greek word “coptic” meaning the the indigenous people in the Ezbekiya district, an unusual thing for
same as “Egyptian”. Seated in the background, he is shown wearing a westerner to do during the period. His The Hhareem of 1850 was
a broad turban and is dictating a letter to be taken to a monastery enormously successful when shown in London and he spent the rest
in the desert. The rest of the composition is a busy world of people, of the decade producing Egyptian subjects in highly finished
birds and animals around the pool in the top-lit courtyard. Like the watercolour before turning to oils for the rest of his career.
209

96 FREDERIC LEIGHTON 97 EDWARD COLEY BURNE-JONES
(Scarborough, 1830– London, 1896) (Birmingham, 1833– London, 1898)
Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon, ca. 1868–69 Danae and the Brazen Tower, ca. 1872
Oil on canvas, 150 x 75.5 cm Oil on panel, 38 x 19 cm
Ferens Art Gallery, Hull Museums The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Presented by F.J. Nettlefold, 1948
Electra stands at the entrance to the tomb of her father Agamemnon, Danae was the daughter of Acrisius, King of Argos, and his queen
King of Argos, who has been murdered by Electra’s mother, Eurydice. Acrisius wanted a male heir and asked an oracle if he
Clytemnestra. As she mourns, Electra vows to avenge her father’s would be lucky. After the oracle told him that he would be killed by
death and regain the throne for her brother Orestes. At the base of his daughter’s son, Acrisius had a brass tower built and imprisoned
the fluted column, which is the abacus of the doorway, is the pot Danae in it. During her captivity, Zeus came to Danae as a shower of
used to pour libations on Agamemnon. The subject comes from The gold and impregnated her: the resulting child was Perseus. Acrisius
Libation Bearers, the second part of Aeschylus’ trilogy, The Oresteia, cast his daughter and grandson out to sea in a wooden chest but they
first performed in Athens in 458BC. Electra is about to encounter were washed up on the island of Seriphos where Perseus was raised
her brother and raise the spirit of their father before plotting by Dictys, brother of King Polydectes. Following his adventures
Clytemnestra’s murder. killing Medusa and rescuing Andromeda, Perseus learned of the
When the painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1869, oracle’s prophecy and hoped to avoid fate by going to the games at
it was widely regarded as the harbinger of a new classical tendency in Larissa instead of home to Argos. By chance, Acrisius was present
British art after many years of Pre-Raphaelite influence. Painting was and Perseus killed him accidentally while throwing a discus. In this
becoming more generalised and less detailed and Leighton was seen as painting, Burne-Jones shows the apprehensive Danae watching the
one of the main figures in this development. The Art Journal noted: king’s soldiers build the tower, an Italianate structure inspired by the
painter’s love of the town of San Gimignano in Tuscany.
the idealism and the realism, the romance and the naturalism, which Burne-Jones made over one hundred drawings for his friend
are so strangely blended in certain new phases of the English school; William Morris’ The Earthly Paradise (1868–70), although they
to these characteristics may be added signs of the growing sway of were not used as illustrations. The book was based on the tales in
Continental styles, together with a tendency to intensity of sentiment, Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499), which
and to a sustained rhapsody of colour. concerns the wanderings of the unhappy lover Poliphilo in search of
(1869: 199.) Polia. The woodcuts in Colonna’s book inspired over thirty paintings
by Burne-Jones. In this painting, the model for Danae was a Greek
The widely travelled and well-connected Leighton had been elected artist and society beauty, Marie Spartali, a friend of the artist’s lover,
an Academician in 1868, was on the Hanging Committee of the 1869 Maria Zambaco. Burne-Jones may be referring to Marie’s resistance
exhibition and used his position to advance younger classicising artists to marrying into the Greek business community in London as she
such as Albert Moore and George Frederic Watts. married the American art critic William J. Stillman.

98 GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS 1 01 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
(London, 1817– Compton, Surrey, 1904) (London, 1828– Birchington-on-Sea, Kent, 1882)
Daphne, 1872 Proserpine, 1878

Oil on canvas, 188 x 61 cm Watercolour with bodycolour on paper mounted on wood, 77.5 x 37.5 cm
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon Private Collection c/o Christies
Daphne, daughter of the river god Peneus, was a nymph in Greek In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the goddess Persephone (in
mythology whose story was retold later by Latin poets, in particular Latin Proserpine) was the daughter of Demeter (Ceres) by Zeus
Ovid in his Metamorphoses (AD8). After being insulted by Apollo, the (Jupiter). She was abducted by Hades (Pluto), her father’s brother,
god of love Eros shot two arrows, one tipped in gold, the other with and transported to the Underworld. Demeter, who was the goddess of
lead. The arrow dipped in gold created insatiable lust, while the other spring and nature, searched for her daughter, abandoning her duties of
created a disgust for passion. The arrow dipped in gold struck Apollo sowing and harvesting the crops. Zeus told Hermes to persuade Hades
and the arrow dipped in lead struck Daphne. Apollo pursued Daphne to release Persephone. Before he did so, however, Hades caused her to
remorselessly, desperate for her love, but she wanted nothing to do eat the seeds of a pomegranate – the food of the dead – so that even if
with him. Weary of the chase, Daphne asked Peneus to help her and he she left the Underworld she would always have to return. Persephone
turned her into a laurel tree. Her legs took root and her arms grew into thus personified the coming of spring, but her return to Hades six
branches. Still in love, Apollo adorned his head with leaves from the months later signified autumn and the end of the harvest. As the queen
tree. Watts’ mysterious nude shows Daphne with her head inclined to of the Underworld, she also was the goddess to whom all mortals
the left, her left leg bent. She raises her right arm above her head as she would become subject. Rossetti, who first painted the subject during a
is about to merge with the laurel tree behind her. The painting fetched mental breakdown in the early 1870s and wrote a sonnet in Italian for
the enormous sum of 800 guineas when Watts sold it in 1872. it which appears in the cartellino in the top right corner, explained his
Watts was a painter and sculptor who specialised in idealised and interpretation to the collector William Turner:
allegorical figures. His most famous works are of classical figures, such
as Daphne and Psyche, and are embodiments of emotional concepts She is represented in a gloomy corridor of her palace, with the fatal
such as Hope and Love. He believed art was part of the spiritual fruit in her hand. As she passes, a gleam strikes on the wall behind
and social growth of humanity and wanted it to be integrated into her from some inlet suddenly opened, and admitting for a moment
contemporary architecture in the form of grand symbolic cycles in the light of the upper world; and she glances furtively towards it,
public buildings. He called his own unrealised scheme for representing immersed in thought. The incense-burner stands beside her as
the progress of the cosmos, The House of Life. the attribute of a goddess. The ivy-branch in the background (a
decorative appendage to the sonnet inscribed on the label) may be
taken as a symbol of clinging memory.
(Quoted in William E. Fredeman, ed. The Correspondence of Dante

Gabriel Rossetti - The Last Decade, 1873-1882. Vol. VII, 1875-1877.
Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008, 477.)
The image, considered by the artist to be his most beautiful, was

painted in many versions and undoubtedly refers to the complex and
frustrated relationship that he had with Jane Morris, the wife of his
friend and collaborator William Morris. This important watercolour,
in its original frame on which there is an English translation of the
Italian sonnet, was painted for the collector and publisher Frederick
Startridge Ellis, who paid 250 guineas for it.
Rossetti was born in London to Italian parents and, in 1848, while
at the Royal Academy Schools, was founder and de facto leader of the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He was an important poet and translator
as well as an artist and a major influence on the Arts and Crafts
designer William Morris. Much of the subject matter of his art, as is
evident in this work, was drawn from his intense sexual and emotional
relationships. Shortly before his death in 1882, Rossetti, reclusive
and addicted to chloral, completed a final version of Proserpine. In
1883, the Royal Academy held a memorial exhibition of his work that
established his reputation.
211

96 FREDERIC LEIGHTON Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon ca. 1868-69
212 REALISM & REACTION

97 EDWARD COLEY BURNE-JONES Danae and the Brazen Tower ca. 1872

98 GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS Daphne, 1872

101 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI Proserpine, 1878

99 GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS
(London, 1817– Compton, Surrey, 1904)
Clytie, 1868–81
Bronze, 87 x 57 x 38 cm
Watts Gallery, Compton
This was the artist’s first life-size sculpture “in the round”, made
originally in clay and then in marble, the latter causing a sensation
when shown at the Royal Academy in 1868. A version of this bronze
was included in the major retrospective of Watts’ art at the Grosvenor
Gallery, London in 1881–82. A number of plaster casts were produced,
including one presented as a gift to the novelist George Eliot by Watts
in 1870. The sculptor’s wife Mary also made terracotta casts of the
sculpture in her pottery at their home in Compton, Surrey. Clytie, the
only sculptural subject exhibited by Watts during his lifetime, was a
highly original work in its anatomical realism and sense of movement,
and is credited with laying the foundations for the “New Sculpture”
movement associated with Alfred Gilbert [CAT. 102]. The subject
derives from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (AD8), where Clytie, abandoned
by her lover Apollo, is buried alive but is transformed into a sunflower,
which follows the sun’s passage across the sky. Watts shows the foliage
growing up around her strong arms and towards her shoulders and
twisting neck, suggesting his belief in a painful but overwhelming
human instinct to follow a spiritual light. In fact, the powerful
musculature for the sculpture, and for a closely related painting also
in the Watts Gallery, was based on studies of the popular Italian male
artists’ model, Angelo Colarossi.

102 ALFRED GILBERT
(London, 1854–1934)
The Kiss of Victory, cast after 1879

Bronze, 58 cm height
The Fine Art Society and Robert Bowmann Gallery, London
This cast of an original marble sculpture shows a Roman legionary

embraced at the moment of death by the winged genius of Victory.
The image was derived in part from Antonio Canova’s Cupid and
Psyche (1787–93), which is in the Louvre, Paris, and may have been
made in memory of the artist’s brother who had recently died. Such
imagery of personified spirits was particularly popular in France
and Gilbert made the sketch model for the sculpture in the École
des Beaux-Arts in Paris, a city where many such images can be seen.
However, Gilbert worked on a domestic scale and intended the
sculpture to be seen in a drawing room rather than out in the open.
It was commissioned by his friend and patron Somerset Beaumont,
and has an almost erotic element that is typical of his art. Weak and
vulnerable, the soldier seems to swoon into Victory’s arms. The
original marble was carved in Gilbert’s studio in Rome. Lady Paget,
the German-born wife of the British Ambassador to Rome, watched
the artist at work on his large clay model and later wrote:
I sat down on a packing case, amidst the cats and pigeons … and
began my criticisms, he, at the same time, cutting off ruthlessly
the parts indicated. After three hours he had a huge heap of clay
by his side …
(Walburga Paget, Embassies of Other Days. London: Hutchinson, 1

923, vol. II, 313–14.)
Gilbert trained under the sculptor Joseph Edgar Boehm and at

the Royal Academy Schools. He also worked in Paris and Rome and
during the 1880s became the leading British sculptor, receiving many
commissions for his complex mythological and symbolic works. He
is most famous for the statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus, London,
a monument to the social reformer the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury. In
1900, Gilbert was appointed Professor of Sculpture at the Royal
Academy but resigned after a scandal in 1908. He settled in Bruges,
Belgium in 1903.
217

100 JAMES ABBOTT MCNEILL WHISTLER
(Lowell, Massachusetts, 1834– London, 1903)
Nocturne: Blue and Silver – Cremorne Lights, 1872

Tate: Bequeathed by Arthur Studd 1919
The view Whistler has taken is westwards up the River Thames from
Battersea Bridge, with the industrial area of Battersea on the left and
Cremorne Pleasure Gardens in Chelsea with its twinkling orange
lights on the right. Whistler preferred the Thames at night and would
set off in a rowing boat at dusk and often stay out until morning,
sketching the scene. He then painted from memory in his studio,
thinning his paints with copal, turpentine and linseed oil to create
what he called a “sauce”. The canvas for this painting originally had
a figure composition on it, which the artist rubbed down and covered
with a pinkish-grey ground. He then applied his “sauce” in thin,
transparent layers. The high horizon, restricted tonality and nearly
empty river make the painting almost abstract in appearance. The title
Nocturne was used for many of his paintings and suggests both the
time of day and a musical form, which accentuates the atmospheric
and emotional aspects of the paintings. Whistler’s fascination with
Japanese art can be seen in the calligraphic strokes with which he
describes the reeds and boat in the foreground, his characteristic
butterfly logo as a signature on the right and the fish-scale pattern on
the frame.
Whistler offended the sensibilities of many with his extreme
aestheticism and took the critic John Ruskin to court to claim damages
against him (p. 34).

219

1 03 ATKINSON GRIMSHAW Grimshaw was born in the industrial city of Leeds, Yorkshire,
(Leeds, 1836–93) the son of a policeman, and at the age of sixteen became a clerk at the
Great Northern Railway. By 1859, he was selling paintings through
local booksellers and in 1861 became a full-time painter, his work
Shipping on the Clyde, 1881
showing the impact of Pre-Raphaelite naturalism and the ideas of the
Oil on board, 30.5 x 51 cm critic John Ruskin. In 1867, the year that he converted to Catholicism,
Collection Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza on deposit in Grimshaw painted the first of his famous moonlit scenes in the fishing
Museo Thyssen Bornemisza, Madrid town of Whitby in north Yorkshire, which by then was also a tourist
destination. During the 1870s, he became very successful, painting the
Glasgow lies on the River Clyde and was the main shipbuilding centre great cities across Britain, including London, Liverpool and Glasgow.
and port in Scotland, importing and exporting goods from around He met James Abbott McNeill Whistler at this time, while both
the world. In the first half of the nineteenth century, its population men were living in Chelsea by the Thames – they became known as
expanded six-fold to nearly half a million people. Here, Grimshaw “Jimmy” and “Grimmy” – and was influenced greatly by his Nocturne
captures the mysterious evening atmosphere of the wet curving paintings of the river [CAT. 100]. Although he adopted a similar use
quayside as figures walk by the ships in the rain, the skeletal masts and of warm-toned under-painting to that of Whistler, Grimshaw also
shop windows emphasised by the gas light. In the left foreground, two used photography and projected negatives onto his canvases to aid in
dockers warm themselves by a small fire. composition.

1 04 WALTER LANGLEY
(Birmingham, 1852– Penzance, Cornwall, 1922)
The Sunny South, 1885

Penlee House Gallery & Museum, Penzance, Cornwall. Purchased
in 1997 with funding from The Art Fund, the Heritage Lottery Fund
and The Friends of Penlee House
An old man lights up as he rests while working in the sloping

garden of a house in Newlyn, an ancient fishing village in south
Cornwall, which had been sacked by the Spanish in 1595. The
view is from Pembroke Lodge where the artist lived, looking
towards the old harbour and across Mount’s Bay. Many artists
worked in Newlyn from the 1880s, inspired by the Cornish
light and the vogue for artists’ colonies in Brittany and often
employing the “square-brush” technique of the French realist
painter Jules Bastien-Lepage. They built large glass studios
among the picturesque stone cottages, cobbled streets, courts
and alleys. By the early nineteenth century, as the traditional
fishing industry declined, large numbers of tourists followed the
artists to Newlyn attracted by the comparatively warm climate,
the seascape and the old customs of the local people.
Walter Langley was born in Birmingham and apprenticed
to a lithographer there before studying design at the South
Kensington Schools in London. He visited Brittany in 1881 and
was the first artist to settle in Newlyn in 1882, where he was a
founder of the Newlyn School of artists that included Frank
Bramley and Stanhope Forbes. Influenced by Bastien-Lepage,
Langley was mainly a watercolourist and followed the plein
air principles of the other Newlyn artists. Langley was a highly
regarded artist, the recipient of a gold medal at the Paris Salon
in 1889 and was discussed with enthusiasm by Leo Tolstoy in
his polemical book What is Art? (1897).
221

1 05 EDWARD COLEY BURNE-JONES
(Birmingham, 1833– London, 1898)
The Heart of the Rose, 1889

Private Collection c/o Christies
A pilgrim is lead by the winged god of love, Cupid, into an enclosed

secret garden to meet Love, a beautiful young woman dressed in a
green dress and enthroned in a rose bush. The subject is taken from
The Romaunt of the Rose, a translation attributed to the great English
poet Geoffrey Chaucer of about one third of the medieval French
dream poem Roman de la Rose, begun around 1237, by Guillaume de
Lorris. Burne-Jones and his friend William Morris were obsessed
with medieval culture and with Chaucer’s work [CAT.119] from their
student days at Oxford in the 1850s. In 1860, Burne-Jones saw a
fifteenth-century illuminated version of the Roman de la Rose that
inspired him deeply. Morris wrote a quatrain adapted from Chaucer to
explain the image:
The ending of the tale ye see;

The lover draws anigh the tree,
And takes the branch, and takes the rose,
That love and he so dearly chose.
(In May Morris, William Morris: Artist, Writer,

Socialist. 2 vols. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1936, vol. 1, 543.)
This painting is one of three based on the story that Burne-Jones

painted between 1874 and 1892. The other works in the series were
The Pilgrim at the Gate of Idleness (1874–84), now at Dallas Museum
of Art, and Love Leading the Pilgrim (1877–97), at Tate Britain.
All of them were developed from an embroidered linen hanging
designed by Burne-Jones and Morris in 1872 for Rounton Grange,
the new Yorkshire home of the industrialist Lowthian Bell, which
was embroidered over eight years by his wife and daughter. The
paintings, bought by the Pre-Raphaelite collector William Connal,
were very significant to Burne-Jones and were exhibited at the major
retrospective that he held at the New Gallery, London in 1893.

223

106 FREDERIC LEIGHTON
(Scarborough, 1830– London, 1896)
Perseus on Pegasus Hastening

to the Rescue of Andromeda, ca. 1895–96
New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester
The Greek hero Perseus, legendary founder of Mycenae, flies across

the sky over a partly Aegean landscape on his steed Pegasus holding
the severed head, with its snaky hair, of the Gorgon Medusa whom
he has just slain. He is about to shoot an arrow at the sea monster
that holds Andromeda captive. Andromeda’s parents, King Cepheus
and Queen Cassiope of Ethiopia, had angered Poseidon by claiming
that she was more beautiful than the Nereids, one of whom was the
sea god’s wife. Poseidon sends the monster to destroy the kingdom
of Cepheus who, following an oracle’s advice, offers his daughter as a
sacrifice. She is chained to a rock in the sea so that the monster Cetus
can consume her. The subject, usually taken from Ovid’s version in
Book Four of Metamorphoses (AD8), had always been very popular
in western art and for Victorian painters such as Leighton had the
additional appeal of a strong chivalric theme. Leighton left this work
unfinished at his death as can be seen by the lack of a bow for Perseus.
Leighton, who trained in Paris, Florence, Rome, Frankfurt and
London travelled across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East,
and the composite landscape in this painting is based on studies that
he made of Palestine, Donegal in Ireland and the Asia Minor coast seen
from Rhodes. His fascination with the Middle East can be seen in the
Arab Hall that he created at his house in Holland Park, London using
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century tiles from Damascus. Leighton, who
became President of the Royal Academy in 1878, was the first British
artist to be made a peer and his tomb is in St Paul’s Cathedral, London.

225

107 JOHN SINGER SARGENT
(Florence, 1856– London, 1925)
Ena and Betty, Daughters of Asher

and Mrs Wertheimer, 1901
Tate: Presented by the widow and family of Asher Wertheimer
in accordance with his wishes 1922
The sitters are the eldest daughters of the Jewish art dealer Asher
Wertheimer, who commissioned many family portraits by his friend
Sargent. The vivacious and mercurial Ena (1874–1936), on the right,
was a favourite of Sargent’s, who painted her again in 1905. The sisters
are standing in the drawing room of their father’s house in Connaught
Place in central London, appearing somewhat as if recent arrivals at
a glamorous party. Ena’s hand just below Betty’s (1877–1953) breast
adds a daring touch to the painting, and the sensuous and revealing
dresses accentuate the young women’s confidence and hedonism. They
are surrounded by their father’s collection of Old Masters and nearby
is a Louis XV commode and a large Kangxi vase. Sargent, an American,
seems not to have indulged in the varying levels of anti-Semitism
that wealthy Jewish families such as the Wertheimers would have
encountered routinely, and the artist and the Wertheimers became
close friends.
Born in Florence, Sargent was the son of an American doctor. He
had a cosmopolitan upbringing and studied painting in Paris under
Emile Auguste Carolus-Duran. Sargent was influenced by Diego
Vélazquez and also by Edouard Manet and the Impressionists. His
erotically charged portrait Madame X caused a great controversy when
shown at the Paris Salon in 1884. Sargent moved to England where he
was the most brilliant and sought-after portraitist of the time.

108 R O G E R F E N T O N (Bury, Lancashire, 1819– London, 1869) 11 0 J O H N T E N N I E L (London, 1820–1914)
Wounded Soldier, Crimean War, ca.1855 Illustrations to Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson),
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. London: Macmillan, 1865, 91
Photograph, albumen print, 215 x 167 mm
Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao. On deposit Wood engraving, 19 x 13 x 2.5 cm (overall)
from Centro Ordóñez-Falcón de Fotografía The British Library, London
Fenton studied classics and mathematics at University College, London, The Oxford mathematician, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–98),
in the 1830s, before taking drawing lessons and eventually exhibiting wrote his two Alice novels after a boat trip up the River Isis in 1862
paintings at the Royal Academy. In 1851, he became interested in in the company of the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, Henry
photography, met William Henry Fox Talbot and was closely involved Liddell, and his three daughters, one of whom was the ten-year-old
with the early development of photography in Britain. He made many Alice. Dodgson told the girls a fantasy story about Alice’s adventures
different kinds of image, including portraits, city scenes, landscapes, after following the White Rabbit down a hole in the ground. The
architecture and still lifes. In 1854, he was appointed photographer at extraordinary published story with its poems, songs, puns and insane
the British Museum and took photographs of the sculpture galleries and logic, includes many references to mathematics, natural history, the
the natural history collections. In 1855, Fenton travelled as an official sisters’ lives and acquaintances in Oxford, and to national figures
war photographer to the Crimea where Britain was involved in the first such as Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (“Bill the Lizard”) and the
major conflict since 1815. He took about 360 images and came under famous critic John Ruskin (“The Mock Turtle”), who taught the girls
enemy fire, but was less interested in the heroic aspects of war than in its drawing. The philosophical Cheshire Cat in Chapter Six, which fades
ordinary and prosaic reality. until it disappears leaving only its wide grin floating in the air, is partly
Roger Fenton’s photographs were a revelation to most who saw a meditation on the abstract concept of number and object.
them when they were displayed in the Exhibition of Photographic Although Dodgson made his own illustrations for the story in
Pictures Taken in the Crimea, Gallery of the Water Colour Society, Pall manuscript, he approached the famous Punch political cartoonist and
Mall, London, in September 1855 (an exhibition that travelled to many illustrator, John Tenniel, to produce the images for both Alice stories
venues around Britain during the following eight months). (the second book, Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found
There, was published in 1871). Tenniel’s illustrations for the Alice
books were engraved onto blocks of deal wood by the Brothers Dalziel
109 J O H N E V E R E T T M I L L A I S (Southampton, 1829– London, 1896) (George (1815–1902) and Edward (1817–1905)). These engravings
were then used as masters for making the electrotype copies for the
Illustration The Crawley Family in Anthony Trollope, actual printing of the books.
Framley Parsonage. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1861,

vol. 2, title page/frontispiece
111 H E R B E R T B O U R N E (1820–1907) after F O R D M A D O X B R O W N
20 x 13.5 x 3 cm (overall) (Calais, 1821– London, 1893)
The Last of England, in The Art Journal. Ed. Samuel Carter

From the beginning of his career Millais had a strong interest in literary
Hall, vol. 9 (London: Hodgson and Graves, 1 August 1870): 236
subjects and during his Pre-Raphaelite period created paintings inspired
by Shakespeare, John Keats, Walter Scott and Alfred Tennyson, among 33 x 25 x 5 cm (overall)
others. He also produced outstanding illustrations for George Moxon’s The British Library, London
celebrated edition of Tennyson’s poems in 1857. In 1860, as one of the
most successful young artists in London, Millais was hired by William The Art Journal was the most important art magazine of the Victorian
Makepeace Thackeray to provide illustrations for the new Cornhill period. It was founded in 1839 as the Art Union Monthly Journal and
Magazine’s serialised novel, Framley Parsonage, by the up-and-coming was edited by Samuel Carter Hall, who became the main proprietor
novelist Anthony Trollope (1815–82). The novel, which was the fourth and used the publication to reproduce expensive fine art engravings
in his famous Chronicles of Barsetshire series, secured Trollope’s of contemporary and Old Master art. Hall, a rather absurd and
reputation, and Millais’ six illustrations proved immensely popular. sanctimonious character who is said to be the model for Seth Pecksniff
The story concerns a socially ambitious young country vicar in Charles Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit (1843–44), failed to make the
and his entanglement with a dishonest local MP who tricks him into journal profitable and was bought out by George Virtue, who kept Hall
guaranteeing a huge loan. There are a also number of romantic sub- as editor and changed the magazine’s name to the one it kept until
plots and one is the focus of Millais’ illustration The Crawley Family, its demise in 1912. Hall supported the artists known as “The Clique”,
showing the vicar’s sister Lucy first entering the home of the poor curate founded in the late 1830s by Richard Dadd (who became insane in
Joseph Crawley and his family. Lucy was in love with Ludovic, Lord 1843) and including popular genre painters such as Augustus Egg and
Lufton whose mother refused the couple’s request to marry. However, William Powell Frith. He exposed the dubious practices of Old Master
Lucy’s kindness to the Crawleys softened the mother’s attitude and the dealers and sought to promote particular British artists, except the
romance ends happily in wedlock. Millais went on to illustrate a number Pre-Raphaelites and John Ruskin, whom he attacked vehemently.
of Trollope’s novels. Nevertheless, this issue of The Art Journal carries an engraving by

108 109
110 111
229

Herbert Bourne of a Pre-Raphaelite masterpiece, Ford Madox Brown’s back from Africa to “an Eastern city”, along with the Sultan’s Palace.
The Last of England (1855), which shows a poverty-stricken artist and Crane uses an extraordinary eclectic mixture of styles in his children’s
his wife leaving England for Australia. The subject was inspired by the stories: Chinese, Japanese, Medieval and Renaissance. In particular,
emigration of the Pre-Raphaelite sculptor Thomas Woolner and the this image shows the impact of the Japanese wood-block print as well
couple depicted are probably based on Brown and his wife Emma. as of Japanese artefacts, which had become very popular in the 1860s.
Walter Crane, who was influenced by William Morris’ Arts and
Crafts movement, was a prolific designer, artist and writer who was
deeply committed to Socialist politics.
11 2 J U L I A M A R G A R E T C A M E R O N (Calcutta, 1815– Kalutara, 1879)
Beatrice Cenci, 1870

114 H U B E R T V O N H E R K O M E R (Waal, 1849– Budleigh
Photograph, albumen print, 344 x 265 mm Salterton, Devon, 1914)
Collection Ordóñez-Falcón
Christmas in a Workhouse, in The Graphic (London,

Cameron was born in India where her father worked for the East India
25 December 1876): 30
Company. She was educated in Europe and returned to India where
she was a society hostess and promoter of philanthropic causes in the Wood engraving, 23 x 56 x 41.5 cm (overall)
1840s. A talented writer, she moved to England in 1848 and met the The British Library, London
poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson and the artist George Frederic Watts. She
bought her first camera in 1863. The following year she was elected The Graphic magazine was founded in 1869 by the engraver William
a member of the Photographic Society of London and was awarded Luson Thomas, who had worked as an illustrator in Paris, Rome and
a gold medal at a major photographic exhibition in Berlin in 1866. New York and for the Illustrated London News, which was founded
Cameron was a successful portrait photographer and also produced in 1842. He employed some of the most talented young realist
the illustrations for an edition of Tennyson’s works in 1874 as well as artists of the time, such as Luke Fildes and Hubert von Herkomer,
many photographs of literary and biblical subjects. who produced fifty-five illustrations for The Graphic and who was
This image is based on the tragic character of Beatrice Cenci drawn to Thomas’ concern for social issues and emphasis upon
from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s play The Cenci (1819). At once dangerous documentary accuracy and immediacy. Many of his images were of
and noble, Beatrice plotted the murder of her abusive father and was the poor and dispossessed who were particularly visible in London
tortured and executed, a story guaranteed to fascinate the Victorian during the economic recession of the 1870s. Appeals for charitable
audience. The model is May Prinsep (1853–1931), who posed for Watts donations appeared frequently next to the illustrations. Herkomer
and other painters. was also attracted by Thomas’ commitment to high artistic values
and was unhappy when in the 1880s the new forms of mechanical
reproduction led to a crudeness in the magazine’s aesthetic. His
own works were characterised by powerful draughtsmanship, busy
113 E D M U N D E V A N S (Southwark, London 1826–Ventnor, composition and a strong and expressive black line.
Isle of Wight, 1905) after W A L T E R C R A N E (Liverpool, 1845–1915) Herkomer was born in Waal, Bavaria and moved with his parents
to England in 1857. His childhood was marked by severe poverty and
he had little formal education before attending the South Kensington
Illustrations in Aladdin; or the wonderful Lamp, London:
Schools to study art and design. His social realist works, portraits and
George Routledge & Sons, 1875
illustrations for magazines and books made his reputation during
Wood engraving, printed in colour, 27 x 23.6 x 0.3 cm (overall) the 1870s and 1880s. He became Slade Professor of Fine Art at
Collection Geoffrey Beare Oxford and was knighted in 1896. Herkomer was also a pioneer film-
maker, establishing a studio at his house “Lululand”, named after
Walter Crane produced a large number of sixpenny and shilling “Toy his second wife, in Bushey, Hertfordshire, where he made historical
Books” for the publisher George Routledge between 1865 and 1876, costume dramas.
his drawings printed from wood-engraved blocks by Edmund Evans,
a prominent Victorian printer of children’s books who pioneered a
technique for colour printing called chromoxylography. Crane often
wrote the versions of the usually traditional stories himself. Aladdin
tells the tale of a poor tailor’s son who steals a magic lamp for a wicked
magician, who then tricks him but is in turn duped by Aladdin and a
beautiful Princess, daughter of the Sultan. Here we see the magician on
the right succumbing to a magic potion that he has drunk unwittingly,
watched by the lovers, prior to the Genii of the lamp bringing them all

112
114
113
231
231

115 S A M U E L B U T L E R (Langar, Nottinghamshire, 1835– London, 1902) 11 8 A U B R E Y B E A R D S L E Y (Brighton, 1872– Menton, 1898)
Blind Man Reading the Bible near Greenwich, 1 May 1892, The Climax, 1893, from A Portfolio of Aubrey Beardsley’s
from Samuel Butler’s photograph album number 2, page 6, Drawings Illustrating “Salome” by Oscar Wilde. London:
photograph 3 John Lane, 1906
Photograph, 76 x 102 mm Line block print, 345 x 273 mm (sheet), 226 x 162 mm (image)
St John’s College Library, Samuel Butler Collection. By permission of the Collection Alessandra and Simon Wilson
The Master and Fellows of St John’s College, Cambridge
Most of Aubrey Beardsley’s original drawings for Salome [CAT. 117] are
now in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and are not
11 6 S A M U E L B U T L E R (Langar, Nottinghamshire, 1835– London, 1902) available for loan. However, in 1906 the publisher John Lane produced
a portfolio of superb line block reproductions of them, the same size as
the originals. In Oscar Wilde’s play, it is Salome’s lust for the Baptist,
Blind Man Reading, with a Small Group of Children, 6 May
and his rejection of her, that brings his death. Here, she is about to kiss
1894, from Samuel Butler’s photograph album number 3,
him in death as she could not in life. Beardsley was no doubt aware
page 45, photograph 6 of the sexual connotations of his title. This drawing remains one of
Photograph, 76 x 102 mm the iconic images of the movements known as Symbolism and Art
St John’s College Library, Samuel Butler Collection. By permission of the Nouveau, in which Beardsley was a key figure.
The Master and Fellows of St John’s College, Cambridge
Samuel Butler was primarily a novelist, translator and philosopher 11 9 W . H . H O O P E R (London, 1834–1912) after E D W A R D C O L E Y
who had been a brilliant student at Cambridge before becoming a B U R N E - J O N E S (Birmingham, 1833– London, 1898)
sheep farmer in New Zealand in the 1860s and then training as an
artist at Heatherley’s School of Art in London. He is best known The Kynghtes Tale, in Geoffrey Chaucer, The works of Chaucer
for his novels, the utopian Erewhon (1872) and the posthumous
now newly imprinted. Ed. F.S. Ellis. London: William Morris at
satire The Way of All Flesh (1903), as well as for his writings on
the Kelmscott Press, 1896, 22
Christianity, evolutionary theory, Homer – who he believed was
a woman – and Italian art and architecture. He was dismissive of Woodcut, 550 x 430 mm (overall)
the Pre-Raphaelites whom he considered melodramatic fantasists The British Library, London
and incapable of the disenchanted and ironic vision necessary
for a truly modern art. His photography was wide-ranging, but he Published, perhaps fittingly, in the year that both Edward Burne-
was particularly fascinated by the disabled and outcast, such as Jones and William Morris died, the “Kelmscott Chaucer” is one of
this blind man outside a London railway station. The man reads a the greatest achievements in the history of British book design. From
Braille Bible against a backdrop of the ubiquitous advertisements the middle of the nineteenth century, interest in the medieval writer
of city life. Chaucer (1343–1400) as the “father” of English literature had grown
rapidly and both Burne-Jones and Morris read his poetry when at the
University of Oxford together in the 1850s. Morris’ design company
11 7 AUBREY BEARDSLEY produced glazed tiles based on The Legend of Good Women (?1386)
(Brighton, 1872– Menton, 1898) in the early 1860s, and the fourteenth-century The Canterbury Tales
served as a model for his The Earthly Paradise (1868–70).
The “Kelmscott Chaucer”, printed near Morris’ house on the
Oscar Wilde, Salome: A Tragedy in One Act: Translated
River Thames in Hammersmith, was four years in the making and
from the French of Oscar Wilde. London: John Lane, 1907
incorporated a new typeface called “Troy” based on fifteenth-century
(second edition with illustrations), title page and frontispiece
founts designed by Morris with the Arts and Crafts printer Emery
21.5 x 18 cm (overall) Walker and which eventually became known as “Chaucer”. Special ink
Collection Alessandra and Simon Wilson was acquired from Germany, and the handmade paper, decoration and
borders were designed by Morris, while Burne-Jones drew the eighty-
This is the second but the most complete and satisfying edition seven remarkable chivalric illustrations. W. H. Hooper engraved
of Oscar Wilde’s (1854–1900) play Salome, illustrated by Aubrey the wood blocks and with its dense, dark gothic type and dream-
Beardsley. First published in 1894 in a censored form, the images like imagery, the publication was seen by its producers as a work of
nevertheless created a sensation on account of their pagan eroticism, medieval architecture as much as a book to be read. The text was based
fully evident here in the uncensored title page and frontispiece. Their on the recent one of Walter Skeat, Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the
radical style, in which Beardsley evoked complex form with single lines University of Cambridge, published by Oxford University Press.
and blank spaces, here exemplified in the frontispiece, The Woman in
the Moon, also shocked. The “Woman” is a caricature of Wilde, and
Beardsley’s drawings both illustrate the play and comment on it and
its author.

115 116
117 118
119
233


MODERNITY
AND TRADITION
1900–1940
One of James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s followers was the Anglo-Danish painter Walter Sickert. WALTER RICHARD SICKERT
He had spent a lot of time in Paris at the end of the nineteenth century and then settled in London, SPENCER GORE
where he became the senior figure in a group of artists called the Camden Town Group after the
DAVID BOMBERG
district in London in which many of them lived. They painted scenes from the lives of the poor
HENRI GAUDIER-BRZESKA
among whom they lived , including their shabby rooms, love lives, music halls and cafés. The
“Bloomsbury” artists such as Duncan Grant painted their own middle-class milieu and attempted HENRY LAMB
to bridge the gap between fine art and design in the rugs, furniture and other goods produced by the WYNDHAM LEWIS
Omega Workshops from 1913. EDWARD WADSWORTH
There were also artists fascinated by the industrial aspects of twentieth-century life, who
DUNCAN GRANT
wanted to find forms appropriate to their subject matter. The Camden Town artist Spencer Gore
C.R.W. NEVINSON
used a Post-Impressionist style to depict the railway at the new town Letchworth to which he
had moved in 1912, while Wyndham Lewis, David Bomberg and Edward Wadsworth created WILLIAM ROBERTS
semi-abstract works to reveal the new forces in urban modernity. Like the French sculptor Henri GWEN JOHN
Gaudier-Brzeska, they looked to European art such as that of the Cubists and Futurists for EDWARD BURRA
inspiration. The Vorticist artists led by Wyndham Lewis also produced a journal, Blast, with an
HENRY MOORE
aggressive assault on British culture and a brutal typeface to match.
The First World War brought the pre-war avant-garde to an abrupt end. Most artists enlisted for BEN NICHOLSON
military service and a number were killed. Many of those who survived worked as official war artists STANLEY SPENCER
and their art was of necessity required to be more conventional in form than it was a few years earlier. PAUL NASH
Among them were Wyndham Lewis, David Bomberg and the English Futurist C.R.W. Nevinson.
MEREDITH FRAMPTON
The decade after the war saw a slow development towards international modernism for a
VANESSA BELL
number of younger artists including Ben Nicholson and Henry Moore. As in the case of older
artists such as Paul Nash, they responded to European abstract and Surrealist art and identified FREDERICK ETCHELLS
themselves with a cosmopolitan movement that embraced the architecture of Walter Gropius and ROGER FRY
Le Corbusier as well as various forms of utopian ideology. The intense political debates of the 1930s CHARLES SHANNON
had a critical effect on ideas about art throughout the decade.
F.L.M. GRIGGS
There were, however, many artists who remained figurative and looked for a wider audience
JAMES BOSWELL
than the one that might be expected for abstract painting: William Roberts and Edward Burra, in
different ways, sought a form of modern vernacular art concerned with contemporary social life, NAUM GABO
while Stanley Spencer practised a stark form of realism and also created his own imaginative world
in the village of Cookham, where humans are shown interacting with spiritual beings.
Once again, the outbreak of war in 1939 disrupted the British art scene, and again artists enlisted
and often became war artists. Meredith Frampton’s scenes of military administrators and scientists
have a surrealistic intensity that reflects the extraordinary pressures faced by Britain during the war.
Henry Lamb,
Lytton Strachey, 1914.

236

MODERNITY
AND TRADITION
1900 – 1940
Since the “night of time,” as they say in France, criticism has set in opposition the words “subject” and
“treatment.” Is it not possible that this antithesis is meaningless, and that the two things are one, and
that an idea does not exist apart from its exact expression? Pictures, like streets and persons, have to
have names to distinguish them. But their names are not definitions of them, or, indeed, anything but the
loosest kind of labels that make it possible for us to handle them, that prevent us from mislaying them, or
sending them to the wrong address. If the names we give pictures were indeed their subject, there would
have been need of but one picture in the world entitled “Madonna and Child.” The subject is something
much more precise and much more intimate than the loose title that is equally applicable to a thousand
different canvases. The real subject of a picture or a drawing is the plastic facts it succeeds in expressing,
and all the world of pathos, of poetry, of sentiment that it succeeds in conveying, is conveyed by means of
the plastic facts expressed, by the suggestion of the three dimensions of space, the suggestion of weight,
the prelude or the refrain of movement, the promise of movement to come, or the echo of movement
past. If the subject of a picture could be stated in words there had been no need to paint it. Writers on
art wisely, in their own interests, mostly ride off at once from any real contact, either with a picture or
its subject, to irrelevant secondary reflections capable of being buttoned on to that subject. The nearer
a writer on art is to the heart of the subject, the better he knows that the subject is very poor copy. The
subject would require words that are a little too simple. The excessive simplicity of the words required
would render the expressions meaningless, or merely risible to readers accustomed to literature.
Walter Sickert, “The Language of Art”, The New Age,

London, 28 July 1910, in Walter Sickert: The Complete
Writings on Art. Ed. Anna Greutzner Robins. London
and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Let me sum up for a moment what I have said about the relation of art to Nature, which is, perhaps, the
greatest stumbling-block to the understanding of the graphic arts.
I have admitted that there is beauty in Nature, that is to say, that certain objects constantly do,
and perhaps any object may, compel us to regard it with that intense disinterested contemplation that
belongs to the imaginative life, and which is impossible to the actual life of necessity and action; but that
in objects created to arouse the aesthetic feeling we have an added conciousness of purpose on the part
of the creator, that he made it on purpose not to be used but to be regarded and enjoyed; and that this
feeling is characteristic of the aesthetic judgement proper.
When the artist passes from pure sensations to emotions aroused by means of sensations, he uses
natural forms which, in themselves, are calculated to move our emotions, and he presents these in
such a manner that the forms themselves generate in us emotional states, based upon the fundamental
necessities of our physical and physiological nature. The artist’s attitude to natural form is, therefore,
infinitely various according to the emotions he wishes to arouse. He may require for his purpose the
most complete representation of a figure, he may be intensely realistic, provided that his presentment,
in spite of its closeness to natural appearance, disengages clearly for us the appropriate emotional
elements. Or he may give us the merest suggestion of natural forms, and rely almost entirely upon the
force and intensity of the emotional elements involved in his presentment.
XXI

We may, then, dispense once for all with the idea of likeness to Nature, of correctness or
incorrectness as a test, and consider only whether the emotional elements inherent in natural
form are adequately discovered, unless, indeed, the emotional idea depends at any point upon
likeness, or completeness of representation.
Roger Fry, An Essay on Aesthetics. London, 1909.
(Quoted in Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, Art in
Theory 1900–2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas.
1. We hear from America and the Continent all sorts of disagreeable things about England: “the
unmusical, anti-artistic, unphilosophic country”.
2. We quite agree.
3. Luxury, sport, the famous English “Humour”, the thrilling ascendancy and idée fixe of Class,
producing the most intense snobbery in the World; heavy stagnant pools of Saxon blood,
incapable of anything but the song of a frog, in home-counties: these phenomena give England
a peculiar distinction, in the wrong sense, among the nations.
4. This is why England produces such good artists from time to time.
5. This is also the reason why a movement towards art and imagination could burst up here, from
this lump of compressed life, with more force than anywhere else.
6. To believe that it is necessary for or conducive to art, to “improve” life, for instance – make
architecture, dress, ornament, in “better taste”, is absurd.
7. The Art-instinct is permanently primitive.
8. In a chaos of imperfection, discord, etc., it finds the same stimulus as in Nature.
9. The artist of the modem movement is a savage (in no sense an “advanced”, perfected, democratic,
Futurist individual of Mr Marinetti’s limited imagination): this enormous, jangling, journalistic,
fairy desert of modern life serves him as Nature did more technically primitive man.
10. As the steppes and the rigours of the Russian winter, when the peasant has to lie for weeks in
his hut, produce that extraordinary acuity of feeling and intelligence we associate with the Slav;
so England is just now the most favourable country for the appearance of a great art.
Wyndham Lewis, “Manifesto”, Blast, no. 1 (June 1914):

30–43.
Uccello accumulated pale parallels, and delighted in cold architecture of distinct colour. Korin found
in the symmetrical gushing of water, in waves like huge vegetable insects, traced and worked faintly,
on a golden pâte, his business. Cézanne liked cumbrous, democratic slabs of life, slightly leaning,
transfixed in vegetable intensity.
Beauty is an immense predilection, a perfect conviction of the desirability of a certain thing,
whatever that thing may be. It is a universe for one organism. To a man with long and consumptive
fingers, a sturdy hand may be heaven. We can aim at no universality of form, for what we see is not
the reality. Henri Fabre was in every way a superior being to a Salon artist, and he knew of elegant
grubs which he would prefer to the Salon painter’s nymphs. – It is quite obvious though, to fulfil the
conditions of successful art, that we should live in relatively small communities.
Wyndham Lewis, “Inferior Religions”, The Wild Body.

London: Chatto & Windus, 1927, 241.
XXII

Any considerable work of art has two distinct elements: a formal element appealing to our sensibility
for reasons which cannot be stated with any clarity, but which are certainly psychological in origin;
and an arbitrary or accidental element of more complex appeal which is the outer clothing given to
these underlying forms. It is at least arguable that the purely formal element in art does not change;
that the same canons of harmony and proportion are present in primitive art, in Greek art, in Gothic
art, in Renaissance art and in the art of the present day. Such forms, we may say, are archetypal;
due to the physical structure of the world and the psychological structure of man. And it is for this
reason that the artist, with some show of reason, can take up an attitude of detachment. It is his
sense of the importance of the archetypal which makes him relatively indifferent to the phenomenal.
The recognition of such universal formal qualities in art is consistently materialistic. It no more
contradicts the materialistic interpretation of the history of art than does a recognition of the
relative permanency of the human form, or the forms of crystals in geology. Certain factors in life are
constant; but to that extent they are not a part of history. History is concerned with that part of life
which is subject to change; and the Marxian dialectic is an interpretation of history, not a theory of
the structure or morphology of life.
Another consideration which mitigates the objection to the formalistic attitude is that, granted
the existence of permanent and unchanging elements in art, there is, admittedly, at various periods,
a different valuation of such elements. In fact, what is the difference between classical and romantic
epochs but a difference in the emphasis given to the formal basis of works of art? […] It is merely,
we might say, a difference of accent. But it is in precisely such a way that a reasonable Marxian
would expect art to be inflected. We can, therefore, in any broad historical generalisations, dismiss
the underlying formal structure of art, to concentrate on style and mannerism. For it is in style and
mannerism that the prevailing ideology of a period is expressed.
Herbert Read, What is Revolutionary Art?. London,

1935. (Quoted in Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, Art
in Theory 1900–2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas.
The method of Superrealism may be scientific, but the fact that it is applied entirely to the internal
and not to the external world makes the whole attitude of its exponents nearer to mysticism than to
rationalism. It is only the last development of individualism, which first modifies external standards
according to its own, and in the end denies that any standards exist at all apart from those that are
purely internal and personal.
Dada and Superrealism have both performed a useful function in denying and to some extent
destroying certain false standards which need destroying, but their achievement in this way has been
entirely negative. They both represent the best kind of art which a society in decay and chaos can
produce, but the time has now come when we can expect art to be something more positive. If art is
primarily an activity for the conveying of ideas, then Superrealism is a side track, and it is time that
art came back to its true path. It seems no longer possible to produce a bourgeois art that is both
rational and alive, but a new art is beginning to arise, the product of the proletariat, which is again
performing its true function, that of propaganda.”
Anthony Blunt (1907–83), “Rationalist and

Anti-rationalist ART”, Left Review, vol. 2, no. 10
(London, July 1936): vi.
XXIII

237

1 20 WALTER RICHARD SICKERT Sickert was born to a Danish father and English mother in
(Munich, 1860– Bathampton, Somerset, 1942) Munich and moved to England in 1868. From 1879 to 1881 he was an
actor before studying at the Slade School of Art, London and then
Portrait of Mrs Barrett, 1906 becoming an apprentice and assistant to James Abbott McNeill
Whistler in his studio in Chelsea. Sickert met Edgar Degas in Paris in
Oil on canvas, 51 x 40.8 cm 1883 and spent much time in Paris and then Dieppe throughout his
The Samuel Courtauld Trust. The Courtauld Gallery, London career. He also lived in Venice for a number of years before settling
in London in 1906. Sickert was a pioneer of Impressionism in Britain
Mrs Barrett was a London dressmaker who Sickert painted many and the leading figure in the Camden Town Group, which included
times from 1906 onwards, in various guises and moods. Her protean painters such as Harold Gilman and Spencer Gore [CAT. 121]. He
forms indicate Sickert’s fascination with the mysterious hidden depths is probably best known for his nude paintings of the period ca. 1905
of the most ordinary people. This canvas perhaps suggests a certain to ca. 1910, some of which have a sinister atmosphere indicated by
grim and stoical acceptance of life, while others evoke a variety of titles such as the celebrated Camden Town Murder, ca. 1907–8. In the
strong emotions. Sickert’s technique was highly painterly and yet 1920s and 1930s, Sickert continued to experiment in his art and used
always conveyed a poetic quality that was intended to provoke a sense press photography to paint some major canvases of contemporary
of some uncertain, perhaps tragic, narrative. Mrs Barrett died in the celebrities and events that anticipate aspects of Pop Art.
National Temperance Hospital near Mornington Crescent where
Sickert lived for much of his early London career.
238 MODERNITY AND TRADITION

1 21 SPENCER GORE residential districts and there was an emphasis on open green spaces.
(Epsom, Surrey, 1878– Richmond, Surrey, 1914) No public houses were built to encourage sobriety. Howard’s ideas
were admired by many artists and designers, including Gore who had
Letchworth Railway Station, 1912 previously lived in the poorer districts of London. The railway station
also opened in 1903 and many tourists travelled to Letchworth to
Oil on canvas, 62 x 72.5 cm see the new concept of a garden city as it grew. Gore’s image shows
National Railway Museum, York and Shildon his interest not only in the subject matter of an ideal modernity but
also, in its strong colours and formal design, in Post-Impressionist
When he got married and had his first child in 1912, Spencer Gore techniques, particularly those of Paul Gauguin and Vincent
moved to Letchworth, a new town in Hertfordshire to the north of van Gogh.
London, which had been founded in 1903 by the great town planner Gore trained at the Slade School of Art in London and was a friend
Ebenezer Howard, whose Garden Cities of To-morrow (1902) was of the painters Harold Gilman and Wyndham Lewis. He met Walter
influential internationally. It was the world’s first “garden city” and Sickert in 1904 and was a founder and first president of the Camden
was intended to be an ideal combination of the best features of the Town Group in 1911. He painted music halls scenes, interiors and
town and country. Industrial areas were zoned separately from urban landscapes. He died of pneumonia in 1914.
239

122 DAVID BOMBERG
(Birmingham, 1890–London, 1957)
Figure Composition, ca. 1913

Oil on millboard, 36 x 26 cm
Manchester City Galleries. Purchased with the assistance of the Victoria and
Albert Museum Purchase Grant Fund.
This small composition on millboard comprises two or three highly

simplified figures described in thick and textured oil paint using a very
limited range of colours. The block forms seem to suggest two humans
with interlocked arms, but the image is ambiguous. The artist appears
to be experimenting with the suggestion of depth by contrasting areas
of colour while also perhaps seeking to evoke a sense of movement.
Bomberg came from a Polish Jewish family who settled in
Whitechapel, an immigrant district in the East End of London where
his father was a leatherworker. Bomberg trained as a lithographer and
then with Walter Sickert at Westminster School of Art, before going to
the Slade School of Art, London in 1911 where he was a contemporary
of Stanley Spencer, Paul Nash and fellow Jewish artist Mark Gertler.
Although a brilliant traditional draughtsman, Bomberg became deeply
involved in the avant-garde scene in London, influenced by Roger Fry’s
writings as well as by the second Post-Impressionist and first Futurist
exhibitions, which were both held in London in 1912. By 1913, and after
a visit to Paris with the London-based American Jewish sculptor Jacob
Epstein, his art was becoming increasingly abstract as is evident in
Figure Composition.
At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, he was one of the
leading modernist painters in Britain, supported by the critics Roger
Fry and T.E. Hulme, and confident enough to reject joining Wyndham
Lewis’ Vorticist movement that year. Bomberg was an official war artist
and after the end of the conflict turned to a more representational
and painterly style, focusing on portraits and landscapes. Many of the
latter were painted in Spain, where he worked in the 1920s and 1930s
at Toledo, Ronda and Asturias. After the Second World War, Bomberg
taught at the Borough Polytechnic in south London and influenced
artists such as Frank Auerbach [CAT. 172] and Leon Kossoff.

124 HENRI GAUDIER-BRZESKA
(Saint Jean de Braye, Orléans, 1891–
Neuville Saint Vaast, Pas de Calais, 1915)
Seated Woman, 1914

Marble, 47 x 35 x 24.3 cm
Centre Pompidou, Paris. Musée national d’art moderne / Centre de création
industrielle. Donation from Kettle’s Yard Foundation in 1965
This may have been the last major carving that Gaudier-Brzeska made
before he enlisted in the French army and was killed in action on the
Western Front in 1915. The face owes much to the contemporary
fascination with “primitive” or non-western art and yet the work also
has a strong classical feeling to it in the large smooth volumes of the
limbs and torso. The monumental shapes have a powerful organic
quality and bring together the many visual sources informing the
artist’s creativity into a unified whole. These ranged from Cubist and
Futurist art to Chinese calligraphy and mechanical drawing.
Gaudier-Brzeska was a French sculptor who moved to London
in 1910 with no formal training behind him. The second part of his
surname indicates the strange relationship that he had with the
Polish writer Sophie Brzeska. He was influenced by the American
sculptor Jacob Epstein as well as by Constantin Brancusi and Amedeo
Modigliani and began to carve directly in stone, believing that this
best conformed to the modernist requirement for “truth to materials”.
He became a close friend of the American poet Ezra Pound and with
him was part of the Vorticist movement in 1914. Gaudier-Brzeska
published a manifesto in the magazine Blast [CAT. 140], which was a
brilliant and idiosyncratic short history of sculpture that claimed the
decline of ancient formal power since the Renaissance was about to
be reversed in the new European sculpture. He was the subject of a
“biopic” by Ken Russell, Savage Messiah (1972).
241

1 23 HENRY LAMB
(Adelaide, 1883– London, 1960)
Lytton Strachey, 1914

Tate: Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1957
The writer and critic Giles Lytton Strachey (1880–1932) was a

founding member of the so-called Bloomsbury Group, which also
included the critic Roger Fry, the writer Virginia Woolf and the
painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. Strachey’s most famous book
was Eminent Victorians (1918), which introduced a new psychological
element to biographical writing and also a witty and irreverent attitude
towards his subjects, the Roman Catholic convert Cardinal Manning,
the headmaster Thomas Arnold, the celebrated nurse and reformer
Florence Nightingale and the soldier General Gordon. A homosexual,
Strachey had a strange relationship with the painter Dora Carrington
with whom he lived from 1917. She committed suicide two months
after his death. This painting is a larger version of one made in 1912
in the artist’s studio in the Vale of Health on Hampstead Heath in
north London. Called by the two men “the Grandissimo”, this painting
captures perfectly the notoriously languid Strachey, with his famous
red beard, long legs and slippered feet.
Lamb was born in Australia but was educated in Britain, where
he trained as a doctor before studying painting in Paris. He was a friend
of artists such as Wyndham Lewis and Augustus John, and during the
war served in the Royal Army Medical Corps and was awarded the
Military Cross. He practised mainly as a portrait painter throughout
the rest of his career.

1 25 WYNDHAM LEWIS 1 26 EDWARD WADSWORTH
(Amherst, Nova Scotia, 1882– London, 1957) (Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire, 1889–London, 1949)
Composition in Red and Mauve, 1915 Vorticist Composition, ca. 1914–15

Pen, ink, chalk and gouache on paper, 34.7 x 24.5 cm Oil on canvas, 76.3 x 63.5 cm
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
This work belonged to the artist Helen Saunders, one of two women This is the only surviving Vorticist oil painting by Wadsworth and was
who were part of the Vorticist movement led by Wyndham Lewis in considered at one stage to be a fake. The artist’s daughter, however,
1914–15 and who contributed to the two issues of the journal that he authenticated it in 1988 and, after X-rays showed that it was painted
edited, Blast. Like the painting by Edward Wadsworth [CAT. 126], it over the figure of a seated man smoking a pipe and with a hat on his
appears to be entirely abstract and yet almost certainly has figurative lap, believed it was in fact a highly formalised interpretation of that
references to bodies, architecture and machinery. Lewis aimed at subject. It is indeed possible to read the shapes in a figurative way.
a compacted imagery and sought to evoke multiple impressions to However, Vorticist art was usually multi-referential and indications of
convey a complex modern vision. Unlike the Futurists, the Vorticists architecture and machinery are also relevant aspects of understanding
were not concerned to imitate movement but to create works with an the image. As with the work of Wyndham Lewis [CAT. 125],
intense yet still dynamism. By contrast with Wadsworth’s more serene Wadsworth’s in many respects anticipates the art of Kazimir Malevich
art, Lewis’ work has a restless and awkward quality, which suggests a and Constructivism.
hidden narrative. Wadsworth, the son of a Yorkshire industrialist, studied
Lewis was perhaps the most cosmopolitan of British artists in engineering in Germany and then trained at the Slade School of Art,
the early twentieth century and lived and studied in a number of London. In 1913, he joined Lewis in founding the Rebel Art Centre and
cities in Europe between 1901 and 1909, responding in various and was a leading figure in the Vorticist movement in 1914–15, contributing
powerful ways to the new ideas in art, literature and philosophy that he significantly to the two issues of Blast [CAT. 140]. Most of his surviving
encountered. During the First World War, Lewis was an artillery officer work from this period is on paper in the form of watercolours and
and war artist and after the conflict produced an astonishing output woodcuts and much of his imagery is based on industrial scenery, in
of work as an artist and writer. He was one of the most original and particular maritime settings, and machinery and has an almost oriental
important British painters of the twentieth century, as well as a major clarity and subtlety. Wadsworth was an exhibitor at the only Vorticist
author of novels and literary, philosophical and political books. Always exhibition in London in 1915 before becoming a naval camouflage and
controversial and a self-styled “enemy” of what he saw as British war artist (p. 38). A wealthy individual able to pursue his own interests
cultural and aesthetic complacency, his often right-wing political views in art, in the 1930s he was a leading exponent of Surrealism and
in the 1930s ensured that he was a permanent outsider in the British abstraction, and a member of the Unit One group [CAT. 145].
arts and literary scene. He was an independent exponent of modernist
art in Britain and after the Second World War an enthusiastic supporter
of younger artists such as Francis Bacon. He lost his sight in 1951, but
continued to write novels, criticism and art theory.

245

1 27 DUNCAN GRANT
(Rothiemurchus, Invernesshire, 1885– Aldermaston, Berkshire, 1978)
The Blue Sheep, 1915

Folding screen, gouache on paper mounted on canvas, 162.5 x 205 cm
This large screen, painted in distemper on paper, was produced by

Grant for the Omega Workshops, a business founded by the artist
and critic Roger Fry in 1913 to encourage the development of modern
design responding to Post-Impressionist art from France (p. 38). The
screen depicts a flock of about twenty sheep in a wicker pen, painted
in bright blues on an orange/red background. Grant has ignored the
hinged breaks between the three folding panels – breaks that are
always visible in order for the screen to stand up – and thus the joins
slice through many of the sheep. The screen was purchased by Paul
Roche, a poet and translator of Latin and Greek, who looked after
Grant in his final years.
Grant was one of the leading painters of the Bloomsbury Group
and, along with Vanessa Bell and Roger Fry, a leading modernist in
England before the First World War, responding to Fauvist, Cubist
and abstract art. He attended the Slade School of Art, London, studied
in Paris and Italy, and was for a while the lover of his cousin Lytton
Strachey [CAT. 123]. A pacifist during the war, Grant lived with his
co-director in the Omega Workshops, Vanessa Bell, and her husband
the critic Clive Bell, in Charleston Farmhouse, near Firle in Sussex,
which is now open to the public and gives the best idea of the ideal
“Bloomsbury” environment with its gardens and decorated rooms,
furniture and textiles. Although a homosexual, Grant had a child by
Vanessa Bell. He spent most of his life at Charleston before dying in
Roche’s home.

247

1 28 CHRISTOPHER RICHARD WYNNE NEVINSON modern warfare. He was invalided out of the army and appointed
(London, 1889–1946) an official war artist, along with fellow modernists David Bomberg,
Wyndham Lewis and others.
French Troops Resting, 1916 Nevinson was the son of a famous war correspondent, Henry
Nevinson. He was trained at the Slade School of Art and was a
Oil on canvas, 71 x 91.5 cm contemporary of Stanley Spencer and Paul Nash. In 1913, he became
Imperial War Museum, London the sole British artist to ally himself with Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
and the Italian Futurists. This caused a split with Lewis and the other
French troops are shown carrying full kit, exhausted, dejected and artists who formed the Vorticist group. Like Lewis, Nevinson had a
resting by the side of a road. In spite of health problems, the artist combative temperament and after the war travelled to New York,
joined the Friends Ambulance Unit with his father in 1914 and served where he painted some Futurist-inspired canvases of the city. His later
in northern France and Flanders, where he witnessed the appalling work was an ambitious attempt to create a modern allegorical form of
destruction of the First World War. Deeply disturbed by what he had painting in the grand style.
seen, in his paintings Nevinson used elements of a Futurist style to
express his violent reaction against the de-humanising aspects of

1 29 WILLIAM ROBERTS Hippodrome had a capacity of nearly 1,500. The figures shown here
(London, 1895–1980) are cramped into the cheap seats of the Upper Gallery, or “Gods”, and
seem at once enthralled, uncomfortable and bored, some perhaps
At the Hippodrome (The Gods), 1920 irritated by the screaming child in the middle of the scene. Their
faces are brutal in form and expression and the artist may have been
Oil on canvas, 97.8 x 92.6 cm reflecting the tense social atmosphere of post-war London, which
New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester was recovering from the human catastrophe of the conflict as people
readjusted to peace.
This painting was inspired by the London music halls, which had Roberts came from a poor East End background and attended the
been a popular subject with the Camden Town Group artists before Slade School of Art, London. He was a member of the Vorticist group
the First World War. The Hippodrome was a very large music hall in 1914 and, after serving in the artillery and then as an official war
and variety theatre, which at the time Roberts painted this work had artist during the First World War, joined Wyndham Lewis’ short-lived
recently hosted the first official jazz concerts in Britain by the racially Group X in 1920, when he made this painting. Throughout his career,
mixed Original Dixieland Jazz Band from New Orleans. On the corner Roberts was dedicated to making a vernacular and popular form of
of Leicester Square and Charing Cross Road in the West End, the modernist art that concerned itself with the lives of ordinary people.
249

13 0 WALTER RICHARD SICKERT
(Munich, 1860– Bathampton, Somerset, 1942)
Portrait of Victor Lecourt, 1922–24

Manchester City Galleries
On 2 November 1921, Sickert wrote to his sister-in-law, Andrina

Schweder: “I am painting also Victor Lecour [sic], a superb creature,
who used to run the Clos Normand at Martin Eglise”. The following
year, on 19 January, he told Andrina that Lecourt was “like a bear”
(both quotes in Wendy Baron, Sickert: Paintings and Drawings. New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006, 480 (published for
the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art)). Martin Eglise is
a hamlet between Envermeu and Dieppe. The setting for the portrait
is Sickert’s apartment at 44 rue Aguado (now Boulevard Verdun) in
Dieppe where he had spent much time since the 1880s. The imposing
country restaurateur stands in the middle of the sitting room with the
sea and beach visible through the window behind him. Lecourt has
a large beard and bald head and stands with his hands in his pockets
staring out at the viewer. Sickert finished the unvarnished painting in
his London studio and exhibited it at the Royal Academy in 1925 where
it was highly acclaimed by the critics.
During the 1920s and 1930s, Sickert moved towards a new way
of painting with broad brushwork and a matt finish and often on a
large scale, frequently using photography as a source for his images.
Although this painting was done from life, it marks a turning point
in Sickert’s work and anticipates the works for which he became
celebrated in the final years of his career.

251

131 GWEN JOHN 13 2 EDWARD BURRA
(Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, 1876– Dieppe, 1939) (London, 1905– Rye, Sussex, 1976)
Girl in Mulberry Dress, 1923 The Café, 1930

Oil on canvas, 69 x 53.3 cm Watercolour on paper, 82.9 x 67.5 cm
Southampton City Art Gallery Southampton City Art Gallery
Gwen John painted a series of portraits of an unidentified girl in The high viewpoint is taken from above a figure in a cap in the
a mulberry dress in the early 1920s. The works in this series are immediate foreground of a café looking across a table with a
characterised by the use of dry paint, a very unfinished, even bare, geometrically patterned cloth towards a man wearing a hat and with
surface and by a subdued palette and strange distortions in the figure. his head resting on his left hand. The bar on the right is lit by lamps
The effect is of a quiet monumentality in keeping with John’s interest near some ambiguous reversed lettering on glass. Burra travelled
in the revival of classicism in much European art after the First World abroad frequently in the late 1920s and early 1930s, especially to Paris,
War. The small differences in tone across the canvas are finely judged Marseilles, Toulon, New York, Barcelona, Madrid and Morocco, where
and John used a detailed numbered disc to find exactly the right he pursued an energetically homosexual lifestyle in spite of frequent
shades. The setting may be the artist’s studio, as there seems to be a bouts of ill health. He created many café, dance hall and nightclub
stack of canvases visible in the bottom left corner. scenes during this period from amalgamations of personal experiences
Gwen John was born in Wales and in the 1890s studied at the and magazine and other photographic illustrations.
Slade School of Art, London where her brother Augustus was a student Burra studied at the Royal College of Art, London between 1923
too. She was a member of the New English Art Club and also studied and 1925 and was influenced by the work of William Roberts [CAT.
in Paris, where she modelled for the French sculptor Auguste Rodin 129] and his friend Paul Nash [CAT. 136]. He was also fascinated by
with whom she had an affair and remained in love until her death. She Dada collage, Surrealism and the satirical work of the German artist
became a friend of Rodin’s secretary, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, George Grosz, and from these interests created a unique visual world
and studied his work. She converted to Roman Catholicism in 1913 of demi-monde characters and eerily distorted urban spaces. Later,
and began a series of portraits of Mère Marie Poussepin, the founder in the 1930s, his art became more fantastic and he painted images
of an order of the Dominican Sisters of Charity with a convent at responding to the violence of the Spanish civil war. For most of his life,
Meudon. Unlike her extrovert and sexually extravagant brother, Gwen Burra lived in the small town of Rye, Kent and in his final years painted
John lived a quiet life dedicated to her art and spiritual experience, many landscapes.
evident in the silent, often nun-like women and simple interiors of her
paintings. After a decade of diminishing output as an artist, she died in
Dieppe, having spent most of her adult life in France.

253

13 3 HENRY MOORE 13 5 BEN NICHOLSON
(Castleford, Yorkshire, 1898– Much Hadham, Hertfordshire, 1987) (Denham, Buckinghamshire, 1894– London, 1982)
Two Forms, 1936 Painting, 1937, 1937

Brown Hornton stone on wood base, 95 x 77 x 57cm Oil on canvas, 79.5 x 91.5 cm
The Henry Moore Foundation, Much Hadham, Hertfordshire The Samuel Courtauld Trust. The Courtauld Gallery, London
This two-part sculpture is carved in brown Hornton stone, an Nicholson painted this canvas at the height of his interest in
ironstone quarried in Oxfordshire and used frequently by Moore in abstraction and Constructivism. It is dominated by pale colours except
the later 1930s. By the mid-1930s, he was investigating both Surrealist for the powerful impact of the small rectangle of red at the centre and
and abstract approaches and in 1934 was a member of the Unit One the larger one of black above it. The colours evoke different spatial
group [CAT. 145], which sought to bring the two tendencies together, depths, which paradoxically appear to both contradict and balance one
as well as the Axis group in 1935–37, which promoted international another. Although clearly influenced by the work of Piet Mondrian,
modernism in Britain. The richly coloured stone has been carved into Nicholson had developed his abstract style in the 1930s out of earlier
one circular form with a shallow notch and another irregular shaped landscape and still-life paintings and in 1934 produced the first of his
partner, evoking a human torso and has deeper notches, one with a famous “white reliefs”. These were subtly carved onto wooden panels
hole continuing through the stone. The forms also suggest heads and and then painted white. In fact, they still made reference to still-life
seem to be in some sort of psychological relationship with one another. motifs, as is also the case in Painting, 1937, where the tonal colours
Of the holes in his sculpture, Moore wrote: are suggestive of sky and landscape effects. Nicholson’s interests are
ultimately more empirical and naturalistic than those of Mondrian,
The first hole made through a piece of stone is a revelation. The hole whose theosophical theories determined the appearance of his overtly
connects one side to the other, making it immediately more three- “pure” paintings.
dimensional. A hole can itself have as much shape-meaning as a solid Nicholson was the son of the painter William Nicholson and
mass… The mystery of the hole – the mysterious fascination of caves in studied at the Slade School of Art, London from 1910 to 1911. He
hillsides and cliffs. travelled extensively in Europe and in the 1920s came under the
(“The Sculptor Speaks”, The Listener (18 August 1937): 449.) influence of Pablo Picasso and Cubism. Nicholson was mainly
interested in landscape art at the time and in 1928 visited the artists’
Moore was the most successful and highly acclaimed British sculptor colony of St Ives, Cornwall, discovering the “primitive” work of the
of the twentieth century with a huge practice and an international local fisherman Alfred Wallis. In the 1930s, along with his wife Barbara
reputation. He absorbed many influences in the 1920s and 1930s, Hepworth [CAT. 151], he was a pioneer of international abstraction
from the work of Alberto Giacometti and Pablo Picasso, to geological and was instrumental in introducing the work of Hans Arp, Constantin
and animal forms, and from these created a unique modern sculptural Brancusi, László Moholy-Nagy and Mondrian to British artists. He was
language. His art can be seen in many public spaces across Britain an editor of the important modernist publication Circle in 1937. From
and Europe. the late 1930s until 1958, he lived and worked in St Ives where he was
the leading figure as well as an internationally renowned artist. He
moved to Ticino, Switzerland in 1958 and returned to London in 1974,
where he died.

255

13 4 STANLEY SPENCER
(Cookham, Berkshire, 1891– Cliveden, Buckinghamshire, 1959)
A Family Group (Hilda, Unity and Dolls), 1937

Leeds Museum and Galleries (Leeds Art Gallery)
The artist’s wife Hilda stands behind their younger daughter Unity,
aged seven, in Hilda’s parents’ house in Hampstead. While the
little girl looks fearlessly out towards the viewer, Hilda looks away
steadfastly to our left, mother and daughter embodying different
stages of life and yet inseparably identified. The psychological tension
is unmistakable and reflects the breakdown in the relationship
between Spencer and his wife after he embarked on an affair with
his model Patricia Preece. Spencer had unrealistically hoped for
some kind of accommodation between all three during his visit to
Hampstead in 1937 when this painting was completed, but Hilda
refused the suggestion and the image records the tragic impact of the
end of their marriage. The blind-eyed dolls add a sinister aspect to
the painting, one staring out with an ambivalent expression, the other
twisted almost in pain in Unity’s arms.
Spencer was born in the Thames village of Cookham, Berkshire,
the son of a piano teacher, and studied at the Slade School of Art,
London from 1907 to 1912. He was an eccentric non-conformist in his
religion and life and many of his paintings are drawn from biblical and
other sacred sources as well as from his own experience and that of
the ordinary people around him. He was a medical orderly during the
First World War and also a war artist. In the 1920s, he was a friend of
artists such as William Roberts [CAT. 129] and Paul Nash [CAT. 136]
and married the painter Hilda Carline in 1925. In 1927, he worked
on a special commission for a war memorial chapel in Burghclere,
Berkshire, the first of a number of such ambitious projects that
culminated in The Resurrection, Port Glasgow (1947–50). Elected
Associate of the Royal Academy in 1932, Spencer resigned in 1935
after the rejection of two works from the summer exhibition. During
the Second World War, he was commissioned to paint Shipbuilding on
the Clyde completed in 1950. He was elected RA in 1950 and knighted
in the year of his death.

257

13 6 PAUL NASH
(London, 1889– Boscombe, Hampshire, 1946)
Druid Landscape, ca. 1938

Oil on cardboard, 58.5 x 40.5 cm
British Council Collection
Painted on board, this work is based on a photograph of one of the

ancient standing stones in Avebury, Wiltshire, taken with a Kodak
pocket camera by the artist in the summer of 1933. This was Nash’s
first visit to the famous megalithic site, which inspired a number
of his works. Although an English subject, Druid Landscape was
painted in Nice, France, early in 1934, while Nash was travelling for
his health across France, Italy, Spain and North Africa. Nash founded
the Unit One group [CAT. 145] in the same year and this work was
displayed at the group’s inaugural exhibition. He had been working
in a more abstract style for a few years but from 1933 returned to
the most important theme in his work, the genius loci of the English
landscape. The reference to the druids, or the priestly caste of ancient
British society, in the title suggests Nash’s fascination with the
mystical aspects of the landscape and the animism that he ascribed to
prehistoric man’s relationship with the inanimate. The great stones
were for him personalities with a real presence, not simply rock
shapes, and were actors in a strange drama.
Nash studied at the Slade School of Art, London from 1910 to
1911 and began to make Romantic and Symbolist landscape works.
He served in the army in 1917 and was appointed an official war artist,
which led to some of his finest work. During the 1920s, he became
friendly with Edward Burra [CAT. 132], a fellow member of Unit One,
and was influenced by the painting of the Italian artist Giorgio de
Chirico. His work always had a strong literary dimension and in 1932
he published an illustrated edition of Urne Buriall and the Garden of
Cyrus by the seventeenth-century writer Thomas Browne. Nash was
on the committee of the 1936 First International Surrealist Exhibition
in London [CAT. 148] and was a distinguished war artist in the Second
World War.

13 7 HENRY MOORE
(Castleford, Yorkshire, 1898– Much Hadham, Hertfordshire, 1987)
Tube Shelter Perspective, 1941

Pencil, wax crayon, coloured crayon, watercolour, wash, gouache on paper,
291 x 238 mm
The Henry Moore Foundation, Much Hadham, Hertfordshire: gift of
the artist 1977
Following the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940 in which the

RAF defeated Hitler’s Luftwaffe, the Germans mounted a sustained
bombing campaign against British cities and industrial targets that
continued throughout most of 1941. The London Blitz forced many
people to take shelter in the underground railway stations across the
city with up to 100,000 Londoners sleeping in them overnight, in
spite of official opposition. Moore had to stay in Belsize Park station
because of a raid one evening and it was then that he conceived the
idea of making a series of drawings of the extraordinary masses of
men, women and children asleep along the platforms. With an official
commission granted to him, Moore made many visits underground at
night, sketching the sleeping and seated figures, and he was fascinated
by the chaos and camaraderie that he witnessed. Moore’s studio
was bombed and he moved to Perry Green, Hertfordshire, north of
London, where he made finished drawings such as this with ink, wax
crayon, gouache and watercolour. The view is of the Liverpool Street
extension, which was a recent development and had no tracks laid,
making it easy to accommodate double rows of people as shown here.
Moore drew on his fascination with Italian Renaissance drawing,
ancient myth, tomb monuments and memories of diagrams showing
how African slaves were crammed into ships. Moore also saw the
darkly Dantesque scenes, with their filthy conditions, as ironically the
incubators of a new and better post-war society.
259

13 8 MEREDITH FRAMPTON
(London, 1894– Mere, Wiltshire,1984)
Sir Ernest Gowers in the London RCDCR, 1943

Imperial War Museum, London
The painting shows Ernest Gowers (1880–1966), the Senior Regional

Commissioner for London, with colleagues Lt Col. A.J. Child, Director
of Operations and Intelligence, and K.A.L. Parker, Deputy Chief
Administrative Officer, in the London Regional Civil Defence Control
Room during the Second World War. The Control Room was in a
specially constructed underground building between the Geology
and Natural History Museums in South Kensington. Its function was
to coordinate civil defence operations across London, and to collect
and evaluate information about German air raids. This image, for
the War Artists Advisory Committee, is typical of Frampton’s almost
surrealistic attention to detail in the maps, papers, telephones, cups of
tea and milk bottle. Gowers was a brilliant administrator and powerful
leader, yet the painting suggests a relaxed relationship with his
colleagues and a concern for simple domestic comforts in the midst of
a complex and secret defence operation.
Frampton was the son of the sculptor George Frampton, famous
for his sculpture Peter Pan (1912) in Kensington Gardens, London. He
attended the Royal Academy Schools from 1912 to 1915, where he was
a prize-winning student, before working on aerial photography during
the First World War. Between the wars, he developed a unique highly
detailed and polished classical portraiture, which has similarities
to the German “Neue Sachlichkeit” painters of the 1920s. After the
Second World War, he abandoned painting due to his failing eyesight.

261

13 9 D U N C A N G R A N T (Rothiemurchus, Invernesshire, 1885– 141 C H A R L E S S H A N N O N (Sleaford, Lincolnshire, 1863-1937)
Aldermaston, Berkshire, 1978), V A N E S S A B E L L (London, 1879– Firle,
Sussex, 1961), F R E D E R I C K E T C H E L L S (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1886– Britain’s Efforts and Ideals: The Rebirth of the Arts, 1917
Folkestone, 1973), R O G E R F R Y (London, 1866–1934)
Lithograph, 742 x 495 mm
Imperial War Museum, London
Cover design for the Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition
catalogue. Grafton Galleries, London, 1912 Much of the official war art produced in Britain, exhibited in galleries
and published as prints and in magazines, was naturally concerned
18.4 x 12.3 x 0.8 cm (overall)
Chastleton House, The Whitmore-Jones Collection (acquired by The National
with the activities on the front line. However, the Department of
Heritage Memorial Fund and transferred to The National Trust in 1991)
Information was keen to stress the positive outcomes of victory and
the importance of culture in official thinking at a time when defeatism
The Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition, selected by the artist and and pacifism were serious problems after the disaster of the Battle of
critic Roger Fry, the critic Clive Bell and the Russian artist Boris the Somme. Britain’s Efforts and Ideals in the Great War was a series
Anrep, opened on 5 October 1912 and closed at the end of December of sixty-six lithographs by eighteen major artists, which included this
1912 having been visited by about 50,000 people. It was the successor print by Charles Shannon of a naked figure representing a renaissance
to Roger Fry’s seminal Manet and the Post-Impressionists in 1910, of the arts amidst the ruins of conflict. In all, there were twelve
but covered a far wider range of modern and contemporary art and allegorical “Ideals”, in colour, dealing with democracy, freedom and
embraced the recent Cubist painting of Pablo Picasso and Georges other general themes, including the arts. The six “Efforts”, in black and
Braque. It included over 250 works divided into three sections: French, white, focused on aspects of the war effort such as women’s work and
British and Russian. Among the artists represented were Vanessa aircraft production. The prints were shown widely in 1917 and were
Bell, Paul Cézanne, Andre Derain, Natalia Goncharova, Spencer Gore, particularly popular in America, which entered the war that year.
Duncan Grant, Mikhail Larionov, Wyndham Lewis, André Lhote, Charles Shannon, the lover and colleague of the artist, illustrator
Henri Matisse, Stanley Spencer, Maurice de Vlaminck and Edward and designer Charles Ricketts, was an important printmaker and
Wadsworth. During the years 1910 to 1915, London galleries hosted a painter and worked with Ricketts on the publications produced by
number of major modern art exhibitions, including ones of art by the their prolific Vale Press. Both men were close to the writer Oscar
Camden Town Group, the Italian Futurists and the Vorticists. Wilde and central figures in the “decadent” and Symbolist culture of
The black and white poster and catalogue cover were conceived late Victorian and Edwardian London associated above all in art with
by Bell and Fry and drawn by Grant (the woman’s head is probably their friend Aubrey Beardsley.
that of Bell), with lettering by Etchells. The primitive design was
intended to convey the modernity and avant-garde quality of much
of the art in the exhibition.
14 2 W Y N D H A M L E W I S (Amherst, Nova Scotia, 1882– London, 1957), ed.
The Tyro, No. 2 (London: The Egoist Press), 1922

14 0 W Y N D H A M L E W I S (Amherst, Nova Scotia, 1882– London, 1957), ed.
24.8 x 18.6 cm (overall)
The Wyndham Lewis Memorial Trust: G. and V. Lane Collection
Blast, No. 1 (London: John Lane), 1914
Wyndham Lewis aimed to revive the avant-garde culture of
The Wyndham Lewis Memorial Trust: G. and V. Lane Collection
Vorticism in a new form after the end of the First World War. He
wrote the polemical The Caliph’s Design: Architects! Where is Your
Blast was the journal of the Vorticist movement, which was formed Vortex? in 1919 to encourage innovative approaches to art, design
by Wyndham Lewis, Edward Wadsworth, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and and architecture and founded the short-lived Group X in 1920. The
others, partly in opposition to the artists of the Bloomsbury Group. publication of The Tyro coincided with Lewis’ invention of a race of
The Vorticists promoted the idea of a dynamically contemporary art brash newcomers in his art and writing, called “tyros”, which he hoped
concerned with the forms and experience of industrial and urban would point the way to a modern satirical form of drawing based on the
modernity. Influenced by Futurism, Blast, with its violent puce cover, tradition of William Hogarth and James Gillray. He also embarked on
carried aggressively polemical art manifestos written by Lewis and a series of brilliant figure drawings, probably in competition with Pablo
his colleagues, which employed a bold typography of different sizes Picasso, and a remarkable group of semi-abstract compositions. Lewis’
to “blast” British cultural insularity and a wide range of other targets “Essay on the Objective Art in our Time”, published in the second and
such as snobbery and francophilia. On the other hand, the typography final issue of The Tyro in 1922, suggests the possibility of a radically
was used to “bless” British maritime traditions and satire. Blast also strange and formalised figuration that takes the observer as far as
carried illustrations of the artists’ works, poetry by Ezra Pound, possible from the visible world without leaving it entirely.
stories by Ford Madox Ford and Rebecca West and Lewis’ strange
philosophical drama Enemy of the Stars. Wadsworth contributed a
translation of passages from Wassily Kandinsky’s essay “Concerning
the Spiritual in Art”.

139 140
141 142
263

14 3 V A N E S S A B E L L (London, 1879– Firle, Sussex, 1961), D U N C A N Jewson. The print was dedicated to Jewson in recognition of his efforts
G R A N T (Rothiemurchus, Invernesshire, 1885– Aldermaston, in saving the iconic manor house, which is today used as the setting for
many period films.
Berkshire, 1978)
Frontispiece for (Arthur) Clive (Heward) Bell, The Legend

of Monte della Sibilla, or Le Paradis de la Reine Sibille. London:
14 5 P A U L N A S H (London, 1889– Boscombe, Hampshire, 1946)
Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, 1923
26 x 18.2 x 0.6 cm (overall) “Contribution to Unit One”, in Herbert Read, ed. Unit One.
National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh Exhibition book. Mayor Gallery, London. London: Cassell,
1934
Clive Bell (1881–1964) was a formalist art critic associated closely with
the Bloomsbury Group, which conceived the concept of “Significant 20 x 15 cm (overall)
Form”. His most important works were Art (1914) and Since Cézanne Tate Library & Archive
(1922). He wrote occasional poetry, including this volume, which is
an amusing tale of wine, sex and song evoking the bohemian and free- “Unit One” was a group of British artists and architects founded in
loving life that he led at Charleston Farmhouse near Firle in Sussex, 1933 by the painters Paul Nash and Ben Nicholson, the architect
with his wife Vanessa Bell and the painter Duncan Grant. Bell designed Wells Coates and the sculptor Henry Moore. The group’s aim was to
the sibyl on the dust jacket and, with Grant, the illustrations inside. promote a modernist tendency in British art, design and architecture
The Hogarth Press was founded in their new home at Hogarth that integrated the potential of each area into a larger vision. The
House in Richmond in 1917 by Leonard Woolf and his wife the novelist name Unit One was chosen to express both unity and individuality.
Virginia Woolf. The enterprise was partly intended to produce Led by Paul Nash, the group also included Edward Burra, Barbara
cheap editions of small books, following the principles of the Omega Hepworth and Edward Wadsworth and announced its founding in
Workshops (see p. 38), and partly to provide a kind of therapy for The Times on 12 June 1933. They were given exhibition and office
Virginia who was recovering from illness. space at the Mayor Gallery, London where their only exhibition
They were self-taught, Leonard handling the printing press was held in 1934, touring England, Ireland and Wales. This book of
and Virginia acting as compositor, and their publications, although statements and photographs, edited by the influential critic Herbert
attractive, were intended to be read rather than treated as “fine” Read (1893–1968), accompanied the exhibition and helped to provoke
publishing. Virginia’s writings were considerably influenced by her a lively debate about modern art throughout Britain. The members
“hands-on” involvement with their publication. Their list of authors of the group did not hold common views and their alliance was
included, as well as themselves, T.S. Eliot, E.M. Forster, Roger Fry, intended to express an ambition for new approaches in art rather than
Katherine Mansfield, major Russian novelists and, later, Sigmund a particular programme. Paul Nash’s essay in the book attempted to
Freud. The business moved to Bloomsbury in 1921 and was absorbed suggest a common quality among the artists and stressed what he saw
into Chatto and Windus in 1946. as a distinct English aesthetic: “a pronounced linear method in design
… [with] colours … somewhat cold but radiant and sharp in key”. He
also described the “spirit” of English art as “of the land; ‘genius loci’ is
indeed almost its conception.” (pp. 80–81.)
14 4 F R E D E R I C K L A N D S E E R M A U R G R I G G S (Hitchin, Hertfordshire,
1876– Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, 1938)
Owlpen Manor, 1931

Etching, 202 x 257 mm (image)
The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Presented by Arthur Mitchell, 1962
Griggs was a popular topographical and architectural illustrator who

moved to the old town of Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds area
in the west of England in 1904. There, a number of Arts and Crafts
artists and craftsmen lived in a community dedicated to a Ruskinian
and Morrisian vision of art and craft integrated with life. Griggs, who
converted to Catholicism in 1912, was a devotee of the pastoral art
of Samuel Palmer and through his teaching at the Royal College of
Art in the 1920s linked the artists of the Romantic period with a new
generation of landscape artists such as Graham Sutherland, himself
a Catholic convert. Owlpen Manor is a Tudor mansion that lies in a
remote valley in Gloucestershire. It was an unoccupied ruin until it
was purchased and renovated in the 1920s by the architect Norman

143 144
145
265

14 6 P A U L N A S H (London, 1889– Boscombe, Hampshire, 1946) 14 8 Unknown photographer
Shell Guide to Dorset. London: Architectural Press, 1935 Paul Eluard, Nusch Eluard, Diana Lee, Salvador Dali in diving
suit, ELT Mesens and Rupert Lee, First International Surrealist
23 x 18.5 x 1 cm (overall)
Shell Art Collection, Beaulieu, Brockenhurst, Hampshire
Exhibition, New Burlington Galleries, London, 1936
Photograph, 381 x 254 mm
In the early 1930s, the Shell oil company commissioned the poet Lee Miller Archives, Chiddingly
and architectural writer John Betjeman to be general editor
of a series of county guides to England and Wales. Betjeman Surrealism had made a significant impact on a number of writers
recruited a number of contemporary artists to create the separate and artists in Britain since the 1920s, including the painter Paul
volumes, which were modern picturesque guides in the tradition Nash [CATS. 136, 145, 146], the sculptor Henry Moore [CATS. 133,
of William Gilpin [CAT. 80] intended for the largely metropolitan 137, 153], the poet David Gascoyne and the writer and critic Herbert
car travellers of the period. The guides were distinguished by Read. British literary and artistic traditions had much in common
their imaginative and innovative design, such as that produced with the tenets of Surrealist thinking. Read was a leading figure in the
by the painter Paul Nash for the south-west county of Dorset, organisation of the Surrealist exhibition, opened by the leader of the
where he lived in the town of Swanage from 1934 to 1936. Nash French Surrealists André Breton at the Burlington Galleries in London
was a prolific photographer and had a fine eye for the strange in 1936. Read wrote in the exhibition catalogue that critics should “not
and surrealistic aspects of the landscape, from the peculiarities judge this movement kindly. It is not just another amusing stunt. It
of seaside towns to the mysterious ancient monuments of Cerne is defiant – the desperate art of men too profoundly convinced of the
Abbas and Badbury Rings. The Shell Guides capture a moment rottenness of our civilisation” (quoted in Alexander Robertson, Michel
when modernism, Surrealism and tradition came together in a Remy, Mel Gooding and Terry Friedman, Angels of Anarchy and
unique synthesis. Machines for Making Clouds: Surrealism in Britain in the Thirties. Exh.
cat. Leeds City Art Galleries, Leeds, 1986, 202). This was considered
an absurd statement by many, as those involved were mostly highly
14 7 J A M E S B O S W E L L (Westport, 1906– London, 1971) privileged individuals. The exhibition was very popular, averaging a
thousand visitors a day. Among those present was Salvador Dali who
“He hath made for us a pathway / To the ends of the earth”, delivered an inaudible lecture wearing a diving suit from which he had
in Left Review, vol. 1, no. 8 (London, May 1935): 321 to be urgently extricated as he fought for air.

Collection Dr I.K. Patterson
14 9 B E N N I C H O L S O N (Denham, Buckinghamshire, 1894– London,
1982), N A U M G A B O (Bryansk, 1890– Connecticut, 1977), eds.
James Boswell was a New Zealander who went to the Royal
College of Art, London in 1925 and soon fell out with the
conservative attitudes of the teaching staff there. In 1928, he met
Circle: An International Survey of Constructivist Art
the Marxist intellectuals Montague Slater and Edgell Rickword (London, 1937, 29-30)
and in 1932 joined the Communist Party. He was a founder- 26 x 20 x 2.6 cm (overall)
member of Artists’ International (later the Artists’ International National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh
Association) with the left-wing artists Cliff Rowe, Misha Black,
James Fitton and James Holland. Slater founded Left Review Refugee modernist artists and architects such as the Russian
in 1934 and invited Boswell to be the art editor. He contributed Constructivist sculptor Naum Gabo and the German Bauhaus
political cartoons to the journal for four years, as well as drawing architect Walter Gropius moved to London in the 1930s, giving the
under a pseudonym for the Daily Worker. His style was heavily small group of British abstract artists such as Ben Nicholson and
influenced by the German satirist George Grosz and his subject Barbara Hepworth and architects such as Wells Coates a welcome
matter was pro-working class, anti-fascist, anti-capitalist and anti- injection of energy and experience. Since Paul Nash’s Unit One group
imperialist, as in the image reproduced here with its mean-faced in 1933 [CAT. 145] there had been a number of mainly unsuccessful
establishment figures and ironic title from a poem by the great attempts to create a centre of gravity for radical and Constructivist
poet of empire, Rudyard Kipling, called “A Song of the English”. art in Britain, all hoping to inform public opinion and policy. Circle
After the Second World War, Boswell turned to abstraction, was an extensive publication, which carried photographs of artworks,
worked in the commercial sector and wrote a book, The Artist’s architectural plans and essays by a number of leading figures, including
Dilemma (1947), about the conflict between an artist’s ideals and Gabo and Piet Mondrian. The ideology of the magazine was markedly
the reality of modern capitalism. left wing, with major scientists and economists close to the group,
and its aesthetic aims were part of a broader movement towards a
technocratic democratic society.

146 147
148
149
267


BRAVE NEW WORLD
1945–1980
After the Second World War, British art developed in myriad ways, and in painters and sculptors GRAHAM SUTHERLAND
such as Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, David Hockney and Richard Long produced artists of BARBARA HEPWORTH
international standing. Many more students attended art school as a result of the growth in higher
HENRY MOORE
education and made an impact not only on the fine arts but also on design, fashion and pop music,
LAURENCE STEPHEN LOWRY
with major rock bands emerging out of the art college scene.
Francis Bacon and Graham Sutherland worked closely together in the late 1940s, producing REG BUTLER
works that reflect the feeling of anxiety and fragmentation prevalent after the war. The sense of EDUARDO PAOLOZZI
human life facing dark and possibly overwhelming forces can also be seen in the figurative sculpture PETER COKER
of young artists of the time, such as Reg Butler.
PETER LANYON
The drab world of the immediate post-war period was brightened considerably in the early
PETER BLAKE
1950s by the Pop artists Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi, whose art drew on the worlds of
advertising, film and other aspects of popular culture to create works that were lively, questioning ANTHONY CARO
and often cynical. The next generation of Pop artists, such as Peter Blake, David Hockney and PATRICK CAULFIELD
Patrick Caulfield, attained a broad popularity in the 1960s, revealing the degree to which a new DAVID HOCKNEY
public for contemporary art had grown since the war.
HOWARD HODGKIN
Abstract painting flourished in the Cornish fishing village of St Ives where Peter Lanyon and
BRIDGET RILEY
others were inspired by the local sea and landscape, and also by the new forms of abstract art in
post-war America such as the painting of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. The more urban LUCIAN FREUD
sophisticated Op Art of Bridget Riley and Anthony Caro’s painted steel sculpture placed straight KEITH ARNATT
on the gallery floor gave British art a dazzling and novel democratic look in keeping with the idea of IAN HAMILTON FINLAY
“Swinging London”.
GILBERT & GEORGE
The so-called “School of London” painters, including Bacon, Freud, R.B. Kitaj and Frank
RICHARD HAMILTON
Auerbach, persevered with figurative art during the 1960s and 1970s when abstract, minimal and
conceptual art became a new orthodoxy among many artists. They continued to paint the human FRANCIS BACON
body, and in 1976 Kitaj mounted an influential exhibition of modern British figurative art, The R.B. KITAJ
Human Clay at the Hayward Gallery, London, which was a rallying call for more traditional artists. RICHARD LONG
The rise of conceptual art in the late 1960s coincided with the rise of various forms of radical
FRANK AUERBACH
politics, although by no means can all the artists identified as “conceptual” be pigeonholed
TONY CRAGG
politically, rather sharing a new attitude to materials and ideas. They include Gilbert and George,
Keith Arnatt, Richard Long and Ian Hamilton Finlay, who variously used photography, video, sticks EDWARD WRIGHT
and stones and other previously “non-artistic” material. LORD SNOWDON

The election of Margaret Thatcher as Conservative Prime Minister in 1979 changed not only the CHARLES HARRISON
political and economic landscape of Britain, but also the cultural one, including the visual arts. Tony
GERALD SCARFE
Cragg’s huge wall sculpture, Britain Seen from the North of 1981, made from multicoloured plastic
GLEN BAXTER
debris, is a landmark work indicating the huge shift that was underway.
Richard Hamilton,
Release Print, 1972.

270

BRAVE NEW WORLD
1945 – 1980
It seems desirable that I give a precise account of what I mean by the inner world, the one of Freud and
Melanie Klein. Apart from the fact that I claim no precise picture, there is always the difficulty that the
concepts of psychoanalysis are little known and far less understood, yet it is impossible to interpolate
several treatises available elsewhere.
The aspect of the psyche that most concerns our context is the potential chaos and the attempts
to achieve stability whether predominantly through defences of splitting such as getting rid of parts of
the psyche on to other people, or through denial, omnipotence, idealization, or whether predominantly
by the less excluding method, the prerogative of the truly adult being, that entails recognition of great
diversity in the psyche under the aegis of trust in a good object. The word “object” may seem obscure
but it is used with determination. By means of introjection, the opposite of projection, the ego has
incorporated phantasy figures (and part-figures such as the breast) both good and bad. These are objects
to us not only because they have come from without but because they can retain within the psyche their
phantasied corporeal character. The ego itself may be much split: many parts may have been projected
permanently to inhabit other people in order to control them, an instance – it is called projective
identification – of the interweaving of outer and inner relationships. Though this phantasy-commerce
be deeply buried in our minds, it colours, nevertheless, as I have indicated, the reception of sense-data
in much-transposed terms. Form in art, I have urged elsewhere, reconstitutes the independent, self-
sufficient, outside good object, the whole mother whom the infant should accept to be independent
from himself, as well as the enveloping good breast of the earliest phase, at the foundation of the ego, the
relationship with which is of the merging kind. In this reparative act the attempt must be made to bring
less pleasing aspects of these objects to bear, parallel with the integrative process in the ego as a whole
that art mirrors no less.
Adrian Stokes, Painting and the Inner World. London:
Tavistock Publications, 1963, 5–6.
There is in popular art a continuum from data to fantasy. Fantasy resides in, to sample a few examples,
film stars, perfume ads, beauty and the beast situations, terrible deaths, sexy women. This is the aspect
of popular art which is most easily accepted by art minorities who see it as a vital substratum of the
folk, as something primitive. This notion has a history since Herder in the eighteenth century, who
emphasized national folk arts in opposition to international classicism. Now, however, mass-produced
folk art is international: Kim Novak, Galaxy Science Fiction, Mickey Spillane, are available wherever
you go in the West.
However, fantasy is always given a keen topical edge; the sexy model is shaped by datable fashion
as well as by timeless lust. Thus, the mass arts orient the consumer in current styles, even when they
seem purely, timelessly erotic and fantastic. The mass media give perpetual lessons in assimilation,
instruction in role-taking, the use of new objects, the definition of changing relationships, as David
Riesman has pointed out. A clear example of this may be taken from science fiction. Cybernetics, a new
word to many people until 1956, was made the basis of stories in Astounding Science Fiction in 1950. SF
aids the assimilation of the mounting technical facts of this century in which, as John W. Campbell, the
editor of Astounding, put it, “A man learns a pattern of behaviour – and in five years it doesn’t work.”
XXV

Popular art, as a whole, offers imagery and plots to control the changes in the world; everything in our
culture that changes is the material of the popular arts.
Critics of the mass media often complain of the hostility towards intellectuals and the lack of
respect for art expressed there, but, as I have tried to show, the feeling is mutual. Why should the mass
media turn the other cheek? What worries intellectuals is the fact that the mass arts spread; they
encroach on the high ground. […]
The definition of culture is changing as a result of the pressure of the great audience, which is
no longer new but experienced in the consumption of its arts. Therefore, it is no longer sufficient to
define culture solely as something that a minority guards for the few and the future (though such art is
uniquely valuable and as precious as ever). Our definition of culture is being stretched beyond the fine
art limits imposed on it by Renaissance theory, and refers now, increasingly, to the whole complex of
human activities. Within this definition, rejection of the mass produced arts is not, as critics think, a
defence of culture but an attack on it. The new role for the academic is keeper of the flame; the new role
for the fine arts is to be one of the possible forms of communication in an expanding framework that
also includes the mass arts.
Lawrence Alloway, “The Arts and the Mass Media”,

Architectural Design (London, February 1958): 34–35.
(Quoted in Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, Art in Theory
1900–2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Oxford:
Blackwell, 1992, 716–17.)
And this is the obsession: how like can I make this thing in the most irrational way? So that you’re not
only remaking the look of the image, you’re remaking all the areas of feeling which you yourself have
apprehensions of. You want to open up so many levels of feeling if possible, which can’t be done in …
It’s wrong to say it can’t be done in pure illustration, in purely figurative terms, because of course it
has been done. It has been done in Velasquez. That is, of course, where Velasquez is so different to
Rembrandt, because, oddly enough, if you take the great late self-portraits of Rembrandt, you will
find that the whole contour of the face changes time after time; it’s a totally different face, although
it has what is called a look of Rembrandt, and by this difference it involves you in different areas of
feeling. But with Velasquez it’s more controlled and, of course, I believe, more miraculous. Because
one wants to do this thing of just walking along the edge of the precipice, and in Velasquez it’s a very,
very extraordinary thing that he has been able to keep it so near to what we call illustration and at the
same time so deeply unlock the greatest and deepest things that man can feel. Which makes him such
an amazingly mysterious painter. Because one really does believe that Velasquez recorded the court at
that time and, when one looks at his pictures, one is possibly looking at something which is very, very
near to how things looked. Of course the whole thing has become so distorted and pulled-out since then,
but I believe that we will come back in a much more arbitrary way to doing something very, very like
that – to being as specific as Velasquez was in recording an image. But of course so many things have
happened since Velasquez that the situation has become much more involved and much more difficult,
for very many reasons. And one of them, of course, which has never actually been worked out, is why
photography has altered completely this whole thing of figurative painting, and totally altered it.
Francis Bacon, Interview with David Sylvester, October

1962. (Quoted in Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, Art in
Theory 1900–2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Oxford:
XXVI

Don’t think that artists are somehow the victims of an underdetermined predestination: their
attempts to fix forever their relations with “the rest of the world”, irrespective of social change, are
the last defensive gasps of an entirely static instrument of capitalism: empty-headed, it parasitizes the
ectoderm of social change in the effort to be the better fed by its masters.
And radical artists produce articles and exhibitions about photos, capitalism, corruption,
war, pestilence, trench-foot and issues, possessed by that venal shade of empiricism which guards
their proprietorial interests. Most people laugh easily at old fools’ hack aestheticism; the by now
undifferentiated mass of pretence and piety. It is similarly easy to avoid debate with the serious,
anorexic autohagiographers who’ve shoved (?) and wheedled their way into the (what?) praxis of a
ludicrous and equivalent “specialism”. The air (and the aether) is toxic with the confident exhalations
of their apprehension. Club-foot-Ph.D.-standards-as-style is nothing new in the global sales-pitch.
American football helmets and meaningless photos are serious objects of contemplation (and …) if you
happen to be obsessed by your career as the nexus of historiography. Heaven knows, anything must
go; and it even goes against the sanction imposed by the appropriate Lebensphilosophie: the manières
of “semiotique” and the manières of “social purpose” even sell that short. The artist, the bourgeois
ideologist without “virtue”, is just like anyone else without “virtue”; his “terror” is gratuitous and
ultimately suicidal.
Art and Language, “Editorial”, Art-Language, Banbury, vol.

3, no. 3 (June 1976). (Quoted in Charles Harrison and Paul
Wood, Art in Theory 1900–2000: An Anthology of Changing
Ideas. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992, 943.)
I’ve always complained that the trouble with a lot of painting is that it is not interested in the visible
world. That simply means that artists must go in on themselves, and their art becomes an internal
one. That is okay but it can be merely therapeutic, and then it moves out of the realm of art. That’s the
theoretical flaw in it … [An] art that’s not based on looking inevitably becomes repetitious, whereas one
that is based on looking finds the world infinitely interesting, and always finds new ways of looking at
ourselves … There was a crisis a few years ago when people moved on to conceptual art and the idea that
you could have art without the object. But all that was leading to was a dead end … We need depictions.
Unfortunately, people were leaving depictions behind because of photography. The depictions that were
being made used the camera. “That’s fine”, they thought, “the camera’s dealing with that are now” … I’m
sure the only way art can be replenished is by going back to nature. You don’t just look at Picasso: you
look at him and he tells you to go to nature. Nature is infinite.
(David Hockney, “Los Angeles, May 1984”, in Hockney

on Art: Conversations with Paul Joyce. London: Little, Brown,
1999, 49–50.)
XXVII

271

15 0 GRAHAM SUTHERLAND
(London, 1903–80)
Thorn Tree, 1945

Sutherland was employed by the War Artists Advisory Committee

to record bomb damage in the East End of London, tin mining in
Cornwall and steel works in Cardiff. He painted the stark ruins of
burnt-out buildings as a metaphor for human injury and loss. This
work was painted at the end of the war, about eighteen months before
Sutherland moved to the south of France, and evokes a bleak and
hostile post-war and post-Holocaust world. It was produced after
Canon Walter Hussey, a priest keen to encourage contemporary art in
Britain, commissioned the artist to create an altarpiece for his church
in Northampton. Sutherland painted a Crucifixion and Thorn Tree was
one of a number of works made soon afterwards that developed from
Sutherland’s study of Christ’s crown of thorns. The thorns are perhaps
like steel daggers gleaming in a cold, unsparing light and have the
quality of forms out of science fiction.
Sutherland trained as an engineer before studying engraving
at Goldsmiths College, London. Influenced by the illustrator
F.L.M. Griggs [CAT. 144] and Samuel Palmer [CAT. 72], he taught
etching, engraving and book illustration. In the 1930s, he visited
Pembrokeshire, Wales, where he painted the landscape and the growth
of natural forms with a strong Surrealist feeling. In the 1940s, he was
seen as a leading “neo-Romantic” painter and was a close friend of
Francis Bacon. From the late 1940s, Sutherland spent much time in
the south of France. A Roman Catholic convert, he designed the huge
tapestry Christ in Glory for the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral in 1962,
among many other major commissions. He was also a highly regarded
portrait painter.
272 BRAVE NEW WORLD

273

151 BARBARA HEPWORTH
(Wakefield, West Yorkshire, 1903– St Ives, Cornwall, 1975)
Rhythmic Form, 1949

Rosewood on wooden base, 100.3 x 30.5 x 12.2 cm
This polished rosewood carving suggests both a monumental human

figure and a standing stone, or “menhir”, of the kind found in the
Cornish landscape near St Ives where Hepworth and her husband Ben
Nicholson [CAT. 135] had lived and worked since 1940. Such stones
often had holes in them, reflecting a primitive belief that through
them the soul might escape after death. Hepworth stressed the way
in which the carving of wood and stone allowed the artist’s emotional
life to express itself and result in an independent object that “puts no
pressure on anything” (Barbara Hepworth, “Sculpture”, Circle (1937):
114). Like her fellow student at the Royal College of Art, London,
Henry Moore, Hepworth also used the hole in her sculpture to open up
the form and to allow the spectator to see through and beyond it. Much
influenced by psychoanalytical ideas, Hepworth asserted women’s
creativity was of a particular nature quite different from that of men:
I believe that they have a sensibility, a perception and a contribution to

make which is complementary to the masculine and which completes
the total experience of life. If this is accepted, instead of feeling cheated
because a woman is not a man, it becomes possible to enrich one’s
experience by the contemplation of a bivalent expression of idea.
(Barbara Hepworth: Retrospective Exhibition 1927–1954. Exh. cat.

Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1954, 29.)
Hepworth was born in Yorkshire and, like Moore, was one of the most
successful artists in post-war Britain, winning many commissions for
public art and her work achieving international acclaim. She lived at
Trewyn Studio in St Ives, where she died in a fire in 1975 and which is
now a museum dedicated to her work.
274 BRAVE NEW WORLD

15 3 HENRY MOORE
(Castleford, Yorkshire, 1898– Much Hadham, Hertfordshire, 1987)
Mother and Child, 1953

Bronze, 61 x 27 x 34.5 cm
Private Collection
This small sculpture is one of seven original bronze casts. A seated

mother seems to strangle a child who, somewhat like an aggressive
young bird, attempts to attack her breast. Moore created many
mother and child sculptures throughout his career but, by contrast
with the majority that tend to emphasise the nurturing role of the
mother, his works from the early 1950s have a disturbing and violent
character. Moore was the senior modernist sculptor at the time and
his work clearly made an impact on younger artists such as Reg Butler
[CAT. 154], who was briefly an assistant of his, and Eduardo Paolozzi
[CAT. 155]. When the three sculptors’ work was shown at the Venice
Biennale in 1952, it was described in the accompanying catalogue by
the critic Herbert Read as expressive of “the geometry of fear”. By this
he meant a stark metal sculpture, which mechanised or animalised the
human figure and seemed to evoke the anxieties of the post-war era.
Like many artists at the time, Moore was interested in psychoanalytic
theory and in this case it seems likely he was drawing on the ideas
of Melanie Klein, who analysed the aggressive feelings of the child
towards the mother’s breast and the guilty reactions and need for
reparation to which these feelings led. By then, Moore himself was
seen by younger artists as an establishment figure against whom they
would react fiercely as the decade wore on.
275

15 2 LAURENCE STEPHEN LOWRY
(Stretford, Lancashire, 1887– Glossop, Derbyshire, 1976)
Industrial Landscape, 1950

New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester
This panoramic view is based on the mid-twentieth-century landscape

of the Manchester region where the artist lived for most of his life,
working as both a rent collector and as a painter. Lowry was trained
in Manchester under the French painter Pierre Adolphe Valette
and developed a sophisticated knowledge of art history, including
French Impressionism and the Pre-Raphaelites. He was irritated by
the suggestion that he was a “naive” painter, though he consciously
employed a visual vocabulary with a strong child-like quality. After
his death, Lowry’s executors discovered a cache of fetishistic erotic
drawings, which suggest a powerful neurotic force behind the eccentric
and lonely man’s art.
In 1909, Lowry’s family was forced by financial problems to move
to the industrial town of Pendlebury, near Salford, north-west of
Manchester. At first he hated his new home, but slowly became absorbed
by it and began to paint what he frequently referred to as “dreamscapes”
– composite scenes based on observation, memory and imagination. The
textile mills, factories, chimneys, streets, bridges and telegraph poles
under pale and polluted skies are put together to create a world at once
strange and familiar. He deliberately made his tiny figures matchstick-
like to accentuate the dream quality of the image: “Natural figures would
have broken the spell of it, so I made the figures half unreal … They are
part of a private beauty that haunted me. I loved them and the houses in
the same way: as part of a vision.” (Michael Howard, Lowry: A Visionary
Artist. Salford Quays: Lowry Press, 2000, 123.)
276 BRAVE NEW WORLD

277

15 4 REG BUTLER
(Buntingford, Hertfordshire, 1913– Berkhamsted, 1981)
Girl, 1953–54
Bronze, 177.8 x 40.6 x 24.1 cm
Bristol Museums & Art Gallery
Butler’s art is largely concerned with the female nude. His work has
been highly controversial, as his often perverse and sadistic responses
to the female body are evident in much of his sculpture, alongside far
more tender and sympathetic feelings. This important bronze piece
announced the artist’s move away from modernist and semi-abstract
sculpture in 1953 to something more in the tradition of Edgar Degas
and Auguste Rodin and with roots in primitive carving. Butler’s
notebooks show he was reading Sigmund Freud’s and Melanie Klein’s
psychoanalytical theories and had become focused on what he called
“the Girl idea”, an object both maternal and nubile. Following the
psychological idea of body fragmentation, also to be found in the work
of Henry Moore, Alberto Giacometti and other artists that he admired,
Butler makes a fetish of the girl. The figure is headless by virtue of
its pose and, as with many works of the period, its legs are balanced
precariously on a bar. Butler stresses the awkwardness of a pubescent
girl as she strains to remove her top. There is a contradiction in
Butler’s response to the body: a gentle torso contrasts with gaunt and
almost inhuman hips and long emaciated legs.
Butler was born to religious parents who ran a workhouse where
he witnessed many vagrants, sick and homeless people. Trained as a
modernist architect, he also made sculptures in his spare time. During
the Second World War, he was a conscientious objector and after it
became an assistant to Henry Moore (CATS. 133, 137, 153) He won the
prize to design a monument to the “Unknown Political Prisoner” in
1953, but this was never realised. His last, highly controversial, painted
sculptures reveal a long-standing debt to the work of the Surrealist
Hans Bellmer.
278 BRAVE NEW WORLD

155 EDUARDO PAOLOZZI
(Leith, Edinburgh, 1924– London, 2005)
Large Frog (New Version), 1958

Bronze, 71 x 83 x 83 cm
This frog is one of a group of totemic sculptures made by Paolozzi

in the 1950s. Large Frog was modelled originally in clay and looks
somewhat like a spaceship with legs. The creature’s appetite seems
both physiological and mechanical and there is a strong science-
fiction aspect to the work. Paolozzi used two methods for making the
sculptures. In one, he rolled out a thick layer of moist clay into which
he would press all manner of found objects; the resulting pattern was
filled with molten wax and Paolozzi would then alter it before it was
cast in a bronze foundry. In the other method, he brought together
objects in a temporary arrangement and made a negative plaster
mould of them, probably the method used here, as a complex piece
of a piano keyboard makes up much of the frog’s face. Wax was poured
into the plaster negative. Thus, after these various processes, the artist
had several pieces of patterned sheets that could be turned into a
finished sculpture.
Paolozzi was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and studied at the Slade
School of Fine Art, London. He travelled to Paris after the Second
World War, where he lived for two years and encountered new ideas
and forms of art such as primitivism, Dada and Surrealism. He began
to make collages from a wide range of commercial and other popular
cultural material, which provided him with his fundamental means of
expression for most of his career. He was a founding father of British
Pop Art with Richard Hamilton in the early 1950s. In his later years, he
executed many public art works.
279

15 6 PETER COKER
(London, 1926– Colchester, Essex, 2004)
Sunflowers, 1958–59
Oil on board, 120 x 97 cm
Robert Travers, Piano Nobile Gallery, London
The artist painted this image from sunflowers that he had planted in
his back garden in east London. The first of three sunflower paintings
produced between 1958 and 1961, it is worked with thick impasto on
board and seeks to create a solid visual equivalent for the heavy flowers
and shrub-like leaves seen in a vase in a sombre domestic interior.
Emphasising the verticality and flatness of the pictorial space, Coker
made frequent use of the palette knife and added solid white lead to
his pigments to give the paint an almost sculptural tactile quality. A
devotee of Gustave Courbet’s art, he was also influenced greatly by the
painting techniques of the modern French artists Andre Dunoyer de
Segonzac, Nicolas de Stael and Jean Reyberolle. Coker’s work is highly
formal and structured, and is based on a strong commitment to the
central importance of draughtsmanship for the painter. Although this
painting invokes clearly Vincent van Gogh’s famous images of the same
subject, Coker emphasises the materiality of the sunflowers rather
than their spiritual and symbolic aspects, as the Dutch artist had in
many respects and symbolic aspects.
Peter Coker was born in London and after service in the Fleet
Air Arm in the Second World War attended St Martin’s School of Art
and the Royal College of Art, London. He first exhibited his work
professionally in 1956 and was associated at the time with the so-called
“Kitchen Sink School” of painters, such as John Bratby and Edward
Middleditch, who were known for their social realist subject matter
and painterly style. The Marxist critic John Berger referred to Coker
as a member of this group when the artist painted powerful images of
a butcher at work in his shop in the mid-1950s, although Coker always
disclaimed any social or political significance for his work and said
he was simply concerned with the craft of painting and the quest for
compelling visual motifs. In the late 1950s, Coker moved from still-life
painting to concentrate mostly on landscape, working primarily in
Britain and France. In 1962, he moved with his wife and son to Mistley
in Essex, on the River Stour, very close to the area in which Constable
had lived and worked. Coker was also a notable printmaker and elected
RA in 1972.
280 BRAVE NEW WORLD

281

15 7 PETER LANYON
(St Ives, Cornwall, 1918– Taunton, Somerset, 1964)
Thermal, 1960
Tate: Purchased 1960
Lanyon wrote of this work, which was inspired by gliding:
The experience in Thermal does not only refer to glider flight. It

belongs to pictures which I have done before, eg Bird-wind, and which
are concerned with birds describing the invisible, their flight across
cliff faces and their soaring activity. I have discovered since I began
gliding that the activity is more general than I had guessed. The air
is a very definite world of activity as complex and demanding as the
sea … The thermal itself is a current of hot air rising and eventually
condensing into cloud. It is invisible and can only be apprehended by
an instrument such as a glider … The basic source of all soaring flight
is the thermal – hot air rising from the ground as a large bubble. The
picture refers to cloud formation and to a spiral rising activity which
is the way a glider rises in an up-current. There is also a reference to
storm conditions and down-currents. These are all things that arise in
connection with thermals.
(Letter, 28 November 1960, in Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin

Butlin, Tate Gallery: The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture.
London: Tate Gallery, 1964, vol. 1, 372.)
Lanyon was born in Cornwall and was one of the major artists working
in the artists’ fishing village of St Ives in the 1950s and 1960s. A pupil
of Ben Nicholson [CAT. 135], he adapted the new forms of post-war
abstraction to convey feelings about the Cornish landscape, its light,
form and meanings. He was killed in a gliding accident in 1964.
282 BRAVE NEW WORLD

15 8 PETER BLAKE Elsbeth Juda shows Blake sitting in front of Love Wall with the French
(Dartford, Kent, b. 1932) model Marie-Lise Gres standing beside him.
Blake attended Gravesend School of Art, Kent from 1949 to 1951
Love Wall, 1961 before doing National Service in the RAF and then studying at the
Royal College of Art, in London from 1953 to 1956. He travelled in
Collage and wood construction, 125 x 237 x 23 cm Holland, France, Italy and Spain from 1956 to 1957, when he began
Coleção CAM-Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon to make the collage works for which he is perhaps best known. A
contemporary of David Hockney and other second generation Pop
Peter Blake made Love Wall by arranging various mass-produced artists, Blake was one of the first celebrity painters of the post-war
images of love that included romance comics, movie photographs, period, appearing in the seminal TV documentary “Pop Goes the
wedding pictures, valentines and birthday cards. The work is a collage, Easel” (1961) by the film director Ken Russell. His most famous
using not only printed material but also real objects such as a door image is the collage design for the cover of the Beatles’ 1967 album
panel. Love Wall suggests a teenager’s pin-board as well as an old- Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, of which he made an updated
fashioned shop window. Since the mid-1950s, Blake had been making version to celebrate his eightieth birthday in 2012 [CAT. 176]. In
works incorporating commercial and popular illustration and design, 1969, Blake moved to Somerset and in 1975 was a founder of the
influenced by the earlier generation of Pop artists such as Eduardo Brotherhood of Ruralists, a group of painters including David Inshaw
Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton. However, Blake’s art has a nostalgic and Graham Ovenden who were dedicated to nature painting, British
dimension with a keen sense of the life of the unglamorous suburbs traditional life and the Pre-Raphaelite legacy.
and an affection for the Victorian roots of much modern British life. A
celebrated photograph of 1961 by the German fashion photographer
284 BRAVE NEW WORLD

160 ANTHONY CARO I am really stunned by what you can do with the ground now… You are
(London, b. 1924) doing something utterly new and astonishing in [Slow Movement]…
Having to do with [the] pace of seeing, and feeling, or how experiencing
something…at a different pace is a different experience.
Slow Movement, 1965
(Quoted in Ian Barker, Anthony Caro: Quest for the New Sculpture.
Paint on steel, 144.8 x 299.7 x 61 cm London: Lund Humphries, 2004, 147–49.)
Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London
Anthony Caro studied engineering at the University of Cambridge

This work is among Caro’s simplest sculptures, comprising three and then trained at the Royal Academy Schools, after which he was an
pieces of steel (two triangular planes and one bar). Caro was assistant to Henry Moore. He travelled to the United States
influenced greatly by contemporary American abstract art, in in the late 1950s and following his encounter with abstract art there
particular the sculpture of David Smith and the painting of Kenneth turned his back on figurative sculpture and in the early 1960s began to
Noland, as well as by the formalist ideas of the great art critic Clement make the coloured, steel sculpture for which he is best known. After
Greenberg. This sculpture is painted a deep blue and rests straight on Moore, Caro is the most successful sculptor in twentieth-century
the ground, both articulating a form and the space around it. Caro’s British art and has been highly influential internationally through his
sculpture of the early 1960s is freestanding, horizontal, brightly work and teaching.
coloured and seemingly gravity defying. The art critic Michael Fried
wrote to Caro having seen Slow Movement:
285

15 9 PATRICK CAULFIELD
(London, 1936–2005)
Portrait of Juan Gris, 1963

Oil on board, 122 x 122 cm
Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, UK (Wilson gift through the National Art
Collection Fund 2004)
Juan Gris (1887–1927) is shown in a blue double-breasted suit against

a yellow background and surrounded by devices that he used for
outlining forms in his paintings of the 1920s. The effect is to stress the
two-dimensionality of the painting and to deny the spectator a way
into a fictive space. The painting, in household gloss paint on board,
was made referring to a photograph of Gris by Man Ray and with the
help of a friend who modelled the suit. Originally intended to be a
portrait of Paul Cézanne, it is a kind of “anti-tribute” to the Spanish
artist. Caulfield was attracted greatly to the formal properties of Gris’
work and said of this painting that it was:
… an excuse for using the figure. My admiration for him and his work
is not really expressed in the painting, or even to do with Cubism. The
figure is the strong thing. After all, these marks are very slight. I made it
brightly coloured, in contrast to his name, because I felt he was a very
optimistic painter. His paintings architecturally are so strong, without
feelings of doubt.
(Quoted in Marco Livingstone, Patrick Caulfield Paintings. London: Lund

Humphries, 2005, 26.)
Caulfield was one of the Pop artists, along with David Hockney, and
attained prominence in the early 1960s after graduating from the
Royal College of Art, London. Throughout his career, his work was
characterised by a cool, flat, linear and decorative style, which moves
subtly between figuration and abstraction.
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1 61 DAVID HOCKNEY
(Bradford, West Yorkshire, b. 1937)
Portrait of Nick Wilder, 1966

Acrylic on canvas, 182 x 182 cm
Private Collection
This portrait is of one of Hockney’s close friends, the art dealer

and gallery owner Nick Wilder (1937–89). He is standing in the
communal swimming pool of the apartment block in which he lived
at 1145 Larrabee Street, Hollywood, just north of Sunset Boulevard.
Hockney lived here from the summer of 1966 until early 1967 when
he was also renting a run-down studio in central Los Angeles. Like
many of his famous swimming pool paintings of the 1960s and early
1970s, Hockney has used a square format to evoke the Polaroid shots
from which he often worked. The area of bare canvas around the edge
accentuates the painting as an object, as do the small areas where the
edges of paint are rough, caused by paint bleeding under the masking
tape that he employed to make straight lines. Hockney preferred
fast-drying acrylic paint, which gives the image a comic-book or
commercial quality. The swimming pool theme reflected Hockney’s
love of the Californian climate and his discovery of the relaxed gay
lifestyle that led him to move there in 1964.
Hockney was born in Yorkshire and trained at the Royal College
of Art, London from 1959 to 1962, where he was part of the highly
successful second wave of British Pop artists. His works from this
period dealt with homosexuality as well as showing his interest in
contemporary American and European modernist art. His career
has been marked by a fascination with reproduction techniques,
especially the photograph and digital technology, and he has also made
illustrations for poems by Wallace Stevens and Constantine Cavafy
and designed many opera sets. He has recently returned to Yorkshire
and painted huge canvases of his native landscape.
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289

1 62 HOWARD HODGKIN
(London, b. 1932)
Mrs K, 1966–67
Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London
This is a portrait of Mrs Jane Kasmin, the wife of a major London art
dealer. Her head and body are indicated by a few clean wide strokes of
paint against a deep blue-purple and black background and she seems
to be moving behind a door. Hodgkin’s paintings are usually based on
fugitive personal memories and seek to capture fleeting emotional
experiences in the quiet of the artist’s studio. Using fragments of form
and powerfully unusual colour contrasts, Hodgkin suggests the flesh
and fabrics of a real woman and then turns them into a semi-abstract
composition beyond appearance. One of Hodgkin’s favourite paintings
is Hélène Rouart in her Father’s Study (ca. 1886) by Edgar Degas,
which he has described as achieving “the kind of glancing, slightly
dematerialized quality that one does actually see in reality” (Andrew
Graham Dixon, Howard Hodgkin. Revised and expanded edition.
London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 2001, 29).
Hodgkin was born in London and studied at Camberwell School
of Art, London, from 1949 to 1950, and then at the Bath Academy
of Art, Corsham, from 1950 to 1954. Since the late 1960s, most
of his painting has been on wood panels, the rich and expressive
colour overlapping the frame and the space suggesting an evocative
combination of interior and exterior. Hodgkin’s sometimes ambiguous
titles frequently suggest a social event, a comment heard, a cultural
reference or some other phrase that might trigger a set of associations
in the viewer.
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291

163 BRIDGET RILEY
(Norwood, London, b. 1931)
Cataract 3, 1967
PVA on canvas, 221.9 x 222.9 cm
This was one of a series of paintings of 1967 in which Riley marked a

move to the use of colour in her art after many years using black and
white and monochrome. Here, a pair of coloured stripes undulate
diagonally across the canvas in shallow curving sequences with
the stripes accentuating the colours’ interaction with one another.
Riley’s aim was to capture “a luminous disembodied light, variously
coloured” (Riley in conversation with Robert Kudielka (1972), in Paul
Moorhouse, ed. Bridget Riley. Exh. cat. Tate, London. London: Tate
Publishing, 2003, 209). The title refers both to the rushing power of a
waterfall and to an ophthalmological cataract in which the lens of the
eye clouds over. Riley hoped that in looking at this painting the eye
would be “caressed and soothed, experienc[ing] frictions and ruptures,
glide and drift” (Bridget Riley, “The Pleasures of Sight” (1984), in
Moorhouse 2003, 213–14). The following year, Riley represented
Britain at the XXXIV Venice Biennale and was the first British (and first
woman) artist to be awarded the International Prize for Painting.
As a child, Riley spent the war years living in Cornwall, which
made a deep impression on her. She entered the Royal College of Art,
London in 1952. A slow developer, in 1960, during visits to Spain and
Italy, Riley made her first “Op Art” paintings working exclusively in
black and white. Riley created a style using regular patterns of line and
colour that appear to move and shimmer.
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293

1 64 LUCIAN FREUD
(Berlin, 1922– London, 2011)
Naked Girl Asleep, 1967

Private Collection
This nude was painted at 227 Gloucester Terrace in Paddington,

London, where Freud moved in 1967 after his previous nearby
apartment and studio were demolished. He had an L-shaped room
to paint in with windows facing north and south. His work until the
early 1960s had been very tightly painted but his style loosened up
considerably, partly under the influence of the work of Frans Hals
and Gustave Courbet. He began a series of nudes in his new studio
of which this is an important early example. He looks downwards at
the woman’s body and casts her in an eerie even light that gives her a
faintly corpse-like quality. Freud’s rather dispassionate approach is
indicated by his comment on these nudes: “I would always start with
the head; and then I realised that I wanted very deliberately not: the
figure not to be strengthened by the head. The head is a limb of course.”
(Quoted in William Feaver, Lucian Freud. Exh. cat. Tate, London.
London: Tate Publishing, 2002, 30.)
Freud was born in Berlin to Jewish parents who moved to Britain
in 1933. He was the grandson of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.
Influenced by Surrealist and British neo-Romantic art, Freud studied
under the painter Cedric Morris at his art school in Hadleigh, Suffolk,
and then moved to London where he lived and worked throughout
his career. He was a central figure in the “School of London” along
with figurative painters such as his friend Frank Auerbach and
Leon Kossoff. Best known for his portraits and nudes, Freud also
occasionally painted urban landscapes and animals, as well as
making a number of series of etchings.
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295

1 65 KEITH ARNATT programme was running at 9.15pm. The enigma was solved at the
(Oxford, 1930– Wales, 2008) end of the one-week series by an interview with the artist. Arnatt said
that “the continual reference to the disappearance of the art object
Self Burial (in Nine Stages), 1969 suggested to me the eventual disappearance of the artist himself”,
alluding to the conceptual art that was prevalent at the time (quoted
Nine original black and white photographs in The Tate Gallery 1972–74: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions.
mounted on board, each 22.9 x 22.9 cm
London, 1974, 8).
Private Collection, London.
Arnatt studied art at the Royal College of Art, London and after
Courtesy Richard Saltoun / John Austin, London
graduating in 1958 began experimenting with photography and video,
an advanced interest at the time. In the mid 1960s, he exhibited
With no announcement or commentary, WDR 3 Television in West widely as a conceptual artist. His photography was used to document
Germany inserted into the programmes showing between 11 and 18 his mostly ephemeral work, which often included performance. In
October 1969 a series of nine photographs depicting Keith Arnatt the 1970s, Arnatt became interested in the tradition of photography.
sinking gradually into the ground. Two consecutive photographs Though he shifted his focus to the craft of the medium, he managed
were shown each evening, the first one at 8.15pm, directly after the to maintain a conceptual element, albeit in an often humorous and
main news broadcast, and the second one in the middle of whatever domestic fashion.
296 BRAVE NEW WORLD

1 67 IAN HAMILTON FINLAY semiotics. Mathematics, navigation and perspective are invoked in an
(Nassau, 1925– Edinburgh, 2006) allusive visual poetry unique to the artist. As with all of Finlay’s work,
the meanings of the piece are cryptic, teasing and multi-referential,
Sea/Land Sundial, 1970 bringing together classical and pastoral themes with modern scientific
and political concerns. At the heart of Finlay’s art is a meditation on
Glass, 33.5 x 30.7 x 7.5 cm nature, thought and language.
Tate: Bequeathed by David Brown in memory of Mrs Liza Brown 2003 After serving in the British army during the Second World
War, Finlay worked as a shepherd and then began writing. He was
This acid etched glass sundial mounted on a wooden block suggests a pioneer of Concrete Poetry in the early 1960s and then began to
the shape of a sail, moving through the sea yet in sight of land. A make sculptures from the poetry using a classical style. He moved to
steel engineering screw tapped into a metal rod makes a gnomon, “Little Sparta”, near Edinburgh, in 1966, where he worked with many
which projects through the greenish glass to the rear of the panel the craftsmen and women throughout his career on a five-acre landscaped
etching applied on the reverse. When lit correctly, the gnomon casts garden full of his sculptures and intended as a complex commentary
a shadow across the glass to the number twelve, which is ten degrees on the history of western culture. Recurring themes include Virgil’s
east of south, as indicated by the words etched in the glass. Finlay has poetry, sea-faring, sundials, the French Revolution and modern
made many sculptures and images of sundials and they reflect his military history.
philosophical and aesthetic interests in mythology, history, time and
297

166 GILBERT AND GEORGE James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1917), yet Gilbert
Gilbert Proesch (Dolomites, Italy, b. 1943) and George seem to have none of the high seriousness of Joyce’s
George Passmore (Plymouth, Devon, 1942) protagonist Stephen Daedalus. For them the play-acting is a way of
creating their own “living sculptures”, as they call themselves. They
were also poking fun at the slow and self-conscious conceptual art
A Portrait of the Artists as Young Men, 1970
film of the time, which often claimed for itself a kind of impersonality.
Video, 7 minutes It is almost as if Laurel and Hardy had reappeared in the avant-garde
Tate: Purchased 1972 art world of the early 1970s, enlivening the scene with a slow-motion
slapstick humour.
This black-and-white video, which runs on a continuous loop, opens Gilbert and George met as students at St Martin’s College of Art,
with a title card bearing the artists’ royal-looking crest, reminiscent of London, in 1967, and immediately created “Gilbert and George”. From
a pre-war film. They simply stand before the camera in suits and ties, their house in Fournier Street, Spitalfields, east London, they have
staring impassively and moving slightly. George smokes a cigarette been inseparable and making “Art For All” for forty-five years, typically
rather affectedly and awkwardly. The impression is of a brittle and in the form of huge photo-pieces that draw on the violent, seedy,
stylised coolness similar to that of certain pop stars of the period, such obscene world around them. Their work is shown all around the world
as Roxy Music and Lou Reed. The title refers to a famous novel by and has provoked both enormous popularity and controversy.
298 BRAVE NEW WORLD

168 RICHARD HAMILTON being persecuted by the authorities partly because an exhibition of the
(London, 1922–2011) Pop artist Jim Dine at his gallery in 1966 had been closed after being
declared obscene. He wrote:
Release Print, 1972 The sentence in the case of my friend Robert Fraser was blatantly
not intended to help him through a sickness, it was to be a notorious
Screenprint and collage, 71 x 95.5 cm
example to others. As the judge declared ‘There are times when a
swingeing sentence can act as a deterrent’.
(Richard Hamilton: Collected Words 1953–1982. Stuttgart and London:

This print shows Hamilton’s art dealer Robert Fraser (1937–1986) on Thames & Hudson, 1982, 104.)
the left, with Mick Jagger (b. 1943) of The Rolling Stones, handcuffed
in a police van after their arrest for possession of illegal drugs. The The pun on “swingeing”, meaning “severe”, and “swinging” alluded to
work is based on a famous photograph taken by John Twine and London’s reputation as a centre for a trendsetting cultural and social life.
published in the Daily Sketch on 29 June 1967. The title comes from Richard Hamilton was a “father” of British Pop Art (p. 43), who
the name of an organisation set up to provide legal aid to those who trained as a commercial artist and at the Royal College of Art and
had fallen foul of the law, often as a result of drug abuse. Hamilton was whose work was focused largely on the aesthetics and meanings of the
asked if he would make a print to help raise funds for Release. He used photographic, reproduced and commercial image. His art was also
one of the images that he had created in his Swingeing London group committed to various social and political causes, as was that of his wife,
of paintings with collage (1968–69). Hamilton felt that Fraser was the painter Rita Donagh.
299

169 FRANCIS BACON
(Dublin, 1909– Madrid, 1992)
Two Studies for a Self Portrait, 1972

Private Collection
Bacon painted self-portraits throughout much of his career from

the mid-1950s. He told the critic David Sylvester: “I loathe my own
face, and I’ve done self-portraits because I’ve had nothing else to do
… people have been dying around me like flies and I’ve had nobody
else to paint but myself” (David Sylvester, ed. Interviews with Francis
Bacon. London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 1993, 129). He
continued: “One of the nicest things that [Jean] Cocteau said was:
‘Each day in the mirror I watch death at work’. This is what one does
oneself.” (Sylvester 1993, 133.) This work was painted in the wake of
the suicide of Bacon’s lover, George Dyer, during the opening of the
artist’s retrospective at the Grand Palais, Paris in 1971. Bacon used
photographs for most of his portraits, including this one, as a means of
distancing himself from the familiar. His technique was a mixture of
control and spontaneity, employing rags, sponges and fingers, as well
as brushes, to apply the oil paint. Bacon painted on the rough reverse
side of the canvas to achieve his unique effects and then framed his
works in large gold frames and thick glass to accentuate their Old
Master and museum status. Although an atheist, he frequently used
the diptych and triptych formats, giving a religious quality to his art.
Bacon was born in Dublin to English parents and, after a period
in Paris and Berlin in the late 1920s, settled in London. He worked
initially as a furniture and interior designer but turned to painting
in the early 1930s. Influenced by the Old Masters, Surrealism, Pablo
Picasso and a range of photographic material, Bacon created a
distinctive iconography after the Second World War, focusing on the
innate drama of the human individual, which he developed throughout
his career. He is regarded widely as one of the greatest painters of the
twentieth century.
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301

170 R.B. KITAJ
(Cleveland, Ohio, 1932– Los Angeles, 2007)
The Man of the Woods and the Cat of the Mountains, 1973
Tate: Presented by the Friends of the Tate Gallery 1974
This painting was inspired by a reproduction of a nineteenth-century

satirical engraving of 1821 that commented on the final stages of the
broken marriage of King George IV and Queen Caroline of Brunswick.
It shows the Queen as a cat and her supporter, Matthew Wood, as an
ape sitting before a fire in a kitchen, her paw on his lap. Kitaj said he
had no idea of the content of the print and that he wanted to suggest
that the man was telling the cat that there was a better world beyond
the room. Kitaj’s work is marked by his poetic technique of making
paintings from collaged images and creating new meanings from them,
very often with strong literary and historical references. For instance,
the man’s face was taken from a study of the French novelist George
Sand, while the circular form in the upper right was taken from a still
from an early Soviet film Fragment of an Empire (1929) by Fridrikh
Ermler, about a man in Tsarist Russia who loses his memory and
regains it under new political conditions.
Kitaj was born in America to Jewish parents and, after joining
the merchant navy at the age of seventeen, studied art in Vienna and
New York. He moved to England and trained at the Royal College
of Art, London from 1959 to 1961, where he met David Hockney,
Patrick Caulfield and others associated with Pop Art. His painting is
characterised by its scholarly imagery and frequent references to the
intellectuals of the Jewish diaspora, such as Franz Kafka and Walter
Benjamin. He organised The Human Clay exhibition at the Hayward
Gallery, London in 1976 to promote figurative art and wrote The First
Diasporist Manifesto in 1989 about the alienation of the Jew in society.
The unfavourable reaction to his retrospective at the Tate Gallery in
1994 led to the artist leaving Britain for good shortly afterwards.
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303

171 RICHARD LONG
(Bristol, Avon, b. 1945)
Slate Line, 1978

Twenty pieces of Cornish Delabole slate, approx. 270 x 70 cm
Courtesy of the artist and Haunch of Venison, London
This sculpture comprises twenty pieces of Delabole slate. The artist’s

“certificate” for the work gives instructions for each occasion on
which it is displayed. The stones, which can be arranged in a random
sequence, are to be laid down just touching one another, on their long,
flattest and most stable side, one by one and side by side, and centred
on a longitudinal axis. Long has frequently used Delabole slate for his
sculptures. It is a rich blue-grey colour and comes from an ancient
deep quarry in north Cornwall that he has known for many years. He
considers stone a fundamental and irreducible material and sees his
sculptures as a form of intense realism based on this perception:
everything has its right place in the world. There are millions of
stones in the world, and when I make a sculpture, all I do is just take
a few of those stones and bring them together and put them in a
circle and show you … I use stones because I like stones or because
they’re easy to find, without being anything special, so common you
can find them anywhere ... It’s enough to use stones as stones, for
what they are. I’m a realist.
(Quoted in Richard Long: Walking in Circles. Exh. cat. London:

Southbank Centre, 1991, 45.)
Long studied at St Martin’s School of Art from 1966 to 1968, a period

of enormous political, cultural and artistic upheaval when minimal
and conceptual art became dominant forms among many younger
artists. He became interested in Land Art and Concrete Poetry and
in particular in “Arte Povera”. Using photography, maps, stone, wood,
mud and text in a variety of ways, Long’s art focuses on a poetic and
spiritual response to the landscape. Typically, his art records his
extended walking trips in many countries around the world, from
Canada and Bolivia to Britain and Mongolia, and uses elementary
forms such as circles, lines, squares and spirals. Long has said that his
work concerns
a balance between the patterns of nature and the formalism of

human, abstract ideas like lines and circles. It is where my human
characteristics meet the natural forces and patterns of the world, and
that is really the kind of subject of my work.
(Quoted in Richard Long: Walking in Circles. Ibid., 250.)
304 BRAVE NEW WORLD

172 FRANK AUERBACH
(Berlin, b. 1931)
Head of JYM III, 1980

Oil on board, 71.1 x 61 cm
Julia Yardley Mills is unusual among Frank Auerbach’s sitters in that

she is a professional model while the others are mostly friends. She
began sitting for him on a weekly basis in the 1950s and continued to
do so until 1997, the pair becoming very close friends in the process.
She held a consistent pose, her head raised to look up and out of the
canvas. The art critic William Feaver has written about sitting for
Auerbach and about the constant moving around the studio, muttering,
gestures, gossip and long periods of silence during the two-hour
sessions: “We are there to enable him to perform” (William Feaver, “In
the Studio”, London Review of Books, vol. 31, no. 20 (22 October 2009):
32). Auerbach’s approach is intense and emotional and he has said,
To paint the same head over and over leads to unfamiliarity; eventually
you get near the raw truth about it, just as people only blurt out the raw
truth in the middle of a family quarrel.
(Quoted in William Feaver, Frank Auerbach. New York: Rizzoli, 2009, 17.)
Auerbach was born in Berlin of Jewish parents and was sent to

England in 1939, never to see his family again. Between 1948 and
1955 he studied at St Martin’s School of Art and the Royal College of
Art, London. He also attended classes at the Borough Polytechnic,
London between 1947 and 1953, where he was taught by David
Bomberg. Auerbach has worked in the same studio in Primrose Hill,
north London, since 1954, concentrating on a limited range of local
landscape and portrait subjects.
305

173 TONY CRAGG
(Liverpool, b. 1949)
Britain Seen from the North, 1981

Plastic and mixed media, 440 x 800 x 10 cm
Tate: Purchased 1982
This huge wall sculpture was made for Cragg’s exhibition at the
Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, in 1981 and comprises a large
amount of plastic and other debris collected by the artist in west
London just before the show opened. Britain is shown on its side with
a figure on the left appearing to look at it “from the North”. The figure
was made by the artist drawing around his own body on to a sheet of
polythene pinned to the wall. The map’s shape was drawn freehand
from an atlas used as a reference on to a large sheet of polythene laid
on the floor. From these, stencils were made, which were pinned to
the wall to enable the work to be arranged. Their relationship to one
another can be changed to suit any particular wall. Cragg lived and
worked in Germany and says he was upset to return to an England
suffering from inner city tensions and a declining economy. It was
the year of the wedding of Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spencer and
he noticed “the superficial, hysterical enthusiasm generated by such
an irrelevant event as a royal wedding” (The Tate Gallery 1980–82:
Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions. London, 1984, 74). His sculpture
was thus an ironic portrait of the nation by a native now an outsider,
albeit one born in the northern city of Liverpool, which that year
suffered serious urban rioting.
Cragg trained as a science laboratory technician and then studied
at the Royal College of Art, London. He has represented Britain
at the Venice Biennale and lives and works in the industrial city of
Wupperthal, Germany.
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307

1 74 E D W A R D W R I G H T (Liverpool, 1912– London? 1988) posing with a cigar in gold lamé jacket and matching bag walking back
from shopping, along with his paintings The Hypnotist (1963) and The
Design for Theo Crosby, ed. This is Tomorrow. Marriage of Styles (1963). The authors commented on Hockney: “The
Exh. cat. Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1956 best [of his art], and his sharp, knowing attitude towards art and life,
have made him a hero figure for his generation” (p. 235).
17 x 17 cm (overall)
Tate Library and Archive
Edward Wright’s design for the catalogue of the ground-breaking This

176 P E T E R B L A K E (Dartford, Kent, b. 1932)
is Tomorrow exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1956 (see
p. 43) was itself a revolutionary piece of graphic design using ring
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, album cover, 1967
binding and including advertisements for new products, materials
and techniques such as Hille furniture, Perspex and modern building 31.5 x 31 cm
systems. The catalogue was edited by the architect and editor of The Private Collection
Architectural Review, Theo Crosby (1925–64), who is best known as a
founder of the Pentagram design partnership in 1972. Introductions Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles is perhaps the
by the art critic Lawrence Alloway, who curated the exhibition, Reyner most famous pop album of all time, having sold over thirty million
Banham, the architectural historian, and the architect and poet David copies since its release on 1 June 1967. Its thirteen tracks, heavily
Lewis were followed by sections devised by the twelve groups of artists, influenced by the producer George Martin, incorporated rock, folk,
architects, designers and musicians who contributed to the exhibition. orchestral and psychedelic aspects and included “Lucy in the Sky With
This image is from Section 6, “Patio and Pavilion”, and shows, from left Diamonds” and “A Day in the Life”, which the BBC initially banned
to right, the artist Eduardo Paolozzi, the husband and wife architect from being broadcast on radio and TV.
team, Peter and Alison Smithson, and the artist and photographer Peter Blake, by 1966 a well-known and popular artist, was asked
Nigel Henderson, in a street in east London. to design the album’s cover by the art dealer and entrepreneur Robert
Fraser, a good friend of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones [CAT.
168]. Blake, with his wife Jann Haworth, created a life-size sculptural
collage of cut-out figures, which were photographed by Michael
1 75 LORD SNOWDON [ANTONY ARMSTRONG-JONES] Cooper along with the band who were wearing Day-Glo military suits
(London, b. 1930) designed by the Mexican, Manuel Cuevas. Among the more than
seventy famous people chosen by The Beatles in the shot are: Marlon
Private View. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1965, 234-35 Brando, James Dean, Marlene Dietrich, Bob Dylan, Sigmund Freud,
C.G. Jung, Karl Marx, Marilyn Monroe and Mae West. The Beatles’
34 x 27.6 x 2.6 cm (overall) waxworks from Madame Tussaud’s are to the left of the band. John
National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh Lennon wanted to include wax models of Jesus Christ and Adolf
Hitler, but this was voted down by other members of the group. The
The early 1960s saw the rapid development of what became known style of the cover is partly pseudo-Victorian and nostalgic with its
as “Swinging London”, when for the first time since the eighteenth quaint lettering, royal coat of arms and flowers and yet also reflects the
century London was seen as one of the world’s most up-to-date and vibrant modernity of the “Swinging Sixties”.
fashionable capitals in the world. In particular, the success of British
pop groups, such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, as well as
the rise of major figures in art and design, such as David Hockney and
Mary Quant, created a dynamic and youthful culture that attracted
international attention. Private View was a celebration of the London
art scene, with photographs by Lord Snowdon of artists, studios,
galleries, museums and art schools accompanied by a text written
by the curator of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, Bryan Robertson,
and the art critic John Russell. In their introduction, Robertson
and Russell asked: “Just what has turned London into one of the
world’s three capitals of art? Who did it, and how? And what kind of
people are they?” (p. 3). The book went through three generations of
artists, curators, dealers and administrators, from Henry Moore and
Anthony Blunt to Peter Blake and Robert Fraser, identifying a range
of characters: “philosopher and holy idiot, golden boy and derelict,
saint and demonic schemer, administrator and clown, pauper and
near-millionaire” (p. 4). The pages illustrated show David Hockney,
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174
175
176
309

177 C H A R L E S H A R R I S O N (Chesham, Buckinghamshire, 1942– Banbury, Gerald Scarfe is one of the most celebrated political cartoonists
Oxfordshire, 2009), ed. of the twentieth century, his art drawing on a tradition that goes
back to the work of James Gillray [CATS. 46, 47]. An asthma sufferer
When Attitudes Become Form: Works-Concepts-Processes- throughout his life, Scarfe worked as a graphic designer and, inspired
by the art of Ronald Searle, became a freelance illustrator, working
Situations-Information – Live in Your Head. Exh. cat. Institute
for the satirical magazine Private Eye and national newspapers and
of Contemporary Arts, London, July–August, 1969
magazines. A highly versatile artist, Scarfe has also worked as a Disney
31 x 22 cm (overall) animator and designed the album cover for Pink Floyd’s The Wall
Tate Library & Archive (1979) and the sets for the accompanying tour.
From the mid-1960s, British art responded to the developments of

conceptualism, land art, video, performance, feminism and other
radical practices from the USA and Europe. The late 1960s were a 179 G L E N B A X T E R (Leeds, b. 1944)
time of political challenge, internationalism and experimentation
and there was also an iconoclastic tendency with echoes of the anti-
Atlas: I’ll never forget the day M’Blawi stumbled on the work
idolatry of Reformation culture and a concomitant fascination with
of the Post-Impressionists... . English edition. London:
the relationship between art and language. Following much of the
Jonathan Cape, 1982
great French Dada artist Marcel Duchamp’s theory and practice,
art was seen as a process of discovery rather than the production of 22.7 x 17.5 cm (overall)
objects with a commodity value. As Charles Harrison, the curator of Private Collection
the seminal exhibition When Attitudes Become Form (see p. xxx), wrote
in his catalogue introduction “Against Precedents”: The biography on Glen Baxter’s website begins:
virtually all the artists represented would appear to share a Glen Baxter was born in Leeds, a tiny suburb of Belgium, in 1944.
dissatisfaction with the status of the art work as a particular object in a A group of radiographers, stumbling into the ruins of the Baxter
finite state, and a rejection of the notion of form as a specific and other ancestral home at this time, found it to be “composed of nothing more
identity to be imposed upon material than irregular blocks of sandstone, graphite and lettuce.” From such
(reprinted in Studio International (September 1969): 90–93). unpromising beginnings sprang the elemental force now officially
recognised as “Baxterism”.
The catalogue itself was made in the same spirit, comprising a loose-
leaf folder with a page for each artist. Among the British artists Baxter’s humorous impact on the British arts scene came with his first
represented were Victor Burgin, Barry Flanagan, Richard Long and publication, Atlas, in the year that Margaret Thatcher was elected to
Bruce McLean. A decade later, a return to neo-expressionist figurative power, which combined a distinctive generic comic-book linear style
painting saw the end of the “heroic” period of these ideas, but by no with incongruous imagery and captions. Typically, Baxter’s characters
means their total eclipse. include cowboys, colonial adventurers, schoolboys and gangsters who
appear in unlikely settings and pronounce on aesthetic, philosophical
and other weighty matters with a dry and off-beat humour. Baxter
expressed a sense of the ridiculous that had grown throughout the
178 G E R A L D S C A R F E (London, b. 1936) 1970s as the aspirations of previous generations seemed to be in
collapse and transforming themselves into new and uncertain forms.
His work can be seen in a British artistic and literary tradition that
Ian Fleming as James Bond, 1970
includes the writings of Laurence Sterne and Lewis Carroll, the verse
Lithograph, 737 x 546 mm and illustrations of Edward Lear, and the comedy of “Monty Python’s
Private Collection Flying Circus”.
The creator of James Bond, the Etonian Ian Fleming (1908–64), is

shown as a mixture of a grotesquely decaying old man, wearing his
trademark bow tie, and a helicoptering bionic figure with an enormous
semen-shooting missile for a phallus, raping an emaciated and
headless female figure. The lurid colours add to the effect of violent
science fiction art. Fleming’s fantasy hero was in fact based on his
own very considerable military and espionage experiences. Scarfe’s
satire is directed at the warped impotence that he sensed behind the
technological power of the West during the Vietnam War, which he had
witnessed as a correspondent during the 1960s.
310 BRAVE NEW WORLD

177
178
179
311

CHRONOLOG Y ( 1477– 1 9 79 )
CHRONOLOG I CA L I N D E X O F A R T I ST S
ALPHA B ETICA L I N D E X O F A R T I ST S
CA TA LOGUE O F W O R K S I N T H E E XH I BI T I O N
SELECT B IB LI O G R A PH Y
EXHIB ITION CA T A L O G UE S
AND OTHER PUBL I CA T I O N S BY
THE FUNDACI Ó N J UA N M A R CH

CH RO N O LO G Y ( 1477–19 79 )
1477 Eton Chapel wall paintings begun. Finished by 1600 Approximate publication date of Nicholas 1711 The Spectator magazine first published.
1487. Hilliard’s The Art of Limning. 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury’s Characteristics
1483 Accession of Richard III. William Shakespeare writes Hamlet. published.
1485 Accession of Henry VII and start of Tudor 1603 Accession of James I and beginning of Stuart 1712 Godfrey Kneller’s Academy, London founded.
dynasty. dynasty. 1714 Accession of George I.
1508 Michelangelo paints Sistine Chapel ceiling, 1605 Gunpowder Plot. 1715 First Jacobite rebellion defeated.
Rome. Francis Bacon’s Advancement of Learning and Jonathan Richardson’s Essay on the Theory
Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote published. of Painting published.
1509 Accession of Henry VIII.
1606 Henry Peacham’s The Art of Drawing with a 1718 James Thornhill’s Academy, London founded.
1512–18 Pietro Torrigiano tomb for Henry VII and his
Pen published.
queen, Westminster Abbey. 1720 “South Sea Bubble” financial crash.
1611 Authorised (“King James”) version of the Bible
1517 “Evil May Day” apprentice riots in London 1726 Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels published.
published.
includes Painter-Stainers’ members. 1727 Accession of George II.
1618–48 Thirty Years War.
1527 Royal divorce crisis. 1733 Society of Dilettanti founded to encourage
1618–22 Inigo Jones builds Banqueting House,
1531 Henry VIII named Protector and Supreme connoisseurship and art collecting.
Whitehall.
Head of Church in England. 1735 St Martin’s Lane Academy, London founded
1620 Mayflower Puritan ship sails to America.
1532 Hans Holbein settles in England. by William Hogarth and others.
1623 First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays.
1534 Act of Supremacy confirms Reformation. Engraver’s (“Hogarth’s”) Copyright Act.
1625 Accession of Charles I.
1535 Thomas More executed. 1740–48 War of Austrian Succession.
1629 Charles dissolves Parliament until 1640.
1536 Dissolution of monasteries begins under 1741 Samuel Richardson’s Pamela published.
1632 Anthony van Dyck settles in London.
Thomas Cromwell. 1744 Samuel Baker’s first auction of books –firm
First coffee shop opens in London.
Union of England and Wales. later becomes Sotheby’s.
Hans Holbein appointed Court Painter. 1641 Death of Anthony van Dyck.
1745 Second Jacobite rebellion. Failure results
1538 Destruction of religious shrines including 1642–49 Civil War. in the end of Stuart hopes.
Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas à Beckett’s Second wave of iconoclasm.
1753 William Hogarth’s The Analysis of Beauty
at Canterbury. 1648 Académie Royale, Paris founded. published.
1539 Myles Coverdale’s Great Bible in English 1649–60 Execution of Charles I in 1649 is followed by a 1752 Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San
published. Republic under Oliver Cromwell. Fernando, Madrid founded.
1540 Execution of Thomas Cromwell. 1656 Diego Velázquez paints Las Meninas. 1754 Society of Arts founded.
1543 Death of Hans Holbein. 1658 William Sanderson’s Graphice … The Most 1754–62 David Hume’s History of England published.
1545 Council of Trent begins Counter-Reformation Excellent Art of Painting published.
1756–63 Seven Years War between Britain and France
(concludes 1563). 1660 Restoration of monarchy and accession of –first “world war”.
1547 Accession of Edward VIwith Lord Somerset as Charles II.
1757 Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry
Protector. 1662 Restoration of Church of England. Royal published, on ideas of the sublime and
1549 First Book of Common Prayer. Society receives charter. beautiful.
1550–3 Height of first wave of iconoclasm in England. 1666 Great Fire of London, followed by rebuilding The British Museum, London founded.
and rapid expansion of London. 1760 Accession of George III.
1550 Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists published in
Florence. 1667 John Milton’s Paradise Lost published. First Society of Artists exhibition in London.
1553 Accession of Mary I who reintroduces 1678 John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress published. 1763–71 Horace Walpole’s Anecdotes of Painting
Catholicism. 1679–81 Emergence of “Whig” and “Tory” political published.
1555 Start of burning of heretics. (Archbishop of parties. 1766 George Stubbs’ Anatomy of the Horse
Canterbury Thomas Cranmer burned 1556.) 1685 Accession of Catholic James II. published.
James Christie’s first sale of artworks.
1558 Accession of Elizabeth I. 1687 Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica
published. 1768 Royal Academy of Arts, London founded.
1563 First edition of John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.
First volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica
Accademia del Disegno, Florence founded. 1688 “Glorious Revolution” and accession of
published.
1574 First Jesuits arrive in England. William III and Mary II.
1770 Captain Cook arrives at Botany Bay.
1577–80 Francis Drake’s circumnavigation of the globe. 1690 John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding published. 1771 Richard Arkwright’s first spinning mill.
1581 Painter-Stainers’ Company granted royal George Vertue’s Anecdotes of Painting in
charter. 1694 Bank of England founded.
England published.
1586 William Camden’s Britannia published, an 1701–14 War of Spanish Succession.
1776 Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman
influential antiquarian study. 1702 Accession of Anne. Empire published.
1588 Defeat of Spanish Armada. 1707 Union of England and Scotland. Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations published.
1593 Accademia di San Luca, Rome founded. 1708–12 James Thornhill’s paintings at Greenwich. 1776–81 American War of Independence.
315

1780 Anti-Catholic Gordon Riots in London. 1833 Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement founded 1891 Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray
1784 Ordnance Survey of England established. by John Henry Newman and others. published.
1785 The Times newspaper founded. 1834 Slavery abolished in British Empire. 1894 The Yellow Book periodical first published,
1837 Accession of Queen Victoria. with Aubrey Beardsley as art editor.
1786 John Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery founded.
School of Design, London (later Royal College 1895 National Trust founded.
1789 French Revolution starts. William Blake’s
of Art) founded. Guglielmo Marconi invented wireless telegraphy.
Songs of Innocence published.
1839 William Henry Fox Talbot published a H G Wells’ The Time Machine published.
1790 Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution
photographic negative. 1896 First cinema opened in London.
in France published.
1840–52 Charles Barry and A.W.N. 1897 Tate Gallery opened in London.
1791 Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man published. Pugin designed and built the Houses of 1899 Magnetic recording of sound invented.
1792 Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of Rights Parliament. Start of Boer War in South Africa.
of Women published. 1841 Punch magazine first published. 1900 Sigmund Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams
1793 Musée du Louvre, Paris opens. 1843 John Ruskin’s Modern Painters published. published.
1793–1815 War with France. 1844–46 Famine in Ireland at its height. 1901 Accession of Edward VII . UK population
1795 École des Beaux-Arts, Paris founded. 1846 “Railway Mania” at it height as investors 41.4 million (USA 75.9 million).
1796 Vaccination against smallpox introduced. bought shares in railway companies. 1903 National Art Collections Fund founded to
1798 Irish Rebellion. 1845 Friedrich Engels’ Condition of the Working prevent works of art leaving Britain.
William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Classes in England published. Wright brothers made first airplane flight.
Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads published. 1848 Revolutions in France and elsewhere in 1905 Les Fauves (Paris) and Die Brücke (Dresden)
1800 Act of Union with Ireland. Europe. groups founded.
Communist Manifesto published. 1907 Pablo Picasso painted Las Desmoiselles
1801 First census. Population of UK 10.4 million
Founding of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. d’Avignon.
(USA 5.3 million).
1851 Great Exhibition, London. 1909 F.T. Marinetti published Futurist Manifesto in
1803–12 Elgin Marbles transferred to British Museum.
Death of Joseph Mallord William Turner. Paris.
1805 Battle of Trafalgar.
1852 Victoria and Albert Museum, London opened. 1910 Accession of George V.
British Institute for the Development of
1857–65 Transatlantic cable laid. First Post-Impressionist Exhibition, London.
the Fine Arts founded.
Contemporary Art Society founded to
1807 Abolition of slave trade in British Empire. 1857 National Portrait Gallery, London opened.
purchase modern works for the nation.
1811 Regency begins under George, Prince of Wales, 1859 Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species published.
1911 Der Blaue Reiter group of Expressionist and
later George IV. 1861 UK population 23.1 million (USA 32 million). abstract painters, Munich founded.
“Luddite” disturbances against new textile 1863 First underground railway in London 1912 Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition, London.
machinery.
1865 Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Futurist Exhibition, London.
1814 George Stephenson builds first steam Wonderland published. 1913 Omega Workshops and Rebel Art Centre,
locomotive.
1867 Reform Act further widens franchise. London founded.
Walter Scott’s Waverly published.
Francisco de Goya paints The 3rd of May 1808 1869 Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy 1914 Blast, No. 1 published.
in Madrid: the executions on Principe Pío hill. published. 1914–18 First World War.
1815 Defeat of Napoleon at Battle of Waterloo. 1870 Elementary Education Act. 1916 Dada movement, Zurich founded.
1816 “Bread or Blood” riots in East Anglia. 1871 Slade School of Fine Art, London opened. 1917 Russian Revolution.
1819 Peterloo Massacre by militia of political 1874 First Impressionist Exhibition, Paris. 1919 Treaty of Versailles.
reform demonstrators in Manchester. 1877 Grosvenor Gallery, London opened. Bauhaus founded.
Real Museo de Pinturas y Esculturas (later Society for the Preservation of Ancient 1922 British Broadcasting Corporation founded.
Museo Nacional del Prado), Madrid opens. Buildings founded. T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and James Joyce’s
1820 Accession of George IV. 1878 First electric street lighting in London. Ulysses published.
Théodore Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa John Ruskin v. James Abbott McNeill Benito Mussolini came to power in Italy.
shown in London. Whistler trial. 1924 André Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism
1824 John Constable’s The Hay Wain shown and 1879 First telephone exchange in London. published in Paris.
highly regarded at Paris Salon. Public granted unlimited access to British 1926 General Strike in Britain.
National Gallery, London founded. Museum. Council for Preservation of Rural England
Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
1881 Population of London is 3.3 million (Paris founded.
Animals founded.
2.2 million and New York 1.2 million). 1929 World Economic Crisis.
1825 Stockton and Darlington railway opens. Trade
1885 Walter Pater’s Marius the Epicurean published. Museum of Modern Art, New York founded.
unions legalised.
1886 Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and 1930 Wyndham Lewis’ Apes of God published.
1829 Catholic emancipation. Metropolitan Police Mr. Hyde published. 1932 Courtauld Institute, London founded.
founded. New English Art Club, London founded.
1933 Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany.
1830 Accession of William IV. 1887 Bloody Sunday socialist demonstration in Unit One group founded.
1831 “Swing” agricultural riots against machinery in Trafalgar Square, London. Artists’ International Association founded.
East Anglia. 1888 Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, London Herbert Read’s Art Now published.
1832 Great Reform Bill enlarges franchise. founded. British Film Institute, London founded.
316 CHRONOLOGHY (1477-1979)

1936–39 Spanish Civil War. 1957 USSR launches Sputnik I.
1936 Accession and abdication of Edward VIII. 1960 Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho released.
Accession of George VI. First Situation exhibition of abstract art
International Surrealist Exhibition, London. in London
1937 Mass Observation group founded. 1961 Private Eye satirical magazine first
Degenerate Art exhibition, Munich. published.
Circle: An International Survey of 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Constructivist Art published Commonwealth Immigrants Act limited
1938 Picasso’s Guernica exhibited in Britain. immigration to Britain.
1939–45 Second World War. 1963 Profumo Affair contributed to downfall
1940 Beginning of the London Blitz (–1941) by the of Conservative government.
German Luftwaffe. 1964 Harold Wilson Prime Minister of new Labour
Council for Encouragement of Music and government.
Arts founded; becomes Arts Council at end 1966 Cultural Revolution in China.
of war. Arte Povera in Italy.
1944 T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets published. 1967 Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album released.
1945 Dropping of first atom bomb on Hiroshima. 1968 Student riots in Paris.
Labour landslide victory at General Election.
1969 First moon landing.
1946 Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), Kenneth Clark’s Civilization and first Monty
London founded. Python series on TV.
1947 Nationalisation of coal and other industries When Attitudes Become Form exhibition
in Britain. at ICA, London.
1948 West Indian immigrants began to arrive in Student protests at universities and art
Britain. schools in Britain.
Ulster Troubles began.
1950–53 Korean War.
1970 Conservative party returned to power under
1951 Conservative party returned to power under
Edward Heath.
Winston Churchill.
UK population 50 million (USA 153 million). 1971 Decimal currency introduced in Britain.
Festival of Britain on South Bank, London. Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange
released.
1952 Accession of Elizabeth II.
First hydrogen bomb exploded. Independent 1973 UK entered European Economic Community.
Group at ICA founded. USA withdrew from Vietnam.
First American Abstract Expressionist 1974 James Callaghan Prime Minister of new
paintings exhibited in London. Labour government.
1954 Bill Haley and the Comets’ Rock Around the 1976 R.B. Kitaj’s The Human Clay exhibition at
Clock single released. Hayward Gallery, London.
1955 Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot first 1977 First mass-produced Apple computers.
performed. Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks album
1956 Suez Crisis. released.
This is Tomorrow exhibition at Whitechapel 1979 Margaret Thatcher Prime Minister of new
Gallery, London. Conservative government.
Nikolaus Pevsner’s The Englishness of English Terry Jones’ Monty Python’s Life of Brian film
Art published. offended churches.
317

CH RO N O LO G I C AL I N DE X OF ART I ST S
Torrigiano, Pietro Cat. 2 Gribelin, Simon Cat. 51 Fuseli, Henry Cat. 69

(1472–1528) (1661–1733) (1741–1825)
Holbein the Younger, Hans Cat. 3 Thornhill, James Cats. 24, 25 Rigaud, John–Francis Cat. 43
(1497/8–1543) (1675/6–1734) (1742–1810?)
Foxe, John Cat. 11 Vanderbank, John Cat. 52 Robertson, George Cat. 78
(1517–87) (1694–1739) (1746/49–88)
De Bry, Theodor Cat. 13 Van der Gucht, Gerard Cat. 52 Spang, Michael Henry Cat. 57
(1527/8–98) (1696–1776) (fl. ca. 1750–d. 1762)
Hilliard, Nicholas Cat. 4 Hogarth, William Cats. 33, 55 Smith, Benjamin Cat. 87
(1547–1619) (1697–1764) (1754–1833)
White, John Cat. 13 Canaletto, Antonio Cat. 38 Flaxman, John Cats. 83, 84, 85
(1540–93) (1697–1768) (1755–1826)
Peake the Elder, Robert Cat. 7 Roubiliac, Louis-François Cat. 34 Gillray, James Cats. 46, 47
(ca. 1551–ca. 1619) (1702–62) (1756–1815)
Gheeraerts II, Marcus Cat. 6 Hayman, Francis Cats. 37, 53 Rowlandson, Thomas Cats. 44, 45, 81
(1561/2–1636) (1708–76) (1756–1827)
Hondius, Jodocus Cat. 15 Vivares, François Cat. 77 Blake, William Cats. 65, 66, 86
(1563–1612) (1709–80) (1757–1827)
Van der Passe the Elder, Crispin Cat. 27 Grignion, Charles Cats. 53, 54 Hoppner, John Cat. 49
(ca. 1564–1637) (1710–1810) (1758–1810)
Oliver, Isaac Cat. 5 Devis, Arthur Cat. 36 Fittler, James Cat. 78
(before 1568–1617) (1712–87) (1758–1835)
Jones, Inigo Cat. 26 Wilson, Richard Cat. 56 Crome, John Cat. 68
(1573–1652) (1713–82) (1768–1821)
Larkin, William Cat. 8 Ramsay, Allan Cat. 35 Lawrence, Thomas Cat. 48
(ca. 1580/5–1619) (1713–84) (1769–1830)
Boel, Cornelius Cat. 14 Cozens, Alexander Cat. 79 Girtin, Thomas Cat. 64
(ca. 1580–ca. 1621) (1717–86) (1775–1802)
Hoskins, John Cat. 18 Bampfylde, Copplestone Warre Cat. 77 Turner, J.M.W. Cats. 70, 73
(ca. 1590–1665) (1720–91) (1775–1851)
Van Dyck, Anthony Cat. 16 Reynolds, Joshua Cat. 40 Constable, John Cats. 71, 82
(1599–1641) (1723–92) (1776–1837)
Hollar, Wenceslaus Cats. 29, 30 Gilpin, William Cat. 80 Cotman, John Sell Cat. 67
(1607–77) (1724–1804) (1782–1842)
Cooper, Samuel Cat. 19 Stubbs, George Cats. 59, 76 Martin, John Cats. 74, 88, 89
(1609–72) (1724–1806) (1789–1854)
Dobson, William Cat. 17 Gainsborough, Thomas Cats. 41, 61 Roberts, David Cat. 90
(1611–46) (1727–88) (1796–1864)
Lely, Peter Cat. 20 Zoffany, Johan Cats. 39 Hall, Samuel Carter Cat. 111
(1618–80) (1733–1810) (1800–89)
Siberechts, Jan Cat. 21 Wright of Derby, Joseph Cat. 58 Lucas, David Cat. 82
(1627–ca. 1700) (1734–97) (1802–81)
Hooke, Robert Cat. 31 Romney, George Cat. 87 Lewis, John Frederick Cat. 95
(1635–1703) (1734–1802) (1805–76)
Kneller, Godfrey Cats. 22, 23 Banks, Thomas Cat. 60 Palmer, Samuel Cat. 72
(1646–1723) (1735–1805) (1805–81)
Knyff, Leonard Cat. 32 Nollekens, Joseph Cat. 50 Cameron, Julia Margaret Cat. 112
(1650–1722) (1737–1823) (1815–79)
Kip, Johannes Cat. 32 Mortimer, John Hamilton Cat. 42 Watts, George Frederic Cats. 98, 99
(1653–1722) (1740–79) (1817–1904)
Closterman, John Cat. 51 Barry, James Cats. 62, 63 Fenton, Roger Cat. 108
(1660–1713) (1741–1806) (1819–69)
318

Ruskin, John Cat. 75 Griggs, F.M.L. Cat. 144 Butler, Reg Cat. 154
(1819–1900) (1876–1938) (1913–81)
Bourne, Herbert Cat. 111 John, Gwen Cat. 131 Lanyon, Peter Cat. 157
(1820–1907) (1876–1939) (1918–64)
Tenniel, John Cat. 110 Gore, Spencer Cat. 121 Freud, Lucian Cat. 164
(1820–1914) (1878–1914) (1922–2011)
Brown, Ford Madox Cat. 111 Bell, Vanessa Cats. 139, 143 Hamilton, Richard Cat. 168
(1821–93) (1879–1961) (1922–2011)
Evans, Edmund Cat. 113 Lewis, Wyndham Cats. 125, 140, 142 Paolozzi, Eduardo Cat. 155
(1826–1905) (1882–1957) (1924–2005)
Hunt, William Holman Cat. 92 Lamb, Henry Cat. 123 Caro, Anthony Cat. 160
(1827–1910) (1883–1960) (b. 1924)
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Cat. 101 Grant, Duncan Cats. 127, 139, 143 Finlay, Ian Hamilton Cat. 167
(1828–82) (1885–1978) (1925–2006)
Millais, John Everett Cats. 93, 94, 109 Etchells, Frederick Cat. 139 Coker, Peter Cat. 156
(1829–96) (1886–1973) (1926–2004)
Pi y Margall, Joaquín Cats. 84, 85 Lowry, L.S. Cat. 152 Arnatt, Keith Cat. 165
(1830–91) (1887–1976) (1930–2008)
Leighton, Frederic Cats. 96, 106 Nash, Paul Cats. 136, 145, 146 Snowdon, Lord Cat. 175
(1830–96) (1889–1946) (Antony Armstrong-Jones)
Brett, John Cat. 91 Nevinson, C.R.W. Cat. 128 (b. 1930)
(1831–1902) (1889–1946) Auerbach, Frank Cat. 172
Burne-Jones, Edward Coley Cats. 97, 105, 119 Wadsworth, Edward Cat. 126 (b. 1931)
(1833–98) (1889–1949) Riley, Bridget Cat. 163
Morris, William Cat. 119 Bomberg, David Cat. 122 (b. 1931)
(1834–96) (1890–1957) Kitaj, R.B. Cat. 170
Whistler, James Abbott McNeill Cat. 100 Gabo, Naum Cat. 149 (1932–2007)
(1834–1903) (1890–1977) Blake, Peter Cats. 158, 176
Hooper, W.H. Cat. 119 Gaudier-Brzeska, Henri Cat. 124 (b. 1932)
(1834–1912) (1891–1915) Hodgkin, Howard Cat. 162
Butler, Samuel Cats. 115, 116 Spencer, Stanley Cat. 134 (b. 1932)
(1835–1902) (1891–1959) Caulfield, Patrick Cat. 159
Grimshaw, Atkinson Cat. 103 Nicholson, Ben Cats. 135, 149 (1936–2005)
(1836–93) (1894–1982) Scarfe, Gerald Cat. 178
Crane, Walter Cat. 113 Frampton, Meredith Cat. 138 (b. 1936)
(1845–1915) (1894–1984) Hockney, David Cat. 161
Herkomer, Hubert von Cat. 114 Roberts, William Cat. 129 (b. 1937)
(1849–1914) (1895–1980) Harrison, Charles Cat. 177
Langley, Walter Cat. 104 Moore, Henry Cats. 133, 137, 153 (1942–2009)
(1852–1922) (1898–1987) George Passmore Cat. 166
Gilbert, Alfred Cat. 102 Hepworth, Barbara Cat. 151 (b. 1942)
(1854–1934) (1903–75) Gilbert Proesch Cat. 166
Sargent, John Singer Cat. 107 Sutherland, Graham Cat. 150 (b. 1943)
(1856–1925) (1903–80) Baxter, Glen Cat. 179
Sickert,Walter Richard Cats. 120, 130 Burra, Edward Cat. 132 (b. 1944)
(1860–1942) (1905–76) Long, Richard Cat. 171
Shannon, Charles Cat. 141 Boswell, James Cat. 147 (b. 1945)
(1863–1937) (1906–71) Cragg, Tony Cat. 173
Fry, Roger Cat. 139 Bacon, Francis Cat. 169 (b. 1949)
(1866–1934) (1909–92)
Beardsley, Aubrey Cats. 117, 118 Wright, Edward Cat. 174
(1872–98) (1912–88)
319

A L P H A B E T I CAL I N DE X OF ART I ST S
Arnatt, Keith Cat. 165 Gilbert, Alfred Cat. 102 Nollekens, Joseph Cat. 50
Auerbach, Frank Cat. 172 Gillray, James Cats. 46, 47 Oliver, Isaac Cat. 5
Bacon, Francis Cat. 169 Gilpin, William Cat. 80 Palmer, Samuel Cat. 72
Bampfylde, Copplestone Warre Cat. 77 Girtin, Thomas Cat. 64 Paolozzi, Eduardo Cat. 155
Banks, Thomas Cat. 60 Gore, Spencer Cat. 121 Passmore, George Cat. 166
Barry, James Cats. 62, 63 Grant, Duncan Cats. 127, 139, 143 Peake the Elder, Robert Cat. 7
Baxter, Glen Cat. 179 Gribelin, Simon Cat. 51 Pi y Margall, Joaquín Cats. 84, 85
Beardsley, Aubrey Cats. 117, 118 Griggs, F.L.M. Cat. 144 Proesch, George Cat. 166
Bell, Clive Cat. 143 Grignion, Charles Cats. 53, 54 Ramsay, Allan Cat. 35
Bell, Vanessa Cats. 139, 143 Grimshaw, Atkinson Cat. 103 Reynolds, Joshua Cat. 40
Blake, Peter Cats. 158, 176 Hall, Samuel Carter Cat. 111 Rigaud, John-Francis Cat. 43
Blake, William Cats. 65, 66, 86 Hamilton, Richard Cat. 168 Riley, Bridget Cat. 163
Boel, Cornelius Cat. 14 Harrison, Charles Cat. 177 Roberts, David Cat. 90
Bomberg, David Cat. 122 Hayman, Francis Cats. 37, 53 Roberts, William Cat. 129
Boswell, James Cat. 147 Hepworth, Barbara Cat. 151 Robertson, George Cat. 78
Bourne, Herbert Cat. 111 Herkomer, Hubert von Cat. 114 Romney, George Cat. 87
Brett, John Cat. 91 Hilliard, Nicholas Cat. 4 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Cat. 101
Brown, Ford Madox Cat. 111 Hockney, David Cat. 161 Roubiliac, Louis-François Cat. 34
De Bry, Theodor Cat. 13 Hodgkin, Howard Cat. 162 Rowlandson,Thomas Cats. 44, 45, 81
Burne-Jones, Edward Coley Cats. 97, 105, 119 Hogarth, William Cats. 33, 55 Ruskin, John Cat. 75
Burra, Edward Cat. 132 Holbein the Younger, Hans Cat. 3 Sargent, John Singer Cat. 107
Butler, Reg Cat. 154 Hollar, Wenceslaus Cats. 29, 30 Scarfe, Gerald Cat. 178
Butler, Samuel Cats. 115, 116 Hondius, Jodocus Cat. 15 Shannon, Charles Cat. 141
Cameron, Julia Margaret Cat. 112 Hooke, Robert Cat. 31 Siberechts, Jan Cat. 21
Canaletto, Antonio Cat. 38 Hooper, W.H. Cat. 119 Sickert, Walter Richard Cats. 120, 130
Caro, Anthony Cat. 160 Hoppner, John Cat. 49 Smith, Benjamin Cat. 87
Caulfield, Patrick Cat. 159 Hoskins, John Cat. 18 Snowdon, Lord Cat. 175
Closterman, John Cat. 51 Hunt, William Holman Cat. 92 (Antony Armstrong-Jones)
Coker, Peter Cat. 156 John, Gwen Cat. 131 Spang, Michael Henry Cat. 57
Constable, John Cats. 71, 82 Jones, Inigo Cat. 26 Spencer, Stanley Cat. 134
Cooper, Samuel Cat. 19 Kip, Johannes Cat. 32. Stubbs, George Cats. 59, 76
Cotman, John Sell Cat. 67 Kitaj, R.B. Cat. 170 Sutherland, Graham Cat. 150
Cozens, Alexander Cat. 79 Kneller, Godfrey Cats. 22, 23 Tenniel, John Cat. 110
Cragg, Tony Cat. 173 Knyff, Leonard Cat. 32 Thornhill, James Cats. 24, 25
Crane, Walter Cat. 113. Lamb, Henry Cat. 123 Torrigiano, Pietro Cat. 2
Crome, John Cat. 68 Langley, Walter Cat. 104 Turner, J.M.W. Cats. 70, 73
Devis, Arthur Cat. 36 Lanyon, Peter Cat. 157 Vanderbank, John Cat. 52
Dobson, William Cat. 17 Larkin, William Cat. 8 Van der Gucht, Gerard Cat. 52
Etchells, Frederick Cat. 139 Lawrence, Thomas Cat. 48 Van der Passe the Elder, Crispin Cat. 27
Evans, Edmund Cat. 113 Leighton, Frederic Cats. 96, 106 Van Dyck, Anthony Cat. 16
Fenton, Roger Cat. 108 Lely, Peter Cat. 20 Vivares, François Cat. 77
Finlay, Ian Hamilton Cat. 167 Lewis, John Frederick Cat. 95 Wadsworth, Edward Cat. 126
Fittler, James Cat. 78 Lewis, Wyndham Cats. 125, 140, 142 Watts, George Frederic Cats. 98, 99
Flaxman, John Cats. 83, 84, 85 Long, Richard Cat. 171 Whistler, James Abbott McNeill Cat. 100
Foxe, John Cat. 11 Lowry, L.S. Cat. 152 White, John Cat. 13
Frampton, Meredith Cat. 138 Lucas, David Cat. 82 Wilson, Richard Cat. 56
Freud, Lucian Cat. 164 Martin, John Cats. 74, 88, 89 Wright, Edward Cat. 174
Fry, Roger Cat. 139 Millais, John Everett Cats. 93, 94, 109 Wright of Derby, Joseph Cat. 58
Fuseli, Henry Cat. 69 Moore, Henry Cats. 133, 137, 153 Zoffany, Johan Cat. 39
Gabo, Naum Cat. 149 Morris, William Cat. 119
Gainsborough, Thomas Cats. 41, 61 Mortimer, John Hamilton Cat. 42
Gaudier-Brzeska, Henri Cat. 124 Nash, Paul Cats. 136, 145, 146
Gheeraerts II, Marcus Cat. 6 Nevinson, C. R.W. Cat. 128
Gilbert and George Cat. 166 Nicholson, Ben Cats. 135, 149
320

CATALOGUE OF WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION
1 9 The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain. 23

Unknown artist(s) Unknown artist London: William Hall and John Beale, Godfrey Kneller
Virgin Mary and baby Jesus; Pietà; The Way Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford, ca. 1620 1611–12 (Lübeck, 1646–London, 1723)
of the Cross; unidentified figure (possibly a Oil on canvas, 222 x 150 cm Etching and engraving, 385 x 525 mm Charles D’Artiquenave, 1702
kneeling saint or perhaps Jesus in the Garden Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. (image), 405 x 527 mm (sheet) Oil on canvas, 108 x 80 cm
of Gethsemane), 1350–1475 Purchased by a donation from Dr David Private Collection National Portrait Gallery, London. Inv. 3239
Alabaster, each approx. 50 x 30 cm Fyfe, 2010
Blunham Parish Church, Bedfordshire 16 24
10 Anthony van Dyck James Thornhill
2 Milemete workshop (Antwerp, 1599–London, 1641) (Woolland, Dorset, 1675/6–Stalbridge,
Pietro Torrigiano (1320-mid 1330s) Queen Henrietta Maria, 1632 Dorset, 1734)
(Florence, 1472–Seville, 1528) Psalter, England (Oxford?), ca. 1330–35, Oil on canvas, 109 x 86.2 cm St Paul Preaching at Athens, ca. 1710
John Colet, 1518 folio 53 Lent by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Oil on canvas, 82 x 73.7 cm
Plaster cast of bust, 83.8 x 65 x 26 cm Parchment, 27.2 x 18.9 x 6.2 cm (overall) Inv. RCIN 404430 Tate. Lent by the Dean and Chapter of
National Portrait Gallery, London. The Master and Fellows of Sidney Sussex St Paul’s Cathedral 1989. Inv. L01480
Inv. 4823 College, Cambridge/Sidney Sussex College. 17
Inv. MS 76 William Dobson 25
3 (London, 1611–46) James Thornhill
Hans Holbein the Younger 11 Portrait of a Family, Probably that of Richard (Woolland, Dorset, 1675/6–Stalbridge,
(Augsburg, 1497/8–London, 1543) Unknown artist Streatfeild, ca. 1645 Dorset, 1734)
Sir Thomas Wyatt the Younger, Ninth Book, in John Foxe, Acts and Oil on canvas, 106.7 x 124.5 cm Sketch for a Ceiling Design, 1700–20
ca. 1540–42 Monuments (The Book of Martyrs), 1563–70 Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Oil on canvas, 62 x 58 cm
Oil on panel, 32 cm diameter (1632 edition) Collection, New Haven. Inv. B1981.25.241 The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Presented
Private Collection. Courtesy of The Weiss Woodcut, 36.5 x 24.5 x 7 cm (overall) by G. McN. Rushforth, 1937. Inv. WA1937.110;
Gallery, London College, Cambridge/Sidney Sussex College. 18 A510 [Not in exhibition]
Inv. N.2.2 John Hoskins
4 (Wells, Somerset, ca. 1590–London, 1665) 26
Nicholas Hilliard 12 Frances Cranfield, Countess of Dorset, Inigo Jones
(Exeter, 1547–London, 1619) Unknown artist ca. 1637 (London, 1573–1652)
Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, 1590 April, in Edmund Spenser, The Shephearde’s Watercolour on vellum, 15.2 x 10.2 cm Design for the Catafalque for James I, ca. 1630
Watercolour on vellum, 5.4 cm diameter Calendar, London: Hugh Singleton, 1579 With kind permission of The Duke of Pen and wash on paper, 600 x 435 mm
National Portrait Gallery, London. Inv. 59 (1581 edition), folio 12 Buccleuch & Queensberry KBE The Provost and Fellows of Worcester College
Woodcut, 20 x 15 x 1 cm (overall) Oxford
5 The British Library, London. Inv. G.11533 19
Isaac Oliver Samuel Cooper 27
(Rouen, before 1568–London, 1617) 13 (London, 1609–72) Crispin van der Passe the Elder
A Lady, formerly called Catherine, Countess Theodor de Bry (Liège, 1527/8–Frankfurt am James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth and (Arnemuiden, ca. 1564–Utrecht, 1637)
of Suffolk, ca. 1600 Main, 1598) after John White (1540–1593) Buccleuch, K.G., ca. 1670 Illustrations in George Wither, A Collection
Watercolour on vellum, 5.1 cm high “Their Manner of fyshynge in Virginia”, in Watercolour on vellum, 7.6 cm diameter of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne. London,
With kind permission of The Duke of Thomas Harriot, A briefe and true report of With kind permission of The Duke of 1635, 90–91
Buccleuch & Queensberry KBE the new found land of Virginia. Frankfurt, Buccleuch & Queensberry KBE Etching, 31 x 20 x 3 cm (overall)
1590, plate XIII The British Library, London. Inv. C.70.h.5
6 Etching and engraving, 460 x 560 mm 20
Marcus Gheeraerts II (sheet) Peter Lely 28
(Bruges, 1561/2–London, 1636) The British Library, London. Inv. G.11533 (Soest, Westphalia, 1618–London, 1680) Unknown artist
Anne, Lady Pope with her children, 1596 Diana Kirke, later Countess of Oxford, England’s Miraculous Preservation
Oil on canvas, 203.6 x 121.7 cm 14 1665–70 Emblematically Described, Erected for a
Private Collection courtesy of Nevill Cornelius Boel Oil on canvas, 132.1 x 104.1 cm perpetuall Monument to Posterity. London:
Keating Pictures (Antwerp, ca. 1580–ca. 1621) Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon John Hancock, 1647, 107
Frontispiece in THE HOLY BIBLE, Collection, New Haven. Inv. B1981.25.756 Etching, 218 x 308 mm (image), 462 x 330 mm
7 Containing the Old Testament, AND THE (printed area)
Robert Peake the Elder and studio NEW: Newly Translated out of the Original 21 The British Library, London. Inv. 669.f.10 (107)
(Lincolnshire, ca. 1551–London, ca. 1619) tongues: & with the former Translations Jan Siberechts
Catherine Carey, Countess of Nottingham, diligently compared and revised, by his (Antwerp, 1627–London, ca. 1700) 29
ca. 1597 Majesties special Commandment, 1611 Henley from the Wargrave Road, 1698 Wenceslaus Hollar
Oil on canvas, 198 x 137 cm (1612 edition) Oil on canvas, 88 x 119 cm (Prague, 1607–London, 1677)
Private Collection. Courtesy of The Weiss Etching and engraving, 23.7 x 18.7 x 8 cm River and Rowing Museum, Henley-on- Spring, 1641
Gallery, London (overall) Thames. Inv. 2001.293 Etching, 246 x 179 mm
The Master and Fellows of Sidney Sussex Collection of David and Diana Wood
8 College, Cambridge/Sidney Sussex College. 22
William Larkin Inv. W.2.20 Godfrey Kneller 30
(London, ca. 1580/5–1619) (Lübeck, 1646–London, 1723) Wenceslaus Hollar (Prague, 1607–London,
Jane, Lady Thornhagh, 1617 15 Arnold Joost van Keppel, 1st Earl of 1677) after Francis Barlow (?1626–1704)
Oil on panel, 114 x 84 cm Jodocus Hondius Albemarle, ca. 1700 Bustards, ca. 1655
Private Collection. Courtesy of The Weiss (Wakken, 1563–Amsterdam, 1612) Oil on canvas, 64.8 x 55.9 cm Etching, 181 x 125 mm
Gallery, London Map of Cambridgeshire, in John Speed, National Portrait Gallery, London. Inv. 1625 Collection of David and Diana Wood
321

31 Oil on canvas, 51 x 76 cm Hand-coloured etching, 247 x 350 mm London, 1748, col. 1, vol. 2
Robert Hooke Compton Verney House Trust (Peter The British Museum, London. Etching and engraving, 21.6 x 14 x 5 cm (overall)
(Freshwater, Isle of Wight, 1635–London, Moores Foundation). Inv. CUCSC: 0355.5 Inv. PD 1968,0808.6253 The British Library, London. Inv. 1031.i.4
1703)
Micrographia (Observation LIV, “Of a 39 47 54
louse”, Scheme XXXV), London: Jo. Martyn Johan Zoffany James Gillray Charles Grignion (London, 1710–1810) after
and Ja. Allestry, 1665 (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1733–Strand- (London, 1756–1815) Samuel Wale (Great Yarmouth, Norfolk,
Etching, 30.6 x 21 x 4.3 cm (overall) on-the-Green, London, 1810) The Gout, 14 May 1799, 1799 1721–London, 1786)
University of Glasgow Library. Special The Sondes Children, 1760 Hand-coloured etching and aquatint, The Foundling Hospital, Holborn, London:
Collections. Inv. Sp Coll Hunterian M.3.1 Oil on canvas, 96.5 x 122 cm 260 x 355 mm a Perspective View Looking North-east at the
Collection James Saunders Watson The British Museum, London. main Building, with Penitent Mothers Arriving
32 Inv. PD 1851,0901.980 beside a Statue of Fortune, 1749
Johannes Kip (Amsterdam, 1653–London, 40 Etching and engraving, 372 x 485 mm
1722) after Leonard Knyff (1650–1722) Joshua Reynolds 48 Wellcome Library, London. Inv. 366401
Althorp in the County of Northampton, from (Plympton, Devon, 1723–London, 1792) Thomas Lawrence
Britannia Illustrata: Or Views of Several of Lady Sondes, 1764 (Bristol, 1769–London, 1830) 55
the Queen’s Palaces, as Also of the principal Oil on canvas, 76.4 x 60.3 cm Miss Martha Carr, ca. 1789 William Hogarth
Seats of the Nobility and Gentry of Great Fundación Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid. Oil on canvas, 76 x 64 cm (London, 1697–1764)
Britain, curiously engraved on 80 Copper Inv. 2505 Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Analysis of Beauty, 1753, plate I
plates, London, 1708–15, plate 27 Inv. P3012 Etching and engraving, 391 x 499 mm
Etching, 46.2 x 31.9 x 6.6 cm (overall) 41 Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San
Erddig, The Yorke Collection (The National Thomas Gainsborough 49 Fernando. Calcografía Nacional, Madrid
Trust). Inv. CMS 3078915 (Sudbury, Suffolk, 1727–London, 1788) John Hoppner
Sir Edward Turner, 1762 (London, 1758–1810) 56
33 Oil on canvas, 229.2 x 147.3 cm Anne Isabella Milbanke Richard Wilson
William Hogarth Wolverhampton Art Gallery. Inv. OP491 (later Lady Byron), ca. 1800 (Penegoes, Montgomeryshire, 1713–
(London, 1697–1764) Oil on canvas, 153.3 x 112.4 cm Colomendy, Denbighshire, 1782)
A Harlot’s Progress, 1732–33 42 Ferens Art Gallery, Hull Museums Ruin in a Clearing, 1753
Series of six engravings, etching and John Hamilton Mortimer Oil on canvas, 122.1 x 172 cm
engraving on paper, each 322 x 392 mm (Eastbourne, 1740–London, 1779) 50 Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums
Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San A Caricature Group, 1766 Joseph Nollekens Collections. Inv. ABDAG003508
Fernando. Calcografía Nacional, Madrid Oil on canvas, 83.8 x 106.7 cm (London, 1737–1823)
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Charles James Fox, ca. 1800 57
34 Collection, New Haven. Inv. B1981.25.467 Marble, 72.7 x 52 x 30 cm Michael Henry Spang
Louis-François Roubiliac Victoria and Albert Museum, London. (fl. ca. 1750–London, d. 1762)
(Lyon, 1702–London, 1762) 43 Inv. A.1:1-1945 Anatomical figure, ca. 1761
Alexander Pope, 1741 John Francis-Rigaud Bronze, 25.3 cm height
Marble, 63.5 x 32.2 cm (Turin, 1742–Coleshill, Warwickshire, 1810?) 51 Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead Vincenzo Lunardi with his Assistant George Simon Gribelin (1660-1711) after John Inv. A.18-1945
Biggin, and Mrs Letitia Anne Sage, in a Closterman (Paris or Blois, 1661–London,
35 Balloon, ca. 1785 1733) 58
Allan Ramsay Oil on copper plate, 36 x 31 cm Frontispiece in Anthony Ashley Cooper, Joseph Wright of Derby
(Edinburgh, 1713–Dover, 1784) Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Characteristicks of men, manners, opinions, (Derby, 1734–97)
Flora Macdonald, 1749 Inv. P02598 times, 1711 (1723 edition) 78-79 Academy by Lamplight, 1770
Oil on canvas, 74 x 61 cm Etching and engraving, 209 x 139 mm Oil on canvas, 127 x 101 cm
The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. 44 University of Glasgow Library. Special Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon
Transferred from the Bodleian Library, Thomas Rowlandson Collections. Inv. Sp Coll Ea8-d.3 Collection, New Haven. Inv. B1973.1.66
1960. Inv. WA1960.76; A4381 (London, 1756–1827)
The Prize Fight, 1787 52 59
36 Watercolour with pen in black and gray Gerard van der Gucht (London, 1696–1776) George Stubbs
Arthur Devis ink over graphite on beige, laid paper, after John Vanderbank (London, 1694–1739) (Liverpool, 1724–London, 1806)
(Preston, 1712–Brighton, 1787) 460 x 695 mm “Membrino’s Helmet”, in Miguel de The Haymakers, 1783
Mr and Mrs Hill, 1750–51 Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Cervantes Saavedra, The Life and Exploits of Oil and enamel on oak panel, 91.8 x 139 cm
Oil on canvas, 76.2 x 63.5 cm Collection, New Haven. Inv. B1993.30.113 the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Upton House, The Bearsted Collection
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Mancha. Translated from the original Spanish (The National Trust). Inv. UPT.P.83, 446708
Collection, New Haven. Inv. B1981.25.226 45 of Miguel Cervantes de Saavedra by Charles
Thomas Rowlandson Jarvis, Esq. 2 vols. London: J. and R. Tonson 60
37 (London, 1756–1827) and R. Dodsley, 1742, vol. 1, 108–09 Thomas Banks
Francis Hayman Exhibition Stare Case. Visitors to the Royal Etching and engraving, 29 x 25 x 6 cm (overall) (London, 1735–1805)
(Exeter, 1708–London, 1776) Academy struggle up and down the steeply Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid. The Falling Titan, 1786
Jonathan Tyers and his daughter Elizabeth curving staircase of Somerset House, ca. 1811 Inv. CERV.SEDÓ/1793 Marble, 84.5 x 90.2 x 58.4 cm
and her husband John Wood, 1750–52 Hand-coloured etching, 484 x 317 mm Royal Academy of Arts, London. Inv. 03/1673
Oil on canvas, 99.1 x 86.4 cm The British Museum, London. 53
Yale Center for British Art. Paul Mellon Inv. PD 1876,0311.66 Charles Grignion (London, 1710–1810) after 61
Collection, New Haven. Inv. B1981.25.328 Francis Hayman (Exeter, 1708–London, 1776) Thomas Gainsborough
46 Frontispiece and title page in Robert (Sudbury, Suffolk, 1727–London, 1788)
38 James Gillray Dodsley, ed. The Preceptor: Containing a Cottage Door with Girl and Pigs, 1786
Antonio Canaletto (London, 1756–1815) General Course of Education Wherein the Oil on canvas, 98 x 124 cm
(Venice, 1697–1768) French Liberty. British Slavery. A design in First Principles of Polite Learning are Laid Colchester and Ipswich Museums Service.
Vauxhall Gardens: The Grand Walk, ca. 1751 two compartments. 21 December 1792, 1792 Down … for … the Instruction of Youth. Inv. R.1982-91
322 CATALOGUE OF WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION

62 70 Engraving, proof state without inscription, 84
James Barry Joseph Mallord William Turner 431 x 524 mm Joaquín Pi y Margall (Barcelona, 1830–
(Cork, 1741–London, 1806) (London, 1775–1851) Stourhead, The Hoare Collection (The Madrid, 1891) after John Flaxman
Satan and his Legions Hurling Defiance Apullia in Search of Appullus vide Ovid, National Trust). Inv. STO/D/749, 731090 (York, 1755–London, 1826)
Toward the Vault of Heaven, 1792–95 exhibited 1814 Protegido por Minerva hiere Diomedes al dios
Etching, 746 x 504 mm Oil on canvas, 148.5 x 241 cm 78 Marte (Protected by Minerva, Diomedes
The British Museum, London. Tate: Accepted by the nation as part of the James Fittler (London, 1758–1835) after hurts god Marte), in Homero, Ilíada L.V.
Inv. PD 1848,1125.583 Turner Bequest 1856. Inv. N00495 George Robertson (London, 1746/49– Obras completas de Flaxman, grabadas al
Turnham Green, Middlesex, 1788) contorno por Joaquín Pi y Margall (Homer’s
63 71 The Iron Bridge, Coalbrookdale, from the Iliad. The Complete Works of John Flaxman,
James Barry John Constable Madeley side, 1788 engraved by Joaquín Pi y Margall). Madrid:
(Cork, 1741–London, 1806) (East Bergholt, Suffolk, 1776–London, 1837) Etching, 379 x 533 mm Manuel Rivadeneyra, 1859–61
Satan, Sin and Death, 1792–95 Dedham Lock and Mill, ca. 1817 Courtesy of The Ironbridge Gorge Museum Line engraving, 117 x 208 mm
Etching, 568 x 510 mm Oil on canvas, 54.6 x 76.5 cm Trust. Inv. CBD59.85.1 Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San
The British Museum, London. Inv. PD Tate: Bequeathed by George Salting 1910. Fernando. Calcografía Nacional, Madrid
1868,0612.2185 Inv. N02661 79
Alexander Cozens 85
64 72 (St Petersburg, 1717–London, 1786) Joaquín Pi y Margall (Barcelona, 1830–
Thomas Girtin Samuel Palmer A New Method of Assisting the Invention Madrid, 1891) after John Flaxman
(London, 1775–1802) (London, 1805–Redhill, Surrey, 1881) in Drawing Original Compositions of (York, 1755–London, 1826)
Bamburgh Castle, Northumberland, A Cornfield Bordered by Trees, Landscape. London: J. Dixwell, 1786 Júpiter y las musas (Jupiter and the muses),
ca. 1797–99 ca. 1833–34 Aquatint, 320 x 260 mm in Hesiodo, Teogonía. Obras completas de
Watercolour, gouache and pencil on paper, Oil on panel, mounted as a drawing, University of Nottingham. Manuscripts and Flaxman, grabadas al contorno por Joaquín
549 x 451 mm 17.5 x 14.9 cm Special Collections. Inv. o/s X LT109.NC/ Pi y Margall (Hesiod’s Theogony. The
Tate: Presented by A.E. Anderson in The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. C6-6002482145 Complete Works of John Flaxman), engraved
memory of his brother Frank through the Purchased 1947. Inv. WA1947.168;A743 by Joaquín Pi y Margall. Madrid: Manuel
Art Fund 1928. Inv. N04409 80 Rivadeneyra, 1859–61
73 William Gilpin Line engraving, 95 x 201 mm
65 Joseph Mallord William Turner (Cumberland, 1724–Boldre, Hampshire, Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San
William Blake (London, 1775–1851) 1804) Fernando. Calcografía Nacional, Madrid
(London, 1757–1827) Sunset (?Sunrise), ca. 1835–40 Three Essays: On Picturesque Beauty;
Pestilence, ca. 1795–1800 Watercolour on paper, 254 x 394 mm on Picturesque Travel; and On Sketching 86
Landscape: To which is Added a Poem, On William Blake
Watercolour on paper, 323 x 484 mm Tate: Accepted by the nation as part of the
(London, 1757–1827)
Bristol Museums & Art Gallery. Turner Bequest 1856. Inv. D36078 Landscape Painting. London: R. Blamire,
Illustrations to Edward Young, The
Inv. K2081 1792, 78–79
Complaint, and the Consolation, or, Night
74 20.9 x 13.9 x 2.9 cm (overall)
thoughts. London: Printed by R. Noble for
66 John Martin University of Glasgow Library. Special
R. Edwards, no. 142 Bond Street,
William Blake (Hexham, Northumberland, 1789–Douglas, Collections. Inv. Sp Coll 2849
MDCCXCVII [1797], 16-17
(London, 1757–1827) Isle of Man, 1854)
Intaglio copper-plate engravings,
The Raising of Lazarus, 1800 Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still 81
41.9 x 32.9 x 2.2 cm (overall)
Pencil, pen, ink and watercolour on paper, upon Gibeon, 1848 Thomas Rowlandson
Senate House Libraries, London.
407 x 296 mm Oil on canvas, 151 x 264 cm (London, 1756–1827)
Inv. [SL] IV [Blake-1797] fol 1916514534
Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums Kirklees Museums and Galleries, Dewsbury Title page in William Combe, The Tour of
Collections. Inv. ABDAG002369 Town Hall Doctor Syntax in Search of the Picturesque,
87
4th ed. London, St Ann’s Lane: Diggens,
Benjamin Smith (London, 1754–1833)
67 75 Printer, 1813
after George Romney (Dalton-in-Furness,
John Sell Cotman John Ruskin Hand-coloured etching, 24.5 x 15 x 2.5 cm
Lancashire, 1734–Kendal, 1802)
(Norwich, 1782–1842) (London, 1819–Brantwood, Cumbria, 1900) (overall)
The Infant Shakespeare Attended by Nature
Norwich Castle, ca. 1808–9 Cloud Effect over Coniston Old Man, 1880 Private Collection and the Passions, 19 September 1799
Pencil and watercolour on paper, Pencil and watercolour on paper, Line engraving and stipple, 630 x 490 mm
324 x 472 mm 205 x 385 mm 82 (plate impression), 587 x 435 mm (image)
Norfolk Museums & Archaeology Service. Ruskin Foundation (Ruskin Library, David Lucas (Brigstock, Northamptonshire, Private Collection
Inv. NWHCM: 1960.98 Lancaster University). Inv. RF 902 1802–Fulham, Middlesex 1881) after John
Constable (East Bergholt, Suffolk, 1776– 88
68 76 London, 1837) John Martin
John Crome George Stubbs Various Subjects of Landscape, (Hexham, Northumberland, 1789–Douglas,
(Norwich, 1768–1821) (Liverpool, 1724–London, 1806) Characteristic of English Scenery, from Isle of Man, 1854)
The Blacksmith’s Shop, Hingham, The Anatomy of the Horse. London: printed Pictures Painted by John Constable, R.A., Bridge over Chaos, 1824–26
Norfolk, ca. 1807–11 by J. Purser for the author, 1766 1830–32 (1855 edition) Mezzotint, 234 x 350 mm (sheet),
Watercolour on paper, 541 x 442 mm (1815 edition), Tab. IV Mezzotint, 140 x 187 mm (image) 190 x 270 mm (image)
Norfolk Museums & Archaeology Service. Etching, 372 x 485 mm Tate Library & Archive. Inv. V 7 CONS LUC Collection Alessandra and Simon Wilson
Inv. NWHCM: 1942.123 Wellcome Library, London.
Inv. EPB G. O/S F.365 83 89
69 John Flaxman John Martin
Henry Fuseli 77 (York, 1755–London, 1826) (Hexham, Northumberland, 1789–Douglas,
(Zurich, 1741–London, 1825) François Vivares (Lodève, 1709–London, Self-Portrait, 1778 Isle of Man, 1854)
The Death of Cordelia, 1810–20 1780) after Copplestone Warre Bampfylde Terracotta in high relief and gold painted Belshazzar’s Feast, 1835
Oil on canvas, 117.1 x 142.6 cm (Devon, 1720–1791) wood, 18.8 cm diameter Mezzotint and etching, 198 x 297 mm
Frankfurter Goethe-Haus. A View of the Lake and Pantheon and Temple Victoria and Albert Museum, London. (sheet), 190 x 290 mm (image)
Inv. IV-2003-005 of Apollo at Stourhead, 1775 Inv. 294:1, 2-1864 Collection Alessandra and Simon Wilson
323

90 99 107 Christmas in a Workhouse, in The Graphic
David Roberts George Frederic Watts John Singer Sargent (London, 25 December 1876): 30
(Stockbridge, Edinburgh, 1796– (London, 1817–Compton, Surrey, 1904) (Florence, 1856–London, 1925) Wood engraving, 23 x 56 x 41.5 cm (overall)
London, 1864) Clytie, 1868–81 Ena and Betty, Daughters of Asher and The British Library, London. Inv. LD 46
The Inauguration of the Great Exhibition: Bronze, 87 x 57 x 38 cm Mrs Wertheimer, 1901
1 May 1851, 1854 Watts Gallery, Compton. Oil on canvas, 185.4 x 130.8 cm 115
Oil on canvas, 86.4 x 152.4 cm Inv. COMWG2008.152 Tate: Presented by the widow and family Samuel Butler
Lent by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. of Asher Wertheimer in accordance with (Langar, Nottinghamshire, 1835–
Inv. RCIN 407143 100 his wishes 1922. Inv. N03708 London, 1902)
James Abbott McNeill Whistler Blind Man Reading the Bible near
91 (Lowell, Massachusetts, 1834– 108 Greenwich, 1 May 1892, from Samuel
John Brett London, 1903) Roger Fenton Butler’s photograph album number 2,
(Reigate, Surrey, 1831–London, 1902) Nocturne: Blue and Silver –Cremorne (Bury, Lancashire, 1819–London, 1869) page 6, photograph 3
The Wetterhorn, Wellhorn and Eiger, Lights, 1872 Wounded Soldier, Crimean War, ca.1855 Photograph, 76 x 102 mm
Switzerland, 1856 Oil on canvas, 50.2 x 74.3 cm Photograph, albumen print, 215 x 167 mm St John’s College Library, Samuel Butler
Watercolour, 25.6 x 36.1 mm Tate: Bequeathed by Arthur Studd 1919. Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao. On deposit Collection. By permission of the Master
Collection Kevin Prosser QC Inv. N03420 from Fundación Centro Ordóñez-Falcón de and Fellows of St John’s College,
Fotografía. Inv. DEP2527 Cambridge
92 101
William Holman Hunt Dante Gabriel Rossetti 109 116
(London, 1827–1910) (London, 1828–Birchington-on-Sea, John Everett Millais Samuel Butler
The Festival of St Swithin (The Dovecot), Kent, 1882) (Southampton, 1829–London, 1896) (Langar, Nottinghamshire, 1835–
1866–75 Proserpine, 1878 Illustration The Crawley Family in Anthony London, 1902)
Oil on canvas, 73 x 91 cm Watercolour with bodycolour on paper Trollope, Framley Parsonage. London: Blind Man Reading, with a Small Group
The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. mounted on wood, 77.5 x 37.5 cm Smith, Elder & Co., 1861, vol. 2, title page/ of Children, 6 May 1894, from Samuel
Bequeathed by Thomas Combe, 1893. Private Collection c/o Christies frontispiece Butler’s photograph album number 3,
Inv. WA1894.5 20 x 13.5 x 3 cm (overall) page 45, photograph 6
102 The British Library, London. Inv. 12634.g.12 Photograph, 76 x 102 mm
93–94 Alfred Gilbert St John’s College Library, Samuel Butler
John Everett Millais (London, 1854–1934) 110 Collection. By permission of the Master
(Southampton, 1829–London, 1896) The Kiss of Victory, cast after 1879 John Tenniel and Fellows of St John’s College,
My First Sermon, 1863 Bronze, 58 cm height (London, 1820–1914) Cambridge
My Second Sermon, 1864 The Fine Art Society, London Illustrations to Lewis Carroll (Charles
Oil on canvas, 92 x 76.8 and 97.1 x 71.7 cm Lutwidge Dodgson), Alice’s Adventures in 117
Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London. 103 Wonderland. London: Macmillan, 1865, 91 Aubrey Beardsley
Inv. 701 and 702 Atkinson Grimshaw Wood engraving, 19 x 13 x 2.5 cm (overall) (Brighton, 1872–Menton, 1898)
(Leeds, 1836–93) The British Library, London. Inv. C.59.g.11 Oscar Wilde, Salome: A Tragedy in One
95 Shipping on the Clyde, 1881 Act: Translated from the French of Oscar
John Frederick Lewis Oil on board, 30.5 x 51 cm 111 Wilde. London: John Lane, 1907 (second
(London, 1805–Walton-on-Thames, Collection Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Herbert Bourne (1820–1907) edition with illustrations), title page and
Surrey, 1876) on deposit in Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, after Ford Madox Brown (Calais, 1821– frontispiece
Study for The Courtyard of the Coptic Madrid. Inv. CTB.1989.28 London, 1893) 21.5 x 18 cm (overall)
Patriarch’s House in Cairo, ca. 1864 The Last of England, in The Art Journal. Collection Alessandra and Simon Wilson
Oil on wood, 36.8 x 35.6 cm 104 Ed. Samuel Carter Hall, vol. 9 (London:
Tate: Purchased 1900. Inv. N01688 Walter Langley Hodgson and Graves, 1 August 1870): 236 118
(Birmingham, 1852–Penzance, 33 x 25 x 5 cm (overall) Aubrey Beardsley
96 Cornwall, 1922) The British Library, London. Inv. 1733.459 (Brighton, 1872–Menton, 1898)
Frederic, Leighton The Sunny South, 1885 The Climax, 1893, from A Portfolio of Aubrey
(Scarborough, 1830–London, 1896) Oil on canvas, 122 x 61 cm 112 Beardsley’s Drawings Illustrating “Salome”
Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon, ca. Penlee House Gallery & Museum, Julia Margaret Cameron by Oscar Wilde. London: John Lane, 1906
1868–69 Penzance, Cornwall. Inv. PEZPH: (Calcutta, 1815–Kalutara, 1879) Line block print, 345 x 273 mm (sheet),
Oil on canvas, 150 x 75.5 cm 1998.32 Beatrice Cenci, 1870 260 x 162 mm (image)
Ferens Art Gallery, Hull Museums. Photograph, albumen print, 344 x 265 mm Collection Alessandra and Simon Wilson.
Inv. 2005.5144 105 Collection Ordóñez-Falcón
Edward Coley Burne-Jones 119
97 (Birmingham, 1833–London, 1898) 113 W.H. Hooper (London, 1834–1912) after
Edward Coley Burne-Jones The Heart of the Rose, 1889 Edmund Evans (Southwark, London Edward Coley Burne-Jones (Birmingham,
(Birmingham, 1833–London, 1898) Oil on canvas, 96.5 x 131 cm 1826–1905 Ventnor, Isle of Wight) after 1833–London, 1898)
Danae and the Brazen Tower, ca. 1872 Private Collection c/o Christies Walter Crane (Liverpool, 1845–1915) The Kynghtes Tale, in Geoffrey Chaucer,
Oil on panel, 38 x 19 cm Illustrations in Aladdin; or the wonderful The works of Chaucer now newly imprinted.
The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Presented 106 Lamp, London: George Routledge & Sons, Ed. F.S. Ellis. London: William Morris at
by F.J. Nettlefold, 1948. Inv. WA1948.32; A757 Frederic, Leighton 1875 the Kelmscott Press, 1896, 22
(Scarborough, 1830–London, 1896) Wood engraving, printed in colour, Woodcut, 550 x 430 mm
98 Perseus on Pegasus Hastening to 27 x 23.6 x 0.3 cm (overall) The British Library, London. Inv. C.43.h.19
George Frederic Watts the Rescue of Andromeda, Collection Geoffrey Beare
(London, 1817–Compton, Surrey, 1904) ca. 1895–96 120
Daphne, 1872 Oil on canvas, 184 x 189 x 6 cm 114 Walter Richard Sickert
Oil on canvas, 188 x 61 cm New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Hubert von Herkomer (Munich, 1860–Bathampton,
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon. Leicester. (Waal, 1849–Budleigh Salterton, Somerset, 1942)
Inv. 81 Inv. L.F6.1902 Devon, 1914) Portrait of Mrs Barrett, 1906

Oil on canvas, 51 x 40.8 cm 128 136 24.8 x 18.6 cm (overall)
The Samuel Courtauld Trust. The Courtauld Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson Paul Nash The Wyndham Lewis Memorial Trust:
Gallery, London. Inv. P.1935.RF.404 (London, 1889–1946) (London, 1889–Boscombe, G. and V. Lane Collection
French Troops Resting, 1916 Hampshire, 1946)
121 Oil on canvas, 71 x 91.5 cm Druid Landscape, ca. 1938 143
Spencer Gore Imperial War Museum, London. Oil on cardboard, 58.5 x 40.5 cm Vanessa Bell (London, 1879–Firle,
(Epsom, Surrey, 1878–Richmond, Inv. IWM ART 5219 British Council Collection. Sussex, 1961) and Duncan Grant
Surrey, 1914) Inv. P37 (Rothiemurchus, Invernesshire, 1885–
Letchworth Railway Station, 1912 129 Aldermaston, Berkshire, 1978)
Oil on canvas, 62 x 72.5 cm William Roberts 137 Frontespiece for (Arthur) Clive (Heward)
National Railway Museum, York and (London, 1895–1980) Henry Moore Bell, The Legend of Monte della Sibilla,
Shildon At the Hippodrome (The Gods), 1920 (Castleford, Yorkshire, 1898–Much or Le Paradis de la Reine Sibille. London:
Oil on canvas, 97.8 x 92.6 cm Hadham, Hertfordshire, 1987) Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth
122 New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Tube Shelter Perspective, 1941 Press, 1923
David Bomberg Leicester. Inv. L.F23.1935 Pencil, wax crayon, coloured crayon, 26 x 18.2 x 0.6 cm (overall)
(Birmingham, 1890–London, 1957) watercolour, wash, gouache on paper, National Library of Scotland,
Figure Composition, ca. 1913 130 291 x 238 mm Edinburgh. Inv. T.9.a
Oil on millboard, 36 x 26 cm Walter Richard Sickert The Henry Moore Foundation,
Manchester City Galleries. Purchased (Munich, 1860–Bathampton, Much Hadham, Hertfordshire: gift 144
with the assistance of the Victoria and Somerset, 1942) of the artist 1977. Inv. HMF 1773 F.L.M. Griggs
Albert Museum Purchase Grant Fund. Portrait of Victor Lecourt, 1922–24 (Hitchin, Hertfordshire, 1876–
Inv. 1967.113 Oil on canvas, 81.3 x 60.5 cm 138 Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire,
Manchester City Galleries. Inv. 1947.165 Meredith Frampton 1938)
123 (London, 1894–Mere, Wiltshire, 1984) Owlpen Manor, 1931
Henry Lamb 131 Sir Ernest Gowers in the London Etching, 202 x 257 mm (image)
(Adelaide, 1883–London, 1960) Gwen John RCDCR, 1943 The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
Lytton Strachey, 1914 (Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, 1876– Oil on canvas, 148 x 168.5 cm Presented by Arthur Mitchell, 1962.
Oil on canvas, 244.5 x 178.4 cm Dieppe, 1939) Imperial War Museum, London. Inv. WA1962.54.158
Tate: Presented by the Trustees of the Girl in Mulberry Dress, 1923 Inv. IWM ART LD 2905
Chantrey Bequest 1957. Inv. T00118 Oil on canvas, 69 x 53.3 cm 145
Southampton City Art Gallery. 139 Paul Nash
124 Inv. 11/1962 Duncan Grant (Rothiemurchus, (London, 1889–Boscombe,
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska Invernesshire, 1885–Aldermaston, Hampshire, 1946)
(Saint Jean de Braye, Orléans, 1891– 132 Berkshire, 1978), Vanessa Bell (London, “Contribution to Unit One”, in Herbert
Neuville Saint Vaast, Pas de Calais, 1915) Edward Burra 1879–Firle, Sussex, 1961), Frederick Etchells Read, ed. Unit One. Exhibition book.
Seated Woman, 1914 (London, 1905–Rye, Sussex, 1976) (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1886–Folkestone, Mayor Gallery, London. London:
Marble, 47 x 35 x 24.3 cm The Café, 1930 1973) and Roger Fry (London, 1866–1934) Cassell, 1934
Centre Pompidou, Paris. Musée national Watercolour on paper, 82.9 x 67.5 cm Cover design for the Second Post- 20 x 15 cm (overall)
d’art moderne / Centre de création Southampton City Art Gallery. Impressionist Exhibition catalogue. Tate Library & Archive.
industrielle. Donation from Kettle’s Yard Inv. 11/1962 Grafton Galleries, London, 1912 Inv. V (41)7.036”193”
Foundation in 1965. Inv. AM 1461 S 18.4 x 12.3 x 0.8 cm (overall)
133 Chastleton House, The Whitmore-Jones 146
125 Henry Moore Collection (acquired by The National Paul Nash
Wyndham Lewis (Castleford, Yorkshire, 1898–Much Heritage Memorial Fund and transferred (London, 1889–Boscombe,
(Amherst, Nova Scotia, 1882– Hadham, Hertfordshire, 1987) to The National Trust in 1991). Hampshire, 1946)
London, 1957) Two Forms, 1936 Inv. CMS 3097007 Shell Guide to Dorset. London:
Composition in Red and Mauve, 1915 Brown Hornton stone on wood base, Architectural Press, 1935
Pen, ink, chalk and gouache on paper, 95 x 77 x 57cm 140 23 x 18.5 x 1 cm (overall)
34.7 x 24.5 cm The Henry Moore Foundation, Much Wyndham Lewis (ed.) Shell Art Collection, Beaulieu,
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. Hadham, Hertfordshire. Inv. LH 166 (Amherst, Nova Scotia, 1882–London, 1957) Brockenhurst, Hampshire
Inv. 1981.20 (647) Blast, No. 1 (London: John Lane), 1914
134 31.8 x 26.7 cm (overall) 147
126 Stanley Spencer The Wyndham Lewis Memorial Trust: James Boswell
Edward Wadsworth (Cookham, Berkshire, 1891–Cliveden, G. and V. Lane Collection (Westport, 1906–London, 1971)
(Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire, 1889– Buckinghamshire, 1959) He hath made for us a pathway /
London, 1949) A Family Group (Hilda, Unity and Dolls), 141 To the ends of the earth, in Left Review,
Vorticist Composition, ca. 1914–15 1937 Charles Shannon vol. 1, no. 8 (London, May 1935): 321
Oil on canvas, 76.3 x 63.5 cm Oil on canvas, 76.2 x 50.8 cm (Sleaford, Lincolnshire, 1863–1937) 22.8 x 12.7 cm (overall)
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. Leeds Museum and Galleries (Leeds Art Britain’s Efforts and Ideals: The Rebirth Collection Dr I.K. Patterson
Inv. 1980.6 (780) Gallery). Inv. LEEAG.PA.1938.0014 of the Arts, 1917
Lithograph, 742 x 495 mm 148
127 135 Imperial War Museum, London. Unknown photographer
Duncan Grant Ben Nicholson Inv. IWM 665 Paul Eluard, Nusch Eluard,
(Rothiemurchus, Invernesshire, 1885– (Denham, Buckinghamshire, 1894– Diana Lee, Salvador Dali in diving
Aldermaston, Berkshire, 1978) London, 1982) 142 suit, ELT Mesens and Rupert Lee,
The Blue Sheep, 1915 Painting, 1937, 1937 Wyndham Lewis (ed.) First International Surrealist Exhibition,
Folding screen, gouache on paper mounted Oil on canvas, 79.5 x 91.5 cm (Amherst, Nova Scotia, 1882– New Burlington Galleries, London,
on canvas, 162.5 x 205 cm The Samuel Courtauld Trust. London, 1957) Chiddingly, 1936
Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The Courtauld Gallery, London. The Tyro, No. 2 (London: The Egoist Photograph, 381 x 254 mm
Inv. CIRC.806-1966 Inv. P.1984.AH.286 Press), 1922 Lee Miller Archives, Chiddingly
325

149 Robert Travers, Piano Nobile Gallery, 165 173
Ben Nicholson (Denham, Buckinghamshire, London Keith Arnatt Tony Cragg
1894–London, 1982) and Naum Gabo (Oxford, 1930–Wales, 2008) (Liverpool, b. 1949)
(Bryansk, 1890–Connecticut, 1977), eds. 157 Self Burial (in Nine Stages), 1969 Britain Seen from the North, 1981
Circle: An International Survey of Peter Lanyon Nine original black and white photographs Plastic and mixed media,
Constructivist Art (London, 1937, 29-30) (St Ives, Cornwall, 1918–Taunton, mounted on board, each 22.9 x 22.9 cm 440 x 800 x 10 cm
26 x 20 x 2.6 cm (overall) Somerset, 1964) Private Collection, London. Courtesy Tate: Purchased 1982. Inv. T03347
National Library of Scotland, Thermal, 1960 Richard Saltoun / John Austin, London
Edinburgh. Inv. X.33.h Oil on canvas, 182.9 x 152.4 cm 174
Tate: Purchased 1960. Inv. T00375 166 Edward Wright
150 Gilbert and George (Liverpool, 1912–London? 1988)
Graham Sutherland 158 (Gilbert Proesch (Dolomites, Italy, b. 1943) Design for Theo Crosby, ed. This is
(London, 1903–80) Peter Blake and George Passmore (Plymouth, Devon, Tomorrow. Exh. cat. Whitechapel Art
Thorn Tree, 1945 (Dartford, Kent, b. 1932) b. 1942) Gallery, London, 1956
Oil on canvas, 127 x 101.5 cm Love Wall, 1961 A Portrait of the Artists as Young Men, 1970 17 x 17 cm (overall)
British Council Collection. Inv. P74 Collage and wood construction, Video, 7 minutes Tate Library and Archive.
125 x 237 x 23 cm Tate: Purchased 1972. Inv. T01704 Inv. V LON-WHI
151 Coleção CAM-Fundação Calouste
Barbara Hepworth Gulbenkian, Lisbon. Inv. PE128 167 175
(Wakefield, West Yorkshire, 1903– Ian Hamilton Finlay Lord Snowdon
St Ives, Cornwall, 1975) 159 (Nassau, 1925–Edinburgh, 2006) (London, b. 1930)
Rhythmic Form, 1949 Patrick Caulfield Sea/Land Sundial, 1970 Private View. London: Thomas Nelson
Rosewood on wooden base, (London, 1936–2005) Glass, 33.5 x 30.7 x 7.5 cm and Sons, 1965, 234–35
100.3 x 30.5 x 12.2 cm Portrait of Juan Gris, 1963 Tate: Bequeathed by David Brown 34 x 27.6 x 2.6 cm (overall)
British Council Collection. Inv. P167 Oil on board, 122 x 122 cm in memory of Mrs Liza Brown 2003. National Library of Scotland,
Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, Inv. T11738 Edinburgh. Inv. NG.1345.e.16
152 UK (Wilson gift through the National
Laurence Stephen Lowry Art Collection Fund 2004). 168 176
(Stretford, Lancashire, 1887–Glossop, Inv. chcph 1055 Richard Hamilton Peter Blake
Derbyshire, 1976) (London, 1922–2011) (Dartford, Kent, b. 1932)
Industrial Landscape, 1950 160 Release Print, 1972 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,
Oil on canvas, 111.7 x 152.5 cm Anthony Caro Screenprint and collage, 71 x 95.5 cm album cover, 1967
New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, (London, b. 1924) British Council Collection. Inv. P4412 31.5 x 31 cm
Leicester. Inv. L.F20.1952 Slow Movement, 1965 Private Collection
Paint on steel, 144.8 x 299.7 x 61 cm 169
153 Arts Council Collection, Southbank Francis Bacon 177
Henry Moore Centre, London. Inv. AC 821 (Dublin, 1909–Madrid, 1992) Charles Harrison
(Castleford, Yorkshire, 1898–Much Two Studies for a Self Portrait, 1972 (Chesham, Buckinghamshire, 1942–
Hadham, Hertfordshire, 1987) 161 Oil on canvas, 35.5 x 61 cm Banbury, Oxfordshire, 2009), ed.
Mother and Child, 1953 David Hockney Private Collection When Attitudes Become Form:
Bronze, 61 x 27 x 34.5 cm (Bradford, West Yorkshire, b. 1937) Works-Concepts-Processes-Situations-
Private Collection Portrait of Nick Wilder, 1966 170 Information –Live in Your Head. Exh. cat.
Acrylic on canvas, 182 x 182 cm R.B. Kitaj Institute of Contemporary Arts, London,
154 Private Collection (Cleveland, Ohio, 1932–Los Angeles, 2007) July–August, 1969
Reg Butler The Man of the Woods and the Cat of the 31 x 22 cm (overall)
(Buntingford, Hertfordshire, 1913– 162 Mountains, 1973 Tate Library & Archive. Inv. V LON-INS
Berkhamsted, 1981) Howard Hodgkin Oil on canvas, 152.4 x 152.4 cm and V CH-BER-KUN
Girl, 1953–54 (London, b. 1932) Tate: Presented by the Friends of the Tate
Bronze, 177.8 x 40.6 x 24.1 cm Mrs K, 1966–67 Gallery 1974. Inv. T01772 178
Bristol Museums & Art Gallery. Oil on canvas, 86.4 x 99 cm Gerald Scarfe
Inv. N5483 Arts Council Collection, Southbank 171 (London, b. 1936)
Centre, London. Inv. ACA 49 Richard Long Ian Fleming as James Bond, 1970
155 (Bristol, Avon, b. 1945) Lithograph, 737 x 546 mm
Eduardo Paolozzi 163 Slate Line, 1978 Private Collection
(Leith, Edinburgh, 1924–London, Bridget Riley Twenty pieces of Cornish Delabole slate,
2005) (Norwood, London, b. 1931) approx. 270 x 70 cm 179
Large Frog (New Version), 1958 Cataract 3, 1967 Courtesy of the artist and Haunch of Glen Baxter
Bronze, 71 x 83 x 83 cm PVA on canvas, 221.9 x 222.9 cm Venison, London (Leeds, b. 1944)
British Council Collection. Inv. P302 British Council Collection. Inv. P996 Atlas: I’ll never forget the day M’Blawi
172 stumbled on the work of the Post-
156 164 Frank Auerbach Impressionists... English edition.
Peter Coker Lucian Freud (Berlin, b. 1931) London: Jonathan Cape, 1982
(London, 1926–Colchester, Essex, (Berlin, 1922–London, 2011) Head of JYM III, 1980 21.5 x 15.8 cm (overall)
2004) Naked Girl Asleep, 1967 Oil on board, 71.1 x 61 cm Private Collection
Sunflowers, 1958–59 Oil on canvas, 61 x 61 cm British Council Collection.
Oil on board, 120 x 97 cm Private Collection Inv. P4995

S E L E CT B I B LI OGRAPH Y
This select bibliography, divided into historical periods, provides details of some of the most
interesting books on British art, culture and history that have been published in the last
two or three decades. It does not include works on individual artists. For these latter, it is
recommended that catalogues for monographic exhibitions at major institutions such as Tate
and the National Portrait Gallery be consulted as well as the lists of the main art publishers
such as Phaidon and Thames & Hudson. The remarkable publications of the Paul Mellon
Center for Studies in British Art (Yale University Press) on both particular artists and broader
artistic themes are highly recommended.
General Reading Thomas, Keith, Man and the Natural World: Hearn, Karen, ed. Dynasties: Painting in Yates, Frances, A., Astraea: The Imperial
Changing Attitudes in England 1500–1800. Tudor and Jacobean England 1530–1630. Theme in the Sixteenth Century. London:
Ayers, Tim, ed. The History of British Art London: Allen Lane, 1983. Exh. cat. Tate Gallery, London. London: Penguin Books Ltd, 1975.
600–1600, Tate Britain and Yale Center for Tate Publishing, 1995.
British Art. London: Tate Publishing, 2008. Waterhouse, Ellis, Painting in Britain
1530–1790. London: Yale University Press, Helgerson, Richard, Forms of Nationhood:
Bindman, David, ed. The History of British 1978. The Elizabethan Writing of England. 1650–1800
Art 1600–1870. Tate Britain and Yale Center Chicago and London: University
for British Art. London: Tate Publishing, Wedd, Kit, with Lucy Peltz and Cathy Ross, of Chicago Press, 1992. Barrell, John, The Political Theory
2008. Creative Quarters: The Art World in London of Painting from Reynolds to Hazlitt:
1700–2000. Exh. cat. London: Museum of Howarth, David, Images of Rule: Art The Body of the Public. Yale and London:
Cannadine, David, ed. The Penguin History London, 2001. and Politics in the English Renaissance Yale University Press, 1986.
of Britain. 9 vols. London: Cambridge 1485–1649. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London:
University Press, 1996. Wilson, Simon, British Art from Holbein to University of California Press, 1997. Bermingham, Ann, Learning to
Hockney. London: Tate Publishing, 1979. Draw: Studies in the Cultural History
Ford, Boris, ed. The Cambridge Cultural Howard, Maurice, The Tudor Image. of a Polite and Useful Art. Yale and
History of Britain. Cambridge: Folio Society London: Tate Publishing, 1995. London: Yale University Press,
edition, 1995. 2000.
1400-1650 Marks, Richard, Image and Devotion in
Graham-Dixon, Andrew, A History of British Late Medieval England. Stroud: Sutton Bignamini, Ilaria, and Martin Postle,
Art. London: BBC, 1996. Aston, Margaret, The King’s Bedpost: Publishing, 2004.
The Artist’s Model: Its Role in British Art
Reformation and Iconography in a Tudor
from Lely to Etty. Exh. cat. University of
Hackney, Stephen, Rica Jones and Joyce Group Portrait. Cambridge: Press Syndicate Marks, Richard, and Paul Williamson,
Nottingham, Nottingham and English
Townsend, Paint and Purpose: A Study of the University of Cambridge, 1993. assisted by Eleanor Townsend, eds. Gothic:
Heritage, 1991.
of Technique in British Art. London: Tate Art for England 1400–1547. Exh. cat.
Publishing, 1999. Deacon, Richard, and Phillip Lindley, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Bonehill, John, and Geoff Quilley, eds.
Image and Idol: Medieval Sculpture. London: V&A Publishing, 2003.
Conflicting Visions: War and Visual
Humphreys, Richard The Tate Britain Exh. cat. Tate Britain, London. London:
Culture in Britain and France,
Companion to British Art. London: Tate Tate Publishing, 2001. Martindale, Andrew, “The W(w)all P(p)
c. 1700–1830. Aldershot and Burlington
Publishing, 2001. aintings in The Chapel of Eton College”, in
VT: Ashgate, 2005.
Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: England and the Low Countries in the Late
Morgan, Kenneth O., ed. The Oxford Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580. Middle Ages. Eds. Caroline Barron and Nigel
Brewer, John, The Pleasures of the
Popular History of Britain. Oxford: Oxford Yale and London: Yale University Press, Saul. Stroud, Alan Sutton and New York:
Imagination: English Culture in the
University Press, 1998 (this is a single 1992. St Martin’s Press, 1995.
Eighteenth Century. London: Harper
volume based on the 10 volumes of The
Collins, 1997.
Oxford History of Britain. Oxford: Oxford Foister, Susan (with contributions by Parry, Graham, The Arts of the Anglican
University Press, 1984). Tim Batchelor), Holbein in England. Exh. Counter-Reformation: Glory, Laud and
cat. Tate Britain, London. London: Tate Honour. Woodbridge and New York: Brotton, Jerry, The Sale of the Late King’s
O’Connell, Sheila, The Popular Print Publishing, 2006. Boydell Press, 2006. Goods: Charles I and His Art Collection.
in Britain 1550–1850. London: British London: Macmillan, 2006.
Museum Press, 1999. Gent, Lucy, Picture and Poetry: Relations Sloan, Kim, with contributions by Joyce
between Literature and the Visual Arts in E. Chaplin, Christian F. Feest and Ute Butler, Marilyn, Romantics, Rebels, and
Pevsner, Nikolaus, The Englishness of the English Renaissance, Leamington Spa: Kuhlema, A New World: England’s First Reactionaries: English Literature and its
English Art. London: Architectural Press, James Hall, 1981. View of America. London: British Museum Background 1760–1830. Oxford: Oxford
1956. Press, 2007. University Press, 1981.
Gent, Lucy, and Nigel Llewellyn, eds.
Piper, David, The English Face. Ed. Malcolm Renaissance Bodies: The Human Figure Stanbury, Sarah, The Visual Object of Desire Clayton, Timothy, The English Print
Rogers. London: National Portrait Gallery, in English Culture c.1540–1660. London: in Late Medieval England. Philadelphia: 1688–1802. Yale and London: Yale
1992. Reaktion Books Ltd, 1990. University of Pennsylvania, 2008. University Press, 1997.
Porter, Roy, ed. Rewriting the Self: Histories Gilman, Ernest B., Iconoclasm and Poetry Warnke, Martin, The Court Artist: On Colley, Linda, Britons: Forging the Nation.
from the Renaissance to the Present. London: in the English Reformation. Chicago and the Ancestry of the Modern Artist. Trans. Yale and London: Yale University Press,
Routledge, 1997. London: University of Chicago Press, 1986. David McLintock. Cambridge: Cambridge 1992.
University Press, 1993.
Stephens, Chris, ed. The History of British Greenblatt, Stephen, Renaissance Self- Curran, Stuart, ed. The Cambridge
Art: 1870 –Now. Tate Britain and Yale Fashioning from More to Shakespeare. Watt, Tessa, Cheap Print and Popular Companion to British Romanticism.
Center for British Art. London: Tate Chicago and London: University Piety 1550–1640. Cambridge: Cambridge Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
Publishing, 2008. of Chicago Press, 1980. University Press, 1991. 1993.
327

Daniels, Stephen, Fields of Vision: Ogborn, Miles, Spaces of Modernity: Cowling, Mary, The Artist as Anthropologist: Robertson, David, Sir Charles Eastlake and
Landscape Imagery and National Identity in London’s Geographies 1660–1780. London The Representation of Type and Character the Victorian Art World. Yale and London:
England and the United States. Princeton: and New York: Guilford Press, 1998. in Victorian Art. Cambridge: Cambridge Yale University Press, 1978.
Princeton University Press, 1993. University Press, 1989.
Pears, Iain, The Discovery of Painting: Smiles, Sam, The Image of Antiquity: Ancient
Defoe, Daniel, A Tour through the Whole The Growth of Interest in the Arts in Cunningham, Andrew, and Nicholas Britain and the Romantic Imagination. Yale
Island of Great Britain. England 1680–1768. Yale and London: Jardine, Romanticism and the Sciences. and London: Yale University Press, 1994.
London, 1724–26. Illustrated edition edited Yale University Press, 1988. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
by P.N. Burbank, W.R. Owens and A.J. 1990. Smith, Alison, The Victorian Nude.
Couslon. Yale and London: Yale University Piggott, Stuart, Ancient Britons and the Manchester: Manchester University Press,
Press, 1991. Antiquarian Imagination: Ideas from Greenhalgh, Paul, Ephemeral Vistas: The 1996.
the Renaissance to the Regency. London: Exposition Universelles, Great Exhibitions
Ede, Mary, Arts and Society in England Thames & Hudson, 1988. and World’s Fairs, 1851–1939. Manchester: Smith, Lindsay, Victorian Photography,
under William and Mary. London: Stainer Manchester University Press, 1988. Painting and Poetry: The Enigma of Visibility
and Bell, 1979. Redwood, John, Reason, Ridicule and in Ruskin, Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites.
Religion: The Age of Enlightenment in Hamlyn, Robin, Robert Vernon’s Gift. Exh. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
Einberg, Elizabeth, ed. Manners and Morals: England 1660–1750. London: Thames & cat. Tate Gallery, London. London: Tate 1992.
Hogarth and British Painting 1700–1760. Hudson, 1996. Publishing, 1993.
Exh. cat. Tate Gallery, London. London: Treuherz, Julian, Hard Times: Social
Tate Publishing, 1987. Sharpe, Kevin, and Peter Lake, eds. Culture Hemingway, Andrew, Landscape Imagery Realism in Victorian Art. Exh. cat.
and Politics in Early Stuart England. and Urban Culture in Early Nineteenth- Manchester: Manchester City Art Galleries,
Hallett, Mark, The Spectacle of Difference: London: MacMillan, 1994. Century Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge 1988.
Graphic Satire in the Age of Hogarth. Yale University Press, 1992.
and London: Yale University Press, 1999. Snodin, Michael, and Nigel Llewellwyn, Waggoner, Diane, ed. The Pre-Raphaelite
assisted by Joanna Norman, eds. Baroque Hermann, Luke, Nineteenth-Century Lens: British Photography and Painting
Hoock, Holger, Empires of the Imagination: 1620–1800: Style in the Age of Magnificence. British Painting. London: Giles de la 1848–1875. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art,
Politics, War and the Arts in the British Exh. cat. Victoria and Albert Museum, Mare, 2000. Washington. Farnham: Lund Humphries,
World, 1750–1850. London: Profile Books, London. London: V&A Publishing, 2009. 2010.
2010. Hewison, Robert, Ian Warrell and Stephen
Solkin, David, ed. Painting for Money: Wildman, Ruskin, Turner and the Pre- Weiner, Martin, English Culture and the
Hoozee, Robert, with introductory essays The Visual Arts and the Public Sphere in Raphaelites. Exh. cat. Tate Britain, London. Decline of the Industrial Spirit 1850–1980.
by John Gage and Timothy Hyman, British Eighteenth-Century England. Yale and London: Tate Publishing, 2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
Vision: Observation and Imagination London: Yale University Press, 1993. 1981.
in British Art, 1750–1850. Exh. cat. Hyde, Ralph, Panoramania! The Art and
Mercatorfonds and Museum Voor Schone Solkin, David, ed. Art on the Line: The Entertainment of the “All-Embracing” View. Wheeler, Michael, Heaven, Hell and
Kunsten, Ghent, 2007. Royal Academy Exhibitions at Somerset Exh. cat. London: Barbican Art Gallery, the Victorians. Cambridge: Cambridge
House 1780–1836. Yale and London: Yale 1988. University Press, 1994.
Jardine, Lisa, Ingenious Pursuits: Building University Press, 2001.
the Scientific Revolution. London: Anchor Jenkyns, Richard, The Victorians and Whitaker, Muriel, The Legends of King
Books, 2000. Tobin, Beth Fowkes, Picturing Imperial Ancient Greece. Blackwell, Cambridge, Arthur in Art. Arthurian Studies XXII.
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❦ ARTE ESPAÑOL CONTEMPORÁNEO. ❦ MIRRORS AND WINDOWS. AMERICAN ❦ JULIA MARGARET CAMERON: 1815–1879.
1966
COLECCIÓN DE LA FUNDACIÓN JUAN PHOTOGRAPHY SINCE 1960. Text by John Texts by Mike Weaver and Julia Margaret
❦ MUSEO DE ARTE ABSTRACTO ESPAÑOL. MARCH. [This catalogue accompanied the Szarkowski. English ed. (Offprint: Spanish Cameron. English ed. (Offprint: Spanish
CUENCA [Catalogue-Guide]. Text by exhibition of the same name that traveled to translation of text by John Szarkowski). translation of text by Mike Weaver).
Fernando Zóbel. Bilingual ed. (Spanish/ 67 Spanish venues between 1975 and 1996; Published by The Museum of Modern Art, Published by John Hansard Gallery & The
English). Published by the Museo de Arte at many venues, independent catalogues New York, 1980 Herbert Press Ltd., Southampton, 1984
Abstracto Español, Cuenca were published.] ❦ MEDIO SIGLO DE ESCULTURA: 1900–1945. ❦ JULIUS BISSIER. Text by Werner
❦ III EXPOSICIÓN DE BECARIOS DE ARTES Text by Jean-Louis Prat Schmalenbach
1969 PLÁSTICAS ❦ MUSEO DE ARTE ABSTRACTO ESPAÑOL.
❦ MUSEO DE ARTE ABSTRACTO ESPAÑOL. CUENCA. FUNDACIÓN JUAN MARCH 1985
CUENCA [Catalogue-Guide]. Texts by 1978 [Catalogue-Guide]. Texts by Gustavo Torner,
❦ ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG. Text by
Gustavo Torner, Gerardo Rueda and ❦ ARS MEDICA. Text by Carl Zigrosser Gerardo Rueda and Fernando Zóbel
Lawrence Alloway
Fernando Zóbel. Bilingual ed. (Spanish/
❦ FRANCIS BACON. Text by Antonio Bonet ❦ VANGUARDIA RUSA: 1910–1930. Museo
English). Published by the Museo de Arte 1982
Correa y Colección Ludwig. Text by Evelyn Weiss
Abstracto Español, Cuenca (1st ed.)
❦ BAUHAUS. Texts by Hans M. Wingler, ❦ PIET MONDRIAN. Óleos, acuarelas y
❦ DER DEUTSCHE HOLZSCHNITT IM
Will Grohmann, Jürgen Joedicke, Nikolaus dibujos. Texts by Herbert Henkels and
20. Text by Gunther Thiem. German
1973 Pevsner, Hans Eckstein, Oskar Schlemmer, Piet Mondrian
ed. (Offprint: Spanish translations of
❦ ARTE’73. Multilingual ed. (Spanish, László Moholy-Nagy, Otto Stelzer and Heinz ❦ ROBERT Y SONIA DELAUNAY. Texts by texts). Published by the Institut für
English, French, Italian and German) Winfried Sabais. Published by the Institut für Juan Manuel Bonet, Jacques Damase, Auslandsbeziehungen, Stuttgart, 1984
Auslandsbeziehungen, Stuttgart, 1976 Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Isaac del Vando
❦ ESTRUCTURAS REPETITIVAS. Text by
❦ KANDINSKY: 1923–1944. Texts by Werner Villar, Vicente Huidobro and Guillermo de
1974 Simón Marchán Fiz
Haftmann, Gaëtan Picon and Wassily Torre
❦ MUSEO DE ARTE ABSTRACTO ESPAÑOL. Kandinsky ❦ PINTURA ABSTRACTA ESPAÑOLA: 1960–
CUENCA [Catalogue-Guide]. Texts by 1986
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Gustavo Torner, Gerardo Rueda and ❦ MAX ERNST. Texts by Werner Spies and
COLECCIÓN DE LA FUNDACIÓN JUAN ❦ KURT SCHWITTERS. Texts by Werner
Fernando Zóbel. Bilingual ed. (Spanish/ Max Ernst
MARCH Schmalenbach, Ernst Schwitters and Kurt
English). Published by the Museo de Arte
Schwitters ❦ ARTE, PAISAJE Y ARQUITECTURA.
Abstracto Español, Cuenca (2nd ed., rev. and ❦ IV EXPOSICIÓN DE BECARIOS DE ARTES
El arte referido a la arquitectura en la
exp.) PLÁSTICAS ❦ VII EXPOSICIÓN DE BECARIOS DE ARTES
República Federal de Alemania. Texts
PLÁSTICAS
by Dieter Honisch and Manfred Sack.
1975 1979 German ed. (Offprint: Spanish translation
❦ WILLEM DE KOONING. Obras recientes. 1983 of introductory texts). Published by the
❦ OSKAR KOKOSCHKA. Óleos y acuarelas.
Text by Diane Waldman ❦ ROY LICHTENSTEIN: 1970–1980. Text Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen,
Dibujos, grabados, mosaicos. Obra literaria.
by Jack Cowart. English ed. Published by Stuttgart, 1983
Text by Heinz Spielmann ❦ MAESTROS DEL SIGLO XX. NATURALEZA
MUERTA. Text by Reinhold Hohl Hudson Hill Press, New York, 1981 ❦ ARTE ESPAÑOL EN NUEVA YORK: 1950–
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CALCOGRAFÍA NACIONAL. Texts by Enrique ❦ GEORGES BRAQUE. Óleos, gouaches,
Correa and Fernand Léger Manuel Bonet
Lafuente Ferrari and Antonio Gallego relieves, dibujos y grabados. Texts by Jean
Paulhan, Jacques Prévert, Christian Zervos, ❦ PIERRE BONNARD. Text by Ángel González ❦ OBRAS MAESTRAS DEL MUSEO DE
❦ I EXPOSICIÓN DE BECARIOS DE ARTES
Georges Salles, André Chastel, Pierre García WUPPERTAL. De Marées a Picasso. Texts
PLÁSTICAS
Reverdy and Georges Braque by Sabine Fehlemann and Hans Günter
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Wachtmann
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1976
TAUROMAQUIA, DISPARATES. Text by de la Serna, José Augusto França, Jorge de
❦ JEAN DUBUFFET. Text by Jean Dubuffet Alfonso E. Pérez-Sánchez (1st ed.) 1987
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Fundación Maeght. Texts by Jean Genêt, PLÁSTICAS Portugal, Lisbon, 1983 Lewison and Ben Nicholson
Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Dupin and ❦ ARTE ABSTRACTO ESPAÑOL EN LA ❦ IRVING PENN. Text by John Szarkowski.
Alberto Giacometti
1980 COLECCIÓN DE LA FUNDACIÓN JUAN English ed. published by The Museum of
❦ II EXPOSICIÓN DE BECARIOS DE ARTES MARCH. Text by Julián Gállego Modern Art, New York, 1984 (repr. 1986)
❦ JULIO GONZÁLEZ. Esculturas y dibujos.
PLÁSTICAS ❦ GRABADO ABSTRACTO ESPAÑOL.
Text by Germain Viatte ❦ MARK ROTHKO. Texts by Michael
COLECCIÓN DE LA FUNDACIÓN JUAN Compton and Mark Rothko
❦ ROBERT MOTHERWELL. Text by
1977 MARCH. Text by Julián Gállego. [This
Barbaralee Diamonstein and Robert
❦ ARTE USA. Text by Harold Rosenberg catalogue accompanied the exhibition of 1988
Motherwell
the same name that traveled to 44 Spanish
❦ ARTE DE NUEVA GUINEA Y PAPÚA. ❦ HENRI MATISSE. Óleos, dibujos, ❦ EL PASO DESPUÉS DE EL PASO EN LA
venues between 1983 and 1999.]
Colección A. Folch y E. Serra. Texts by B. A. gouaches, découpées, esculturas y libros. COLECCIÓN DE LA FUNDACIÓN JUAN
L. Cranstone and Christian Kaufmann Text by Henri Matisse MARCH. Text by Juan Manuel Bonet
1984
❦ PICASSO. Texts by Rafael Alberti, Gerardo ❦ VI EXPOSICIÓN DE BECARIOS DE ARTES ❦ ZERO, A EUROPEAN MOVEMENT.
Diego, Vicente Aleixandre, Eugenio d’Ors, ❦ EL ARTE DEL SIGLO XX EN UN MUSEO
PLÁSTICAS The Lenz Schönberg Collection. Texts by
Juan Antonio Gaya Nuño, Ricardo Gullón, HOLANDÉS: EINDHOVEN. Texts by Jaap Dieter Honisch and Hannah Weitemeier.
José Camón Aznar, Guillermo de Torre and Bremer, Jan Debbaut, R. H. Fuchs, Piet de Bilingual ed. (Spanish/English)
Enrique Lafuente Ferrari 1981 Jonge and Margriet Suren
❦ COLECCIÓN LEO CASTELLI. Texts by
❦ MARC CHAGALL. 18 pinturas y 40 ❦ MINIMAL ART. Text by Phyllis Tuchman ❦ JOSEPH CORNELL. Text by Fernando Huici Calvin Tomkins, Judith Goldman, Gabriele
grabados. Texts by André Malraux and Louis ❦ PAUL KLEE. Óleos, acuarelas, dibujos y ❦ FERNANDO ZÓBEL. Text by Francisco Henkel, Leo Castelli, Jim Palette, Barbara
Aragon (in French) grabados. Text by Paul Klee Calvo Serraller. Madrid and Rose and John Cage
KEY: ❦ Sold-out publications | Exhibition at the Museu Fundación Juan March, Palma | Exhibition at the Museo de Arte Abstracto Español, Cuenca
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❦ MUSEO DE ARTE ABSTRACTO ESPAÑOL. ❦ PICASSO. EL SOMBRERO DE TRES PICOS. ❦ FRANK STELLA. Obra gráfica: 1982–1996. ❦ MATISSE. ESPÍRITU Y SENTIDO. Obra
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Berthon ❦ EL OBJETO DEL ARTE. Text by Javier ❦ RÓDCHENKO. GEOMETRÍAS. Texts
1989 ❦ MUSEO BRÜCKE BERLÍN. ARTE Maderuelo by Alexandr Lavrentiev and Alexandr
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2002
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1994 ❦ GEORGIA O’KEEFFE. NATURALEZAS
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Joana Cunha Leal ❦ MOMPÓ. Obra sobre papel. Texts by
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1991 Meyer and Antje Birthälmer ❦ CHILLIDA. ELOGIO DE LA MANO. Text by
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❦ PICASSO. RETRATOS DE JACQUELINE. Colección Kenneth Tyler. Text by Robert ❦ MIQUEL BARCELÓ. Ceràmiques: 1995– Javier Maderuelo
Texts by Hélène Parmelin, María Teresa Motherwell 1998. Text by Enrique Juncosa. Bilingual ed. ❦ GERARDO RUEDA. CONSTRUCCIONES.
Ocaña, Nuria Rivero, Werner Spies and Rosa (Spanish/Catalan) Text by Barbara Rose
Vives ❦ FERNANDO ZÓBEL. Obra gráfica
1996 ❦ ESTEBAN VICENTE. Collages. Texts by
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Livingstone, Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, ❦ LUCIO MUÑOZ. ÍNTIMO. Texts by Rodrigo
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Tilman Osterwold and Meinrad Maria Muñoz Avia and Lucio Muñoz
(in Portuguese) and Joham de Castro 1999
Grewenig. Published by Hatje Cantz, MUSEU D’ART ESPANYOL CONTEMPORANI.
❦ MONET EN GIVERNY. Colección del
Museo Marmottan de París. Texts by Ostfildern, 1996 PALMA.FUNDACION JUAN MARCH
2000 [Catalogue-Guide]. Texts by Juan Manuel
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colecciones. Texts by Danièle Devynck and ❦ VASARELY. Texts by Werner Spies and Bonet and Javier Maderuelo. Bilingual eds.
Claude Monet
Michèle-Catherine Vasarely (Catalan/Spanish and English/German, 2nd
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❦ EXPRESIONISMO ABSTRACTO.
ed. rev. and exp.)
CUENCA. FUNDACIÓN JUAN MARCH ❦ MILLARES. Pinturas y dibujos sobre papel:
OBRA SOBRE PAPEL. Colección de The
[Catalogue-Guide]. Text by Juan Manuel 1963–1971. Text by Manuel Millares
Bonet (2nd ed.) Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nueva York. 2004
❦ MUSEU D’ART ESPANYOL
Text by Lisa M. Messinger ❦ MAESTROS DE LA INVENCIÓN DE LA
CONTEMPORANI. PALMA. FUNDACION
SCHMIDT-ROTTLUFF. Colección Brücke- COLECCIÓN E. DE ROTHSCHILD DEL
1992 JUAN MARCH [Catalogue-Guide]. Texts by
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Text by Marco Livingstone de París. Texts by Delfín Rodríguez, Isabelle
(Spanish/German/English). [This catalogue Muñoz Avia
❦ COL·LECCIÓ MARCH. ART ESPANYOL Collet, Amélie Simier, Maryline Assante di
accompanied the exhibition of the same ❦ EUSEBIO SEMPERE. PAISAJES. Text by
CONTEMPORANI. PALMA. FUNDACIÓN Panzillo and José de los Llanos. Bilingual ed.
name that, since 1996, has traveled to seven Pablo Ramírez
JUAN MARCH [Catalogue-Guide]. Text by (Spanish/French)
Spanish and foreign venues.]
Juan Manuel Bonet (German ed.) ❦ LIUBOV POPOVA. Text by Anna María
2001 Guasch
1993 1997 ❦ DE CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH A PICASSO. ❦ ESTEBAN VICENTE. GESTO Y COLOR.
❦ MAX BECKMANN. Texts by Klaus Gallwitz Obras maestras sobre papel del Museo Von Text by Guillermo Solana
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Malevich Text by Manfred Reuther ❦ ADOLPH GOTTLIEB. Text by Sanford Hirsch Aledo. Bilingual ed. (Spanish/English)
332 EXHIBITION CATALOGUES AND OTHER PUBLICATIONSBY THE FUNDACIÓN JUAN MARCH

❦ NEW TECHNOLOGIES, NEW Juan Manuel Bonet, Gustavo Torner, Antonio ❦ ANDREAS FEININGER: 1906–1999. Texts PALAZUELO, PARIS, 13 RUE SAINT-JACQUES
ICONOGRAPHY, NEW PHOTOGRAPHY. Lorenzo, Rafael Pérez Madero, Pedro Miguel by Andreas Feininger, Thomas Buchsteiner, (1948–1968). Texts by Alfonso de la Torre
Photography of the 80’s and 90’s in the Ibáñez and Alfonso de la Torre Jean-François Chevrier, Juan Manuel Bonet and Christine Jouishomme. Bilingual ed.
Collection of the Museo Nacional Centro GARY HILL: IMAGES OF LIGHT. Works and John Loengard. Bilingual ed. (Spanish/ (Spanish/English)
de Arte Reina Sofía. Texts by Catherine from the Collection of the Kunstmuseum English) THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPES OF ASHER
Coleman, Pablo Llorca and María Toledo. Wolfsburg. Text by Holger Broeker. Bilingual B. DURAND (1796–1886). Texts by Linda S.
JOAN HERNÁNDEZ PIJUAN: THE DISTANCE
Bilingual ed. (Spanish/English) ed. (Spanish/English) Ferber, Barbara Deyer Gallati, Barbara
OF DRAWING. Texts by Valentín Roma, Peter
KANDINSKY. Acuarelas. Städtische Galerie Dittmar and Narcís Comadira. Bilingual ed. Novak, Marilyn S. Kushner, Roberta J. M.
GOYA. CAPRICHOS, DESASTRES,
im Lenbachhaus, Munich. Texts by Helmut TAUROMAQUIA, DISPARATES. Texts by (Spanish/English) Olson, Rebecca Bedell, Kimberly Orcutt and
Friedel and Wassily Kandinsky. Bilingual ed. Alfonso E. Pérez-Sánchez (11th ed., 1st ed. Sarah Barr Snook. Spanish and English eds.
Supplementary publication: IRIS DE PASCUA.
(Spanish/German) 1979). [This catalogue accompanied the Supplementary publication: Asher
JOAN HERNÁNDEZ PIJUAN. Text by Elvira
exhibition of the same name that, since 1979, Maluquer. Bilingual ed. (Spanish/English) B. Durand. LETTERS ON LANDSCAPE
2005 has traveled to 173 Spanish and foreign PAINTING (1855). Spanish semi-facsimile ed.
❦ CONTEMPORANEA. Kunstmuseum venues. The catalogue has been translated and English facsimile ed.
into more than seven languages.]
2009
Wolfsburg. Texts by Gijs van Tuyl, Rudi PICASSO. Suite Vollard. Text by Julián
TARSILA DO AMARAL. Texts by Aracy Amaral,
Fuchs, Holger Broeker, Alberto Ruiz de Gállego. Bilingual ed. (Spanish/English)
Samaniego and Susanne Köhler. Bilingual ed. Juan Manuel Bonet, Jorge Schwartz, Regina
2007 (Rev. ed, 1st ed. 1996)
(Spanish/English) Teixeira de Barros, Tarsila do Amaral, Mário
ROY LICHTENSTEIN: BEGINNING TO de Andrade, Oswald de Andrade, Manuel
❦ ANTONIO SAURA. DAMAS. Texts by END. Texts by Jack Cowart, Juan Antonio 2011
Bandeira, Haroldo de Campos, Emiliano di
Francisco Calvo Serraller and Antonio Saura. Ramírez, Ruth Fine, Cassandra Lozano, Cavalcanti, Ribeiro Couto, Carlos Drummond ❦ COLD AMERICA: Geometric Abstraction
Bilingual ed. (Spanish/English) James de Pasquale, Avis Berman and Clare de Andrade, António Ferro, Jorge de Lima and in Latin America (1934–1973). Texts by
CELEBRATION OF ART: A Half Century of Bell. Spanish, French and English eds. Osbel Suárez, César Paternosto, María
Sérgio Milliet. Spanish and English eds.
the Fundación Juan March. Texts by Juan Supplementary publication: Roy Fox Amalia García, Ferreira Gullar, Luis Pérez-
❦ Supplementary publication: Blaise
Manuel Bonet, Juan Pablo Fusi, Antonio Lichtenstein. PAINTINGS, DRAWINGS AND Oramas, Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro and Michael
Cendrars. HOJAS DE RUTA (1924).
Muñoz Molina, Juan Navarro Baldeweg and PASTELS, A THESIS. Original text by Roy Fox Nungesser. Spanish and English eds.
Javier Fuentes. Spanish and English eds. Spanish semi-facsimile ed., translation
Lichtenstein (1949). Additional texts by Jack WILLI BAUMEISTER. PINTURAS Y DIBUJOS.
Cowart and Clare Bell. Bilingual ed. (English and notes by José Antonio Millán Alba
❦ BECKMANN. Von der Heydt-Museum, Texts by Willi Baumeister, Felicitas
Wuppertal. Text by Sabine Fehlemann. [facsimile]/Spanish), translation by Paloma Supplementary publication: Oswald de Baumeister, Martin Schieder, Dieter
Bilingual ed. (Spanish/German) Farré Andrade. PAU BRASIL (1925). Spanish semi- Schwarz, Elena Pontiggia and Hadwig Goez.
THE ABSTRACTION OF LANDSCAPE: facsimile ed., translation by Andrés Sánchez Spanish, German and Italian eds.
❦ EGON SCHIELE: IN BODY AND SOUL. Text
From Northern Romanticism to Abstract Robayna
by Miguel Sáenz. Bilingual ed. (Spanish/ ALEKSANDR DEINEKA (1899–1969). AN
English) Expressionism. Texts by Werner Hofmann, CARLOS CRUZ-DIEZ: COLOR HAPPENS. Texts AVANT-GARDE FOR THE PROLETARIAT.
Hein-Th. Schulze Altcappenberg, Barbara by Osbel Suárez, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Gloria
❦ LICHTENSTEIN: IN PROCESS. Texts Texts by Manuel Fontán del Junco,
Dayer Gallati, Robert Rosenblum, Miguel Carnevali and Ariel Jiménez. Spanish and
by Juan Antonio Ramírez and Clare Bell. Christina Kiaer, Boris Groys, Fredric
López-Remiro, Mark Rothko, Cordula Meier, English eds.
Bilingual ed. (Spanish/English) Jameson, Ekaterina Degot, Irina Leytes and
Dietmar Elger, Bernhard Teuber, Olaf Mörke
Supplementary publication: Carlos Cruz- Alessandro de Magistris. Spanish and English
❦ FACES AND MASKS: Photographs from and Víctor Andrés Ferretti. Spanish and
Diez. REFLECTION ON COLOR (1989), rev. eds.
the Ordóñez-Falcón Collection. Text by English eds.
Francisco Caja. Bilingual ed. (Spanish/ and exp. Spanish and English eds. Supplementary edition: Boris Uralski.
Supplementary publication: Sean Scully.
English) ❦ CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH: THE ART EL ELECTRICISTA (1930). Cover and
BODIES OF LIGHT (1998). Bilingual ed.
OF DRAWING. Texts by Christina Grummt, illustrations by Aleksandr Deineka. Spanish
❦ MUSEO DE ARTE ABSTRACTO ESPAÑOL. (Spanish/English)
Helmut Börsch-Supan and Werner Busch. semi-facsimile ed., transaltion by Iana
CUENCA. FUNDACIÓN JUAN MARCH
EQUIPO CRÓNICA. CRÓNICAS REALES. Spanish and English eds. Zabiaka
[Catalogue-Guide]. Texts by Juan Manuel
Texts by Michèle Dalmace, Fernando Marías
Bonet and Javier Maderuelo. Bilingual ed. MUSEU FUNDACIÓN JUAN MARCH, PALMA
and Tomás Llorens. Bilingual ed. (Spanish/
(Spanish/English, 2nd ed.) [Catalogue-Guide]. Texts by Miquel Seguí 2012
English)
Aznar and Elvira González Gozalo, Juan GIANDOMENICO TIEPOLO (1727-1804): TEN
BEFORE AND AFTER MINIMALISM: A Manuel Bonet and Javier Maderuelo. Catalan,
2006 FANTASY PORTRAITS. Texts by Andrés Úbeda
Century of Abstract Tendencies in the Spanish, English and German eds. (3rd ed. rev. de los Cobos. Spanish and English eds.
❦ OTTO DIX. Text by Ulrike Lorenz. Bilingual Daimler Chrysler Collection. Virtual guide: and exp.)
ed. (Spanish/English) www.march.es/arte/palma/anteriores/ VLADIMIR LEBEDEV (1891-1967). Texts by
CatalogoMinimal/index.asp. Spanish, Masha Koval, Nicoletta Misler, Carlos Pérez,
❦ CREATIVE DESTRUCTION: Gustav Klimt,
Catalan, English and German eds. 2010 Françoise Lévèque and Vladimir Lebedev.
the Beethoven Frieze and the Controversy
Bilingual ed. (Spanish/English)
about the Freedom of Art. Texts by Stephan WYNDHAM LEWIS (1882–1957). Texts by
Koja, Carl E. Schorske, Alice Strobl, Franz A. Paul Edwards, Richard Humphreys, Yolanda PHOTOMONTAGE BETWEEN THE WARS
2008 (1918-1939). Texts by Adrian Sudhalter and
J. Szabo, Manfred Koller, Verena Perhelfter Morató, Juan Bonilla, Manuel Fontán del
MAXImin: Maximum Minimization in Deborah L. Roldán. Spanish and English
and Rosa Sala Rose, Hermann Bahr, Ludwig Junco, Andrzej Gasiorek and Alan Munton.
Contemporary Art. Texts by Renate eds.
Hevesi and Berta Zuckerkandl. Spanish, Spanish and English eds.
Wiehager, John M. Armleder, Ilya
English and German eds. Published by THE AVANT-GARDE APPLIED (1890-1950).
Bolotowsky, Daniel Buren, Hanne Darboven, Supplementary publication: William
Prestel, Munich/Fundación Juan March, Texts by Manuel Fontán del Junco, Richard
Adolf Hölzel, Norbert Kricke, Heinz Mack Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton. TIMON
Madrid, 2006 Hollis, Maurizio Scudiero and Bruno Tonini.
and Friederich Vordemberge-Gildewart. OF ATHENS (1623). With illustrations by
❦ Supplementary publication: Hermann Spanish and English eds.
Spanish and English eds. Wyndham Lewis and additional text by Paul
Bahr. CONTRA KLIMT (1903). Additional Edwards, translation and notes by Ángel-Luis TREASURE ISLAND: BRITISH ART FROM
TOTAL ENLIGHTENMENT: Conceptual Art
texts by Christian Huemer, Verena Pujante and Salvador Oliva. Bilingual ed. HOLBEIN TO HOCKNEY. Texts by Richard
in Moscow 1960–1990. Texts by Boris Groys,
Perlhefter, Rosa Sala Rose and Dietrun (Spanish/English) Humphreys, Tim Blanning and Kevin Jackson.
Ekaterina Bobrinskaya, Martina Weinhart,
Otten. Spanish semi-facsimile ed., Spanish and English eds.
Dorothea Zwirner, Manuel Fontán del Junco, Supplementary publication: Wyndham Lewis.
translation by Alejandro Martín Navarro Andrei Monastyrski and Ilya Kabakov. BLAST. Revista del gran vórtice inglés (1914).
LA CIUDAD ABSTRACTA: 1966. El nacimiento Bilingual ed. (Spanish/English). Published Additional texts by Paul Edwards and Kevin
del Museo de Arte Abstracto Español. Texts by by Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern/Fundación Juan Power. Spanish semi-facsimile ed., translation
Santos Juliá, María Bolaños, Ángeles Villalba, March, Madrid, 2008 and notes by Yolanda Morató For more information: www.march.es
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16 Where was British Art?

46 England and the British Isles 1485–1980

64 “The Isle is Full of Noises”:

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87 Destruction and Reformation 1520–1620

107 Revolution and the Baroque 1620–1720

129 Society and Satire 1720–1800

163 Landscapes of the Mind 1760–1850

201 Realism and Reaction 1850–1900

235 Modernity and Tradition 1900–1940

269 Brave New World 1945–1980

315 Chronology (1477–1979)

321 Catalogue of Works in the Exhibition

327 Select Bibliography

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FUNDACIÓN JUAN MARCH

Madrid, October 2012

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Eton College, Berkshire, 1477–87

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Arundel House, London, 1618

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20 WHERE WAS BRITISH ART?

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Church of St Michael the Archangel, Framlingham, Suffolk, ca. 1700

St Paul’s Cathedral, London, 1712–14

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Burlington House, London, 1724

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24 WHERE WAS BRITISH ART?

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Stourhead, Wiltshire, from 1740

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Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London, 1787

Royal Academy Schools, London, 1771–72