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Answer the following questions:Answer the following questions:
1. When did English painting begin to developindependently?
2. Who was the first really British painter?
3. What other famous painters can you name?
4. Which genre of painting was the most popularin Britain in the first half of the nineteenthcentury?
In the seventeenth century art in Britain had been dominatedlargely by the Flemish artist Anthony van Dyck. In the earlyeighteenth century, although influenced by Continentalmovements, British art began to develop independently.
William Hogarth, born just before the turn of the century, wasthe first major artist to reject foreign influence and establish akind of art whose themes and subjects were thoroughly British.
Hogarth was followed by a row of illustrious painters: ThomasGainsborough, with his lyrical landscapes, "fancy pictures" andportraits; Sir Joshua Reynolds, who painted charming societyportraits and became the first president of the Royal Academy;and George Stubbs, who is only now being recognized as anartist of the greatest visual perception and sensitivity.
The mainstream of English painting in the first half of thenineteenth century was landscape. At that time nature wasbeginning to be swallowed up by the expanding cities of theIndustrial Revolution. Constable and Turner, the greatest of thelandscapists, approached nature with love and excitement.
William Hogarth
(1697 – 1764)
gallery
biography
Hogarth, William, 1697–1764, English painter, satirist, engraver,and art theorist, b. London.
At the age of 15 he was apprenticed to a silver-plate engraver. Hestudied drawing with Thornhill, whose daughter he married in1729. Hogarth tried to earn a living with small portraits andportrait groups, but his first real success came in 1732 with aseries of six morality pictures, ‘The Harlot's Progress’. He firstpainted, then engraved them, selling subscriptions for the prints,which had great popularity.
The series ‘Marriage à la Mode’ (1745) is often considered hismasterpiece. With a wealth of detail and brilliant characterizationhe depicts the profligate and inane existence of a fashionableyoung couple. Hogarth invented a sort of visual shorthand thatenabled him to recall with perfect clarity whatever sight he wishedto retain.
He became an enormously learned artist possessing a profoundvisual understanding. His portraits The Shrimp Girl (National Gall.,London) and Captain Coram (1740) are two of the masterpiecesof British painting.
David Garrick as Richard III
The Shrimp Girl
Marriage à la Mode
The Graham Children
gallery
biography
Thomas Gainsborough
(1727 - 1788)
Gainsborough, 1727–88, English portrait and landscapepainter, b. Sudbury. In 1740 he went to London and becamethe assistant and pupil of the French engraver HubertGravelot. He also studied the landscapes of the great 17th-century Dutch artists.
Gainsborough is celebrated for the elegance, vivacity, andrefinement of his portraits. Some of these portray old-moneyaristocrats, but more are from the newly wealthy and highlycultured middle-class elite.
Gainsborough spent much spare time painting his favoritesubject, landscape, entirely for his own pleasure. These workswere among the first great landscapes painted in England. Asa colorist Gainsborough has had few rivals among Englishpainters.
He left a large collection of landscape drawings, whichinfluenced the development of 19th-century landscape art.
Portrait of a Lady in Blue
Mrs Sarah Siddons
The Cottage Girl with Dog and Pitcher
River landscape
Robert Andrews and His Wife Frances
Reynolds, Sir Joshua
(1723-1792)
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biography
Sir Joshua Reynolds was the foremost portraitist of his day.
First he learned portraiture from a painter in London and thenwent to Italy. After three years of study and travel, Reynoldsreturned to London, where he soon attracted notice by hisportraits of prominent persons.
He came to be the first English painter to achieve socialrecognition for his artistic achievements. He entertained theworld of wealth and fashion and the great literary figures of theday. When the Royal Academy was founded in 1768, Reynoldswas inevitably elected president and was knighted the followingyear.
Reynolds painted more than 2,000 portraits and historicalpaintings, depicting almost every notable person of his time. Heoften used experimental painting methods.
His portraits of Commodore Keppel, Dr. Johnson, Lady CarolineHoward, Mrs. Siddons, Sterne, Goldsmith, Garrick, Gibbon, andEdmund Burke are among the many fine examples that are ofhistorical interest.
Reynolds's works are in nearly every major museum in thewestern world.
Lady Elizabeth Delme and her Children
Mrs John Hale
Ladies Adorning a Term of Hymen
Heads of Angels
Portrait of Suzanna Beckford
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George Stubbs
(1724-1806)
biography
George Stubbs belongs to the artists whose names are re-discovered in the 20th century. At his time he was known only toa narrow circle of aristocratic sportsmen and horse lovers andonly the 20th century revealed the full extent of his achievement,his innovations and exceptional originality and power.
Self-taught, Stubbs was interested in comparative anatomy andpublished his Anatomy of the Horse (1766), which is still admiredfor its accuracy and elegance. It gained him a first-rate career asa painter to the English gentry, specializing in horse portraits,family groups with carriages, and portraits of other domesticanimals such as cattle and dogs. His Phaeton and Pair (NationalGall., London) is well known. He also painted rural scenes. Stubbswas a skilled engraver and made many sporting prints.
An Associate of the Royal Academy in 1780, Stubbs was electedto full membership in 1781. Stubbs died in 1806, July 10, in poorfinancial circumstances.
Horse Attacked by a Lion
Cheetah with Two Indian Attendants and a Stag
Mares and Foals in a Landscape
The Milbanke and Melbourne Families
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John Turner
(1775-1851)
biography
Turner was the foremost English romantic painter and the mostoriginal of English landscape artists. Although known for his oils,Turner is regarded as one of the founders of English watercolorlandscape painting.
The son of a barber, he received almost no general education but at14 was already a student at the Royal Academy of Arts. In 1791 forthe first time he exhibited two watercolors at the Royal Academy. Inthe following 10 years he exhibited there regularly, was elected amember (1802), and was made professor of perspective (1807).
He travelled constantly in England or abroad. With the years hedeveloped a painting technique all his own. Instead of merelyrecording factually what he saw, Turner translated scenes into alight-filled expression of his own romantic feelings. His paintingbecame increasingly abstract as he strove to portray light, space,and the elemental forces of nature.
Characteristic of his later period are such paintings as The FightingTéméraire and Rain, Steam, and Speed.
Turner left more than 19,000 watercolors, drawings, and oils to theBritish nation.
Mortlake
Rain, Steam and Speed
Norham Castle, Sunrise
The Fighting "Temeraire”
Dolbadern Castle
John Constable
(1776-1837)
gallery
biography
Constable was one of the leading figures in English landscapepainting of the 19th century. The son of a prosperous miller, heshowed artistic talent while very young but did not devote himselfto art until he was 23, when he went to London to study at theRoyal Academy.
He never went abroad, and his finest works are of the places heknew and loved best, particularly Suffolk and Hampstead, where helived from 1821.
During the 1820s he began to win recognition: The Hay Wain(National Gallery, London, 1821) won a gold medal at the ParisSalon of 1824.
Constable developed his own original treatment from the attempt torender scenery more directly and realistically.
In a way that was then new he represented in paint theatmospheric effects of changing light in the open air, the movementof clouds across the sky, and his excited delight at thesephenomena, stemming from a profound love of the country.
Splendid examples of his work are contained in the National Gallery,London and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Brighton Beach with Colliers
Boat-building on the Stour
The Hay Wain
Wivenhoe Park
A Mill at Gillingham in Dorset
Use the internet and learn more
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
English_school_of_painting
www.wga.hu/index1.html
www.artcyclopedia.com
www.abcgallery.com
www.nationalgallery.org.uk
www.tate.org.uk/collection/