Theart of theUnited Kingdom refers to all forms ofvisual art in or associated with the country since the formation of theKingdom of Great Britain in 1707 and encompassesEnglish art,Scottish art,Welsh art andIrish art, and forms part ofWestern art history. During the 18th century, Britain began to reclaim the leading place England had previously played in European art during theMiddle Ages, being especially strong in portraiture andlandscape art.
Increased British prosperity at the time led to a greatly increased production of bothfine art and thedecorative arts, the latter often being exported. TheRomantic period resulted from very diverse talents, including the paintersWilliam Blake,J. M. W. Turner,John Constable andSamuel Palmer. The Victorian period saw a great diversity of art, and a far bigger quantity created than before. Much Victorian art is now out of critical favour, with interest concentrated on thePre-Raphaelites and the innovative movements at the end of the 18th century.
The training of artists, which had long been neglected, began to improve in the 18th century through private and government initiatives, and greatly expanded in the 19th century. Public exhibitions and the later opening of museums brought art to a wider public, especially in London. In the 19th century publicly displayed religious art once again became popular after a virtual absence since theReformation, and, as in other countries, movements such as thePre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and theGlasgow School contended with establishedAcademic art.
The British contribution to earlyModernist art was relatively small, but since World War II British artists have made a considerable impact onContemporary art, especially with figurative work, and Britain remains a key centre of an increasingly globalised art world.[citation needed]
The oldest surviving British art includesStonehenge from around 2600 BC, andtin andgold works of art produced by theBeaker people from around 2150 BC. TheLa Tène style ofCeltic art reached the British Isles rather late, no earlier than about 400 BC, and developed a particular "Insular Celtic" style seen in objects such as theBattersea Shield, and a number of bronze mirror-backs decorated with intricate patterns of curves, spirals and trumpet-shapes. Only in the British Isles can Celtic decorative style be seen to have survived throughout theRoman period, as shown in objects like theStaffordshire Moorlands Pan and the resurgence of Celtic motifs, now blended with Germanicinterlace and Mediterranean elements, in ChristianInsular art. This had a brief but spectacular flowering in all the countries that now form the United Kingdom in the 7th and 8th centuries, in works such as theBook of Kells andBook of Lindisfarne. The Insular style was influential across Northern Europe, and especially so in laterAnglo-Saxon art, although this received new Continental influences.
The English contribution toRomanesque art andGothic art was considerable, especially inilluminated manuscripts and monumental sculpture for churches, though the other countries were now essentially provincial, and in the 15th century Britain struggled to keep up with developments in painting on the Continent. A few examples of top-quality English painting on walls or panel from before 1500 have survived, including theWestminster Retable,The Wilton Diptych and some survivals from paintings inWestminster Abbey and thePalace of Westminster.[1]
TheProtestant Reformations ofEngland andScotland were especially destructive of existing religious art, and the production of new work virtually ceased. TheArtists of the Tudor Court were mostly imported from Europe, setting a pattern that would continue until the 18th century. Theportraiture of Elizabeth I ignored contemporary European Renaissance models to create iconic images that border onnaive art. The portraitistsHans Holbein andAnthony van Dyck were the most distinguished and influential of a large number of artists who spent extended periods in Britain, generally eclipsing local talents likeNicolas Hilliard, the painter ofportrait miniatures,Robert Peake the elder,William Larkin,William Dobson, andJohn Michael Wright, a Scot who mostly worked in London.[2]
Landscape painting was as yet little developed in Britain at the time of the Union, but a tradition ofmarine art had been established by thefather andson both called Willem van de Velde, who had been the leading Dutch maritime painters until they moved to London in 1673, in the middle of theThird Anglo-Dutch War.[3]
The so-calledActs of Union 1707 came in the middle of the long period of domination in London of SirGodfrey Kneller, a German portraitist who had eventually succeeded as principal court painter the Dutch SirPeter Lely, whose style he had adopted for his enormous and formulaic output, of greatly varying quality, which was itself repeated by an army of lesser painters. His counterpart in Edinburgh, SirJohn Baptist Medina, born in Brussels to Spanish parents, had died just before the Union took place, and was one of the last batch of Scottish knights to be created. Medina had first worked in London, but in mid-career moved to the less competitive environment of Edinburgh, where he dominated portraiture of the Scottish elite. However, after the Union the movement was to be all in the other direction, and Scottish aristocrats resigned themselves to paying more to have their portraits painted in London, even if by Scottish painters such as Medina's pupilWilliam Aikman, who moved down in 1723, orAllan Ramsay.[4]
There was an alternative, more direct, tradition in British portraiture to that of Lely and Kneller, tracing back to William Dobson and the German or DutchGerard Soest, who trainedJohn Riley, to whom only a few works are firmly attributed and who in turn trainedJonathan Richardson, a fine artist who trainedThomas Hudson who trained Joshua Reynolds and Joseph Wright of Derby. Richardson also trained the most notable Irish portraitist of the period,Charles Jervas who enjoyed social and financial success in London despite his clear limitations as an artist.[5]
An exception to the dominance of the "lower genres" of painting was SirJames Thornhill (1675/76–1734) who was the first and last significant English painter of hugeBaroque allegorical decorative schemes, and the first native painter to be knighted. His best-known work is atGreenwich Hospital,Blenheim Palace and thecupola ofSaint Paul's Cathedral, London. His drawings show a taste for strongly drawn realism in the direction his son-in-lawWilliam Hogarth was to pursue, but this is largely overridden in the finished works, and for Greenwich he took to heart his careful list of "Objections that will arise from the plain representation ofthe King's landing as it was in fact and in the modern way and dress" and painted a conventional Baroque glorification.[6] Like Hogarth, he played the nationalist card in promoting himself, and eventually beatSebastiano Ricci to enough commissions that in 1716 he and his team retreated to France,Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini having already left in 1713. Once the other leading foreign painters of allegoric schemes,Antonio Verrio andLouis Laguerre, had died in 1707 and 1721 respectively, Thornhill had the field to himself, although by the end of his life commissions for grand schemes had dried up from changes in taste.[7]
From 1714 the newHanoverian dynasty conducted a far less ostentatious court, and largely withdrew from patronage of the arts, other than the necessary portraits. Fortunately, the booming British economy was able to supply aristocratic and mercantile wealth to replace the court, above all in London.[8]
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William Hogarth was a great presence in the second quarter of the century, whose art was successful in achieving a particular English character, with vividly moralistic scenes of contemporary life, full of both satire and pathos, attuned to the tastes and prejudices of the Protestant middle-class, who bought theengraved versions of his paintings in huge numbers. Other subjects were only issued as prints, and Hogarth was both the first significant British printmaker, and still the best known. Many works were series of four or more scenes, of which the best known are:A Harlot's Progress andA Rake's Progress from the 1730s andMarriage à-la-mode from the mid-1740s. In fact, although he only once briefly left England and his own propaganda asserted his Englishness and often attacked theOld Masters, his background inprintmaking, more closely aware of Continental art than most British painting, and apparently his ability to quickly absorb lessons from other painters, meant that he was more aware of, and made more use of, Continental art than most of his contemporaries.
Like many later painters Hogarth wanted above all to achieve success athistory painting in theGrand Manner, but his few attempts were not successful and are now little regarded. His portraits were mostly of middle-class sitters shown with an apparent realism that reflected both sympathy and flattery, and included some in the fashionable form of theconversation piece, recently introduced from France byPhilippe Mercier, which was to remain a favourite in Britain, taken up by artists such asFrancis Hayman, though usually abandoned once an artist could get good single figure commissions.[9]
There was a recognition that, even more than the rest of Europe given the lack of British artists, the training of artists needed to be extended beyond the workshop of established masters, and various attempts were made to set upacademies, starting with Kneller in 1711, with the help of Pellegrini, in Great Queen Street. The academy was taken over by Thornhill in 1716, but seems to have become inactive by the timeJohn Vanderbank andLouis Chéron set up their own academy in 1720. This did not last long, and in 1724/5 Thornhill tried again in his own house, with little success. Hogarth inherited the equipment for this, and used it to start theSt. Martin's Lane Academy in 1735, which was the most enduring, eventually being absorbed by theRoyal Academy in 1768. Hogarth also helped solve the problem of a lack of exhibition venues in London, arranging for shows at theFoundling Hospital from 1746.[10]
The Scottish portraitistAllan Ramsay worked in Edinburgh before moving to London by 1739. He made visits of three years to Italy at the beginning and end of his career, and anticipatedJoshua Reynolds in bringing a more relaxed version of "Grand Manner" to British portraiture, combined with very sensitive handling in his best work, which is generally agreed to have been of female sitters. His main London rival in the mid-century, until Reynolds made his reputation, was Reynold's master, the stodgyThomas Hudson.[11]
John Wootton, active from about 1714 to his death in 1765, was the leading sporting painter of his day, based in the capital of Englishhorse racing atNewmarket, and producing large numbers of portraits of horses and also battle scenes and conversation pieces with ahunting or riding setting. He had begun life as a page to the family of theDukes of Beaufort, who in the 1720s sent him to Rome, where he acquired a classicising landscape style based on that ofGaspard Dughet andClaude, which he used in some pure landscape paintings, as well as views of country houses and equine subjects. This introduced an alternative to the various Dutch and Flemish artists who had previously set the prevailing landscape style in Britain, and through intermediary artists such asGeorge Lambert, the first British painter to base a career on landscape subjects, was to greatly influence other British artists such as Gainsborough.[12]Samuel Scott was the best of the native marine and townscape artists, though in the latter specialisation he could not match the visitingCanaletto, who was in England from nine years from 1746, and whose Venetian views were a favourite souvenir of theGrand Tour.[13]
Theantiquary and engraverGeorge Vertue was a figure in the London art scene for most of the period, and his copious notebooks were adapted and published in the 1760s byHorace Walpole asSome Anecdotes of Painting in England, which remains a principal source for the period.[14]
From his arrival in London in 1720, the Flemish sculptorJohn Michael Rysbrack was the leader in his field until the arrival in 1730 ofLouis-François Roubiliac who had aRococo style which was highly effective in busts and small figures, though by the following decade he was also commissioned for larger works. He also produced models for theChelsea porcelain factory founded in 1743, a private enterprise which sought to compete with Continental factories mostly established by rulers. Roubiliac's style formed that of the leading native sculptorSir Henry Cheere, and hisbrother John who specialised in statues for gardens.[15]
The strong Londonsilversmithing trade was dominated by the descendants ofHuguenot refugees likePaul de Lamerie,Paul Crespin,Nicholas Sprimont, and theCourtauld family, as well asGeorges Wickes. Orders were received from as far away as the courts of Russia and Portugal, though English styles were still led by Paris.[16] The manufacture ofsilk atSpitalfields in London was also a traditional Huguenot business, but from the late 1720s silk design was dominated by the surprising figure ofAnna Maria Garthwaite, a parson's daughter fromLincolnshire who emerged at the age of 40 as a designer of largely floral patterns in Rococo styles.[17]
Unlike in France and Germany, the English adoption of the Rococo style was patchy rather than whole-hearted, and there was resistance to it on nationalist grounds, led byRichard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington andWilliam Kent, who promoted styles in interior design and furniture to match thePalladianism of the architecture they produced together, also beginning the influential British tradition of thelandscape garden,[18] according toNikolaus Pevsner "the most influential of all English innovations in art".[19] The French-born engraverHubert-François Gravelot, in London from 1732 to 1745, was a key figure in importing Rococo taste in book illustrations and ornament prints for craftsmen to follow.[20]
In the modern popular mind, English art from about 1750–1790 — today referred to as the "classical age" of English painting — was dominated bySir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792),George Stubbs (1724–1806),Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) andJoseph Wright of Derby (1734–1797). At the time Reynolds was considered the dominant figure, Gainsborough was very highly reputed, but Stubbs was seen as a mere painter of animals and viewed as far a less significant figure than many other painters that are today little-known or forgotten. The period saw continued rising prosperity for Britain and British artists: "By the 1780s English painters were among the wealthiest men in the country, their names familiar to newspaper readers, their quarrels and cabals the talk of the town, their subjects known to everyone from the displays in the print-shop windows", according toGerald Reitlinger.[21]
Reynolds returned from a long visit to Italy in 1753, and very quickly established a reputation as the most fashionable London portraitist, and before long as a formidable figure in society;, the public leader of the arts in Britain. He had studied both classical and modern Italian art, and his compositions discreetly re-use models seen on his travels. He could convey a wide range of moods and emotions, whether heroic military men or very young women, and often to unite background and figure in a dramatic way.[22]
TheSociety for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce had been founded in 1754, principally to provide a location for exhibitions. In 1761 Reynolds was a leader in founding the rivalSociety of Artists of Great Britain, where the artists had more control. This continued until 1791, despite the founding of theRoyal Academy of Arts in 1768, which immediately became both the most important exhibiting organisation and the most important school in London. Reynolds was its first President, holding the office until his death in 1792. His publishedDiscourses, first delivered to the students, were regarded as the first major writing on art in English, and set out the aspiration for a style to match the classical grandeur of classical sculpture andHigh Renaissance painting.[23]
After the academy was established, Reynolds' portraits became more overly classicising, and often more distant, until in the late 1770s he returned to a more intimate style, perhaps influenced by the success ofThomas Gainsborough,[24] who only settled in London in 1773, after working inIpswich and thenBath. While Reynolds' practice of aristocratic portraits seem exactly matched to his talents, Gainsborough, if not forced to follow the market for his work, might well have developed as a pure landscape painter, or a portraitist in the informal style of many of his portraits of his family. He continued to paint pure landscapes, largely for pleasure until his later years; full recognition of his landscapes came only in the 20th century. His main influences were French in his portraits and Dutch in his landscapes, rather than Italian, and he is famous for the brilliant light touch of his brushwork.[25]
George Romney also became prominent in about 1770 and was active until 1799, though with a falling-off in his last years. His portraits are mostly characterful but flattering images of dignified society figures, but he developed an obsession with the flighty youngEmma Hamilton from 1781, painting her about sixty times in more extravagant poses.[26] His work was especially sought after by American collectors in the early 20th century and many are now in American museums.[27] By the end of the period this generation had been succeeded by younger portraitists includingJohn Hoppner,Sir William Beechey and the youngGilbert Stuart, who only realised his mature style after he returned to America.[28]
The Welsh painterRichard Wilson returned to London from seven years in Italy in 1757, and over the next two decades developed a "sublime" landscape style adapting the Franco-Italian tradition of Claude and Gaspard Dughet to British subjects. Though much admired, like those of Gainsborough his landscapes were hard to sell, and he sometimes resorted, as Reynolds complained, to the common stratagem of turning them intohistory paintings by adding a few small figures, which doubled their price to about £80.[29] He continued to paint scenes set in Italy, as well as England and Wales, and his death in 1782 came just as large numbers of artists began to travel to Wales, and later theLake District and Scotland in search of mountainous views, both for oil paintings andwatercolours which were now starting their long period of popularity in Britain, both with professionals and amateurs.Paul Sandby,Francis Towne,John Warwick Smith, andJohn Robert Cozens were among the leading specialist painters and the clergyman and amateur artistWilliam Gilpin was an important writer who stimulated the popularity of amateur painting of thepicturesque, while the works ofAlexander Cozens recommended forming random ink blots into landscape compositions—even Constable tried this technique.[30]
History painting in the grand manner continued to be the most prestigious form of art, though not the easiest to sell, and Reynolds made several attempts at it, as unsuccessful as Hogarth's. The unheroic nature of modern dress was seen as a major obstacle in the depiction of contemporary scenes, and the Scottish gentleman-artist and art dealerGavin Hamilton preferred classical scenes as well as painting some based on his Eastern travels, where his European figures by-passed the problem by wearing Arab dress. He spent most of his adult life based in Rome and had at least as much influence onNeo-Classicism in Europe as in Britain. The IrishmanJames Barry was an influence on Blake but had a difficult career, and spent years on his cycleThe Progress of Human Culture in the Great Room of theRoyal Society of Arts. The most successful history painters, who were not afraid of buttons and wigs, were both Americans settled in London:Benjamin West andJohn Singleton Copley, though one of his most successful worksWatson and the Shark (1778) was able to mostly avoid them, showing a rescue from drowning.
Smaller scale subjects from literature were also popular, pioneered byFrancis Hayman, one of the first to paint scenes fromShakespeare, andJoseph Highmore, with a series illustrating the novelPamela. At the end of the period theBoydell Shakespeare Gallery was an ambitious project for paintings, and prints after them, illustrating "the Bard", as he had now become, while exposing the limitations of contemporary English history painting.[31]Joseph Wright of Derby was mainly a portrait painter who also was one of the first artists to depict theIndustrial Revolution, as well as developing a cross between theconversation piece and history painting in works likeAn Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768) andA Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery (c. 1766), which like many of his works are lit only by candlelight, giving a strongchiaroscuro effect.[32]
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Paintings recording scenes from the theatre were another subgenre, painted by the GermanJohann Zoffany among others. Zoffany painted portraits and conversation pieces, who also spent over two years in India, painting the Englishnabobs and local scenes, and the expandingBritish Empire played an increasing role in British art.[33] Training in art was considered a useful skill in the military for sketch maps and plans, and many British officers made the first Western images, often in watercolour, of scenes and places around the world. In India, theCompany style developed as a hybrid form between Western andIndian art, produced by Indians for a British market.
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Thomas Rowlandson produced watercolours and prints satirising British life, but mostly avoided politics. The master of the politicalcaricature, sold individually by print shops (often acting as publishers also), either hand-coloured or plain, wasJames Gillray.[34] The emphasis on portrait-painting in British art was not entirely due to the vanity of the sitters. There was a large collector's market for portrait prints, mostly reproductions of paintings, which were often mounted in albums. From the mid-century there was a great growth in the expensive but more effective reproductions inmezzotint, of portraits and other paintings, with special demand from collectors for early proof states "before letter" (that is, before the inscriptions were added), which the printmakers obligingly printed off in growing numbers.[35]
This period marked one of the high points in British decorative arts. Around the mid-century manyporcelain factories opened, includingBow in London, and in the provincesLowestoft,Worcester,Royal Crown Derby,Liverpool, andWedgwood, withSpode following in 1767. Most were started as small concerns, with some lasting only a few decades while others still survive today. By the end of the period British porcelain services were being commissioned by foreign royalty and the British manufacturers were especially adept at pursuing the rapidly expanding international middle-class market, developingbone china andtransfer-printed wares as well as hand-painted true porcelain.[36]
The three leading furniture makers,Thomas Chippendale (1718–1779),Thomas Sheraton (1751–1806) andGeorge Hepplewhite (1727?–1786) had varied styles and have achieved the lasting fame they have mainly as the authors of pattern books used by other makers in Britain and abroad. In fact it is far from clear if the last two named ever ran actual workshops, though Chippendale certainly was successful in this and in what we now call interior design; unlike France Britain had abandoned itsguild system, and Chippendale was able to employ specialists in all the crafts needed to complete a redecoration.[37] During the period Rococo andChinoiserie gave way toNeo-Classicism, with the Scottish architect and interior designerRobert Adam (1728–1792) leading the new style.
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The late 18th century and the early 19th century characterised by theRomantic movement in British art includesJoseph Wright of Derby,James Ward,Samuel Palmer,Richard Parkes Bonington,John Martin and was perhaps the most radical period in British art, also producingWilliam Blake (1757–1827),John Constable (1776–1837) andJ. M. W. Turner (1775–1851), the later two being arguably the most internationally influential of all British artists.[38][39] Turner's style, based on the Italianate tradition although he never saw Italy until in his forties, passed through considerable changes before his final wild, almost abstract, landscapes that explored the effects of light, and were a profound influence on theImpressionists and other later movements.[40] Constable normally painted pure landscapes with at most a few genre figures, in a style based on Northern European traditions, but, like Turner, his "six-footers" were intended to make as striking an impact as any history painting.[41] They were carefully prepared using studies and full-sizeoil sketches,[42] whereas Turner was notorious for finishing his exhibition pieces when they were already hanging for show, freely adjusting them to dominate the surrounding works in the tightly packed hangs of the day.[43]
Blake's visionary style was a minority taste in his lifetime, but influenced the younger group of "Ancients" of Samuel Palmer,John Linnell,Edward Calvert andGeorge Richmond, who gathered in the country atShoreham, Kent in the 1820s, producing intense and lyrical pastoral idylls in conditions of some poverty. They went on to more conventional artistic careers and Palmer's early work was entirely forgotten until the early 20th century.[44] Blake and Palmer became a significant influence on modernist artists of the 20th century seen (among others) in the painting of British artists such asDora Carrington,[45]Paul Nash andGraham Sutherland.[46] Blake also had an enormous influence on thebeat poets of the 1950s and thecounterculture of the 1960s.[47]
Thomas Lawrence was already a leading portraitist by the start of the 20th century, and able to give a Romantic dash to his portraits of high society, and the leaders of Europe gathered at theCongress of Vienna after theNapoleonic Wars.Henry Raeburn was the most significant portraitist since the Union to remain based in Edinburgh throughout his career, an indication of increasing Scottish prosperity.[48] ButDavid Wilkie took the traditional road south, achieving great success with subjects of country life and hybridgenre and history scenes such asThe Chelsea Pensioners reading the Waterloo Dispatch (1822).[49]
John Flaxman was the most thorough-going neo-classical English artist. Beginning as a sculptor, he became best known for his many spare "outline drawings" of classical scenes, often illustrating literature, which were reproduced as prints. These imitated the effects of the classical-style reliefs he also produced. The German-SwissHenry Fuseli also produced work in a linear graphic style, but his narrative scenes, often from English literature, were intensely Romantic and highly dramatic.[50]
ThePre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) achieved considerable influence after its foundation in 1848 with paintings that concentrated on religious, literary, andgenre subjects executed in a colourful and minutely detailed style, rejecting the loose painterly brushwork of the tradition represented by "Sir Sloshua" Reynolds. PRB artists includedJohn Everett Millais,William Holman Hunt,Dante Gabriel Rossetti, andFord Madox Brown (never officially a member), and figures such asEdward Burne-Jones andJohn William Waterhouse were later much influenced by aspects of their ideas, as was the designerWilliam Morris. Morris advocated a return to hand-craftsmanship in the decorative arts over the industrial manufacture that was rapidly being applied to all crafts. His efforts to make beautiful objects affordable (or even free) for everyone led to his wallpaper and tile designs defining theVictorian aesthetic and instigating theArts and Crafts movement.
The Pre-Raphaelites, like Turner, were supported by the authoritative art criticJohn Ruskin, himself a fine amateur artist. For all their technical innovation, they were both traditional and Victorian in their adherence to thehistory painting as thehighest form of art, and their subject matter was thoroughly in tune with Victorian taste, and indeed "everything that the publishers of steel engravings welcomed",[51] enabling them to merge easily into the mainstream in their later careers.[52]
While the Pre-Raphaelites had a turbulent and divided reception, the most popular and expensive painters of the period includedEdwin Landseer, who specialised in sentimental animal subjects, which were favourites ofQueen Victoria andPrince Albert. In the later part of the century artists could earn large sums from selling the reproduction rights of their paintings to print publishers, and works of Landseer, especially hisMonarch of the Glen (1851), a portrait of a Highland stag, were among the most popular. Like Millais'Bubbles (1886) it was used on packaging and advertisements for decades, for brands of whisky and soap respectively.[53]
During the late Victorian era in Britain the academic paintings, some enormously large, ofLord Leighton and the Dutch-bornLawrence Alma-Tadema were enormously popular, both often featuring lightly clad beauties in exotic or classical settings, while the allegorical works ofG. F. Watts matched the Victorian sense of high purpose. The classical ladies ofEdward Poynter andAlbert Moore wore more clothes and met with rather less success.William Powell Frith painted highly detailed scenes of social life, typically including all classes of society, that include comic and moral elements and have an acknowledged debt to Hogarth, though tellingly different from his work.[54]
For all such artists theRoyal Academy Summer Exhibition was an essential platform, reviewed at huge length in the press, which often alternated ridicule and extravagant praise in discussing works. The ultimate, and very rare, accolade was when a rail had to be put in front of a painting to protect it from the eager crowd; up to 1874 this had only happened to Wilkie'sChelsea Pensioners, Frith'sThe Derby Day andSalon d'Or, Homburg and Luke Filde'sThe Casual Ward (see below).[55] A great number of artists laboured year after year in the hope of a hit there, often working in manners to which their talent was not really suited, a trope exemplified by the suicide in 1846 ofBenjamin Haydon, a friend ofKeats andDickens and a better writer than painter, leaving his blood splashed over his unfinishedKing Alfred and the First British Jury.[56]
British history was a very common subject, with the Middle Ages, Elizabeth I,Mary, Queen of Scots and theEnglish Civil War especially popular sources for subjects. Many painters mentioned elsewhere painted historical subjects, including Millais (The Boyhood of Raleigh and many others), Ford Madox Brown (Cromwell on his Farm), David Wilkie, Watts and Frith, and West, Bonington and Turner in earlier decades. The London-based IrishmanDaniel Maclise andCharles West Cope painted scenes for the newPalace of Westminster.Lady Jane Grey was, like Mary Queen of Scots, a female whose sufferings attracted many painters, though none quite matchedThe Execution of Lady Jane Grey, one of many British historical subjects by the FrenchmanPaul Delaroche.[57] Painters prided themselves on the increasing accuracy of their period settings in terms of costume and objects, studying the collections of the newVictoria and Albert Museum and books, and scorning the breezy approximations of earlier generations of artists.[58]
Victorian painting developed the Hogarthian social subject, packed with moralising detail, and the tradition of illustrating scenes from literature, into a range of types of genre painting, many with only a few figures, others large and crowded scenes like Frith's best-known works. Holman Hunt'sThe Awakening Conscience (1853) andAugustus Egg's set ofPast and Present (1858) are of the first type, both dealing with "Fallen woman", a perennial Victorian concern. AsPeter Conrad points out, these were paintings designed to be read like novels, whose meaning emerged after the viewer had done the work of deciphering it.[59] Other "anecdotal" scenes were lighter in mood, tending towards being captionlessPunch cartoons.
Towards the end of the 19th century theproblem picture left the details of the narrative action deliberately ambiguous, inviting the viewer to speculate on it using the evidence in front of them, but not supplying a final answer (artists learned to smile enigmatically when asked). This sometimes provoked discussion on sensitive social issues, typically involving women, that might have been hard to raise directly. They were enormously popular; newspapers ran competitions for readers to supply the meaning of the painting.[60]
Many artists participated in the revival of original artisticprintmaking usually known as theetching revival, although prints in many other techniques were also made. This began in the 1850s and continued until the fallout from the1929 Wall Street Crash brought about a collapse in the very high prices that the most fashionable artists had been achieving.
BritishOrientalism, though not as common as in France at the same period, had many specialists, includingJohn Frederick Lewis, who lived for nine years inCairo,David Roberts, a Scot who made lithographs of his travels in the Middle East and Italy, the nonsense writerEdward Lear, a continual traveller who reached as far asCeylon, andRichard Dadd. Holman Hunt also travelled toPalestine to obtain authentic settings for his Biblical pictures. The FrenchmanJames Tissot, who fled to London after the fall of theParis Commune, divided his time between scenes of high society social events and a huge series of Biblical illustrations, made in watercolour for reproductive publication.[61]Frederick Goodall specialised in scenes of Ancient Egypt.
Larger paintings concerned with the social conditions of the poor tended to concentrate on rural scenes, so that the misery of the human figures was at least offset by a landscape. Painters of these includedFrederick Walker,Luke Fildes (although he made his name in 1874 withApplicants for Admission to a Casual Ward- see above),Frank Holl,George Clausen, and the GermanHubert von Herkomer.[64]
William Bell Scott, a friend of the Rossettis, painted historical scenes and other types of work, but was also one of the few artists to depict scenes from heavy industry. His memoirs are a useful source for the period, and he was one of several artists to be employed for a period in the greatly expanded system of government art schools, which were driven by the administratorHenry Cole (the inventor of theChristmas card) and employedRichard Redgrave,Edward Poynter,Richard Burchett, the Scottish designerChristopher Dresser and many others. Burchett was headmaster of the "South Kensington Schools", now theRoyal College of Art, which gradually replaced the Royal Academy School as the leading British art school, though around the start of the 20th century theSlade School of Fine Art produced many of the forward-looking artists.[65]
The Royal Academy was initially by no means as conservative and restrictive as theParis Salon, and the Pre-Raphaelites had most of their submissions for exhibition accepted, although like everyone else they complained about the positions their paintings were given. They were especially welcomed at theLiverpool Academy of Arts, one of the largest regional exhibiting organisations; theRoyal Scottish Academy was founded in 1826 and opened itsgrand new building in the 1850s. There were alternative London locations like theBritish Institution, and as the conservatism of the Royal Academy gradually increased, despite the efforts ofLord Leighton when President, new spaces opened, notably theGrosvenor Gallery inBond Street, from 1877, which became the home of the Aesthetic Movement. TheNew English Art Club exhibited from 1885 many artists with Impressionist tendencies, initially using theEgyptian Hall, opposite the Royal Academy, which also hosted many exhibitions of foreign art. The American portrait painterJohn Singer Sargent (1856–1925), spent most of his working career in Europe and he maintained his studio in London (where he died) from 1886 to 1907.
Alfred Sisley, who was French by birth but had British nationality, painted in France as one of theImpressionists;Walter Sickert andPhilip Wilson Steer at the start of their careers were also strongly influenced, but despite the dealerPaul Durand-Ruel bringing many exhibitions to London, the movement made little impact in England until decades later.[66] Some members of theNewlyn School of landscapes and genre scenes adopted a quasi-Impressionist technique while others used realist or more traditional levels of finish.
The late 19th century also saw theDecadent movement in France and the BritishAesthetic movement. The British-based American painterJames Abbott McNeill Whistler,Aubrey Beardsley, and the formerPre-RaphaelitesDante Gabriel Rossetti, andEdward Burne-Jones are associated with those movements, with late Burne-Jones and Beardsley both being admired abroad and representing the nearest British approach to EuropeanSymbolism.[67] In 1877 James McNeill Whistler sued theart criticJohn Ruskin for libel after the critic condemned his paintingNocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket. Ruskin accused Whistler of "ask[ing] two hundred guineas for throwing a pot of paint in the public's face."[62][63] The jury reached a verdict in favour of Whistler but awarded him only a single farthing in nominal damages, and the court costs were split.[68] The cost of the case, together with huge debts from building his residence ("The White House" inTite Street,Chelsea, designed withE. W. Godwin, 1877–8), bankrupted Whistler by May 1879,[69] resulting in an auction of his work, collections, and house. Stansky[70] notes the irony that theFine Art Society of London, which had organised a collection to pay for Ruskin's legal costs, supported him in etching"the stones of Venice" (and in exhibiting the series in 1883) which helped recoup Whistler's costs.
Scottish art was now regaining an adequate home market, allowing it to develop a distinctive character, of which the "Glasgow Boys" were one expression, straddlingImpressionism in painting, andArt Nouveau,Japonism and theCeltic Revival in design, with the architect and designerCharles Rennie Mackintosh now their best-known member. Painters includedThomas Millie Dow,George Henry,Joseph Crawhall andJames Guthrie.
New printing technology brought a great expansion in book illustration with illustrations forchildren's books providing much of the best remembered work of the period. Specialized artists includedRandolph Caldecott,Walter Crane,Kate Greenaway and, from 1902,Beatrix Potter.
The experience of military, political and economic power from the rise of theBritish Empire, led to a very specific drive in artistic technique, taste and sensibility in the United Kingdom.[71]British people used their art "to illustrate their knowledge and command of the natural world", whilst the permanent settlers inBritish North America,Australasia, and South Africa "embarked upon a search for distinctive artistic expression appropriate to their sense of national identity".[71] The empire has been "at the centre, rather than in the margins, of the history of British art".[72]
The enormous variety and massive production of the various forms of British decorative art during the period are too complex to be easily summarised. Victorian taste, until the various movements of the last decades, such asArts and Crafts, is generally poorly regarded today, but much fine work was produced, and much money made. BothWilliam Burges andAugustus Pugin were architects committed to theGothic Revival, who expanded into designing furniture, metalwork, tiles and objects in other media. There was an enormous boom in re-Gothicising the fittings of medieval churches, and fitting out new ones in the style, especially withstained glass, anindustry revived from effective extinction. The revival of furniture painted with images was a particular feature at the top end of the market.[73]
From its opening in 1875 the London department storeLiberty & Co. was especially associated with imported Far Eastern decorative items and British goods in the new styles of the end of the 19th century.Charles Voysey was an architect who also did much design work in textiles, wallpaper furniture and other media, bringing theArts and Crafts movement intoArt Nouveau and beyond; he continued to design into the 1920s.[74]A. H. Mackmurdo was a similar figure.
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In many respects, the Victorian era continued until the outbreak of World War I in 1914, and the Royal Academy became increasingly ossified; the unmistakably late Victorian figure ofFrank Dicksee was appointed president in 1924. In photographyPictorialism aimed to achieve artistic indeed painterly effects;The Linked Ring contained the leading practitioners. The AmericanJohn Singer Sargent was the most successful London portraitist at the start of the 20th century, withJohn Lavery,Augustus John andWilliam Orpen rising figures. John's sisterGwen John lived in France, and her intimate portraits were relatively little appreciated until decades after her death. British attitudes tomodern art were "polarized" at the end of the 19th century.[75]Modernist movements were both cherished and vilified by artists and critics;Impressionism was initially regarded by "many conservative critics" as a "subversive foreign influence", but became "fully assimilated" into British art during the early-20th century.[75] The Irish artistJack Butler Yeats (1871–1957), was based in Dublin, at once aromantic painter, asymbolist and anexpressionist.
Vorticism was a brief coming together of a number ofModernist artists in the years immediately before 1914; members includedWyndham Lewis, the sculptorSir Jacob Epstein,David Bomberg,Malcolm Arbuthnot,Lawrence Atkinson, the American photographerAlvin Langdon Coburn,Frederick Etchells, the French sculptorHenri Gaudier-Brzeska,Cuthbert Hamilton,Christopher Nevinson,William Roberts,Edward Wadsworth,Jessica Dismorr,Helen Saunders, andDorothy Shakespear. The early 20th century also includesThe Sitwells artistic circle and theBloomsbury Group, a group of mostly English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists, including painterDora Carrington, painter andart criticRoger Fry,art criticClive Bell, painterVanessa Bell, painterDuncan Grant among others. Although very fashionable at the time, their work in the visual arts looks less impressive today.[76]British modernism was to remain somewhat tentative until after World War II, though figures such asBen Nicholson kept in touch with European developments.
Walter Sickert and theCamden Town Group developed an English style of Impressionism andPost-Impressionism with a strong strand of social documentary, includingHarold Gilman,Spencer Frederick Gore,Charles Ginner,Robert Bevan,Malcolm Drummond andLucien Pissarro (the son of French Impressionist painterCamille Pissarro).[77] Where their colouring is often notoriously drab, theScottish Colourists indeed mostly used bright light and colour; some, likeSamuel Peploe andJohn Duncan Fergusson, were living in France to find suitable subjects.[78] They were initially inspired by SirWilliam McTaggart (1835–1910), a Scottish landscape painter associated with Impressionism.
The reaction to the horrors of the First World War prompted a return to pastoral subjects as represented byPaul Nash andEric Ravilious, mainly a printmaker.Stanley Spencer painted mystical works, as well as landscapes, and the sculptor, printmaker andtypographerEric Gill produced elegant simple forms in a style related toArt Deco. TheEuston Road School was a group of "progressive" realists of the late 1930s, including the influential teacherWilliam Coldstream.Surrealism, with artists includingJohn Tunnard and theBirmingham Surrealists, was briefly popular in the 1930s, influencingRoland Penrose andHenry Moore.Stanley William Hayter was a Britishpainter andprintmaker associated in the 1930s withSurrealism and from 1940 onward withAbstract Expressionism.[79] In 1927 Hayter founded the legendaryAtelier 17 studio in Paris. Since his death in 1988, it has been known asAtelier Contrepoint. Hayter became one of the most influential printmakers of the 20th century.[80] Fashionable portraitists includedMeredith Frampton in a hard-faced Art Deco classicism,Augustus John, and SirAlfred Munnings if horses were involved. Munnings was President of the Royal Academy 1944–1949 and led a jeering hostility to Modernism. The photographers of the period includeBill Brandt,Angus McBean and the diaristCecil Beaton.
Henry Moore emerged afterWorld War II as Britain's leading sculptor, promoted alongsideVictor Pasmore,William Scott andBarbara Hepworth by theFestival of Britain. The "London School" of figurative painters includingFrancis Bacon,Lucian Freud,Frank Auerbach,Leon Kossoff, andMichael Andrews have received widespread international recognition,[81] while other painters such asJohn Minton andJohn Craxton are characterised asNeo-Romantics.Graham Sutherland, the Romantic landscapistJohn Piper (a prolific and popular lithographer), the sculptorElisabeth Frink, and the industrial townscapes ofL.S. Lowry also contributed to the strong figurative presence in post-war British art.
According to William Grimes ofThe New York Times "Lucien Freud and his contemporaries transformed figure painting in the 20th century. In paintings likeGirl With a White Dog (1951-52), Freud put the pictorial language of traditional European painting in the service of an anti-romantic, confrontational style of portraiture that stripped bare the sitter’s social facade. Ordinary people — many of them his friends — stared wide-eyed from the canvas, vulnerable to the artist’s ruthless inspection."[82] In 1952 at the 26thVenice Biennale a group of young British sculptors includingKenneth Armitage,Reg Butler,Lynn Chadwick,William Turnbull andEduardo Paolozzi, exhibited works that demonstrated anti-monumental, expressionism.[83] Scottish painterAlan Davie created a large body of abstract paintings during the 1950s that synthesize and reflect his interest in mythology and zen.[84] Abstract art became prominent during the 1950s withBen Nicholson,Terry Frost,Peter Lanyon andPatrick Heron, who were part of theSt Ives school in Cornwall.[85] In 1958, along with Kenneth Armitage and William Hayter,William Scott was chosen by the British Council for the British Pavilion at the XXIX Venice Biennale.
In the 1950s, the London-basedIndependent Group formed; from whichpop art emerged in 1956 with the exhibition at theInstitute of Contemporary ArtsThis Is Tomorrow, as a British reaction toabstract expressionism.[86] The International Group was the topic of a two-day, international conference at theTate Britain in March 2007. The Independent Group is regarded as the precursor to thePop Art movement in Britain and the United States.[86][87] TheThis is Tomorrow show featured Scottish artistEduardo Paolozzi,Richard Hamilton, and artistJohn McHale amongst others, and the group included the influentialart criticLawrence Alloway as well.[88]
In the 1960s,Sir Anthony Caro became a leading figure of British sculpture[89] along with a younger generation of abstract artists includingIsaac Witkin,[90]Phillip King andWilliam G. Tucker.[91]John Hoyland,[92]Howard Hodgkin,John Walker,Ian Stephenson,[93][94]Robyn Denny,John Plumb[95] andWilliam Tillyer[96] were British painters who emerged at that time and who reflected the new international style ofColor Field painting.[97] During the 1960s another group of British artists offered a radical alternative to more conventional artmaking and they includedBruce McLean,Barry Flanagan,Richard Long andGilbert and George. Britishpop art paintersDavid Hockney,Patrick Caulfield,Derek Boshier,Peter Phillips,Peter Blake (best known for the cover-art forSgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band),Gerald Laing, the sculptorAllen Jones were part of the sixties art scene as was the British-based American painterR. B. Kitaj.Photorealism in the hands ofMalcolm Morley (who was awarded the firstTurner Prize in 1984) emerged in the 1960s as well as theop-art ofBridget Riley.[98]Michael Craig-Martin was an influential teacher of some of theYoung British Artists and is known for the conceptual work,An Oak Tree (1973).[99]
![Paul Nash, The Ypres Salient at Night, 1917–18, he painted some of the most powerful images of World War I by an English artist.[100]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aThe_Ypres_Salient_at_Night_Art.IWMART1145.jpg)
Post-modern, contemporary British art, particularly that of theYoung British Artists, has been said to be "characterised by a fundamental concern with material culture ... perceived as a post-imperial cultural anxiety".[101] The annualTurner Prize, founded in 1984 and organised by the Tate, has developed as a highly publicised showcase for contemporary British art. Among the beneficiaries have been several members of theYoung British Artists (YBA) movement, which includesDamien Hirst,Rachel Whiteread, andTracey Emin, who rose to prominence after theFreeze exhibition of 1988, with the backing ofCharles Saatchi and achieved international recognition with their version ofconceptual art. This often featuredinstallations, notably Hirst'svitrine containing a preserved shark. The Tate gallery and eventually the Royal Academy also gave them exposure. The influence of Saatchi's generous and wide-ranging patronage was to become a matter of some controversy, as was that ofJay Jopling, the most influential London gallerist.[citation needed]
TheSensation exhibition of works from the Saatchi Collection was controversial in both the UK and the US, though in different ways. At the Royal Academy press-generated controversy centred onMyra, a very large image of the murdererMyra Hindley byMarcus Harvey, but when the show travelled to New York City, opening at theBrooklyn Museum in late 1999, it was met with intense protest aboutThe Holy Virgin Mary byChris Ofili, which had not provoked this reaction in London. While the press reported that the piece was smeared with elephant dung, although Ofili's work in fact showed a carefully rendered blackMadonna decorated with a resin-covered lump of elephant dung. The figure is also surrounded by smallcollage images of female genitalia from pornographic magazines; these seemed from a distance to be the traditionalcherubim. Among other criticism, New York MayorRudolph Giuliani, who had seen the work in the catalogue but not in the show, called it "sick stuff" and threatened to withdraw the annual $7 million City Hall grant from theBrooklyn Museum hosting the show, because "You don't have a right to government subsidy for desecrating somebody else's religion."[102]
In 1999, theStuckists figurative painting group which includesBilly Childish andCharles Thomson was founded as a reaction to the YBAs.[103] In 2004, theWalker Art Gallery stagedThe Stuckists Punk Victorian, the first national museum exhibition of theStuckist art movement.[104] TheFederation of British Artists hosts shows of traditional figurative painting.[105]Jack Vettriano andBeryl Cook have widespread popularity, but not establishment recognition.[106][107][108]Banksy made a reputation with streetgraffiti and is now a highly valued mainstream artist.[109]
Antony Gormley produces sculptures, mostly in metal and based on the human figure, which include the 20 metres (66 ft) highAngel of the North nearGateshead, one of the first of a number of very large public sculptures produced in the 2000s,Another Place, andEvent Horizon. The Indian-born sculptorAnish Kapoor has public works around the world, includingCloud Gate inChicago andSky Mirror in various locations; like much of his work these use curved mirror-like steel surfaces. Theenvironmental sculptures of Britishland artistAndy Goldsworthy have been created in many locations around the world. Using natural found materials they are often very ephemeral, and are recorded in photographs of which several collections in book form have been published.[110]Grayson Perry works in various media, including ceramics. Whilst leading printmakers includeNorman Ackroyd,Elizabeth Blackadder,Barbara Rae andRichard Spare.
