Table Of ContentPRAEGER WORLD OF ART PAPERBACKS
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CONCISE HISTORY OF
A
WILLIAM GAUNT
A History of
Concise
PAINTING
ENGLISH
Gaunt
William
Publishers
A. Praeger,
Frederick
NewYorl( Wasiiington
•
r
\
BOOKS THAT MATTER
PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN 1964
BY FREDERICK A. PRAEGER, INC., PUBLISHERS
III FOURTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, N.Y. IOOO5
THIRD PRINTING, I967
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
© THAMES AND HUDSON 1964
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 64-I979O
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY JARROLD AND SONS LTD,
NORWICH
1
Contents
Introduction 7
ONE The Middle Ages and their legacy 9
TWO
Painting in the Tudor and Jacobean periods 15
THREE The Stuart period 29
FOUR Hogarth and his age 57
FIVE Early phases of landscape and topography 83
SIX Rural life and sport 89
SEVEN Portraiture in the later eighteenth century 99
EIGHT Watercolour and the Picturesque
1 1
NINE Insular trends in landscape 127
TEN Blake and the current of imaginative art 139
ELEVEN The followers of Blake 149
TWELVE The genius of Turner 153
—
THIRTEEN The early nineteenth century age of transition 163
FOURTEEN Pre-Raphaelitism and Victorian painting 175
FIFTEEN Varvins; directions of the twentieth century 207
Bibliography 269
List of illustrations 273
Index 285
Introduction
The general character of English painting is defined for us by
the work of great individuals. In Hogarth its inclination
towards the illustration of social life has a supreme example.
In Gainsborough there is all of a native poetry of feeling.
Devotion to landscape, ranging from a patriotic delight in the
local scene to a romantic sense of far horizons, is summed up
by Constable and Turner. An imaginative vein, warring at
times with the observant description of natural fact, finds its
exemplar in Blake. In none of these aspects can English paint-
ing be called 'classical'. Its excellence is of a different kind from
that which belongs to the European tradition, the grandeur of
Renaissance and Baroque art, the lucidity of aesthetic aim and
reasoning which so distinguishes French painting. It takes on
in the course of time the complexity and waywardness which
are rather to be termed 'romantic'.
The complexity is in part due to the processes of social and
economic change which so clearly separate one period from
another; the age of the Tudors from the Middle Ages, the
eighteenth from the seventeenth century, the nineteenth from
the eighteenth, the modern age from that of Queen Victoria.
English painting correspondingly proceeds in a fitful fashion.
When the medieval tradition founders, it must slowly start
again. It alternates between conservatism and individual as-
cents into freedom of expression. It changes in aspect with the
variable relation of island and neighbouring continent.
After the 'Channel bridge' of the Middle Ages is broken
under the Tudors European influence becomes 'foreign',
though for a long stretch of time, and with some remarkable
exceptions, painters from the Continent working in England
predominate. They cannot be dissociated from the history of
English art though it is a native evolution that results in the
great creative outbursts of the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries. Historically the affinities of English painting have
been stronger with northern than with southern Europe, with
A
the Netherlands in particular. recurring tendency to isola-
tionism has not perhaps been without some adverse effect in
causing English painters to lag behind or exclude from view
other and later developments ofart on the European mainland.
On
the other hand their place apart from the European 'main-
stream' has created a situation never lacking in interest. In-
dependence of spirit has animated achievement as distinctive
and original as that of Hogarth and Blake at the same time a
;
renewal of contact with vital developments elsewhere, such
as is to be found in this century after a long separation in the
Victorian Age, has given English painting a new impulse of
creative energy. There has been in the past some tendency to
be apologetic about or deprecate various aspects ofits tradition,
the 'literary' character of poetic or narrative products, the
limiting demands of portraiture against which artists them-
selves have chafed, the prevalence of good taste as distinct
from the expression of strong feeling, the want of 'plastic'
virtues which has accompanied its linear bent, yet in each
respect there are compensating values to be appreciated; and
as Professor Ellis Waterhouse has remarked {a propos of
English portraiture), 'Today it may seem more sensible to
enjoy and value what our tradition has bequeathed us, rather
than to repine over what it has not.' Surveyed as a whole, in
present-day perspective, the history of English painting reveals
an immense amount to be enjoyed and a number of outstand-
ing individual contributions to art, the value of which is
probably more evident now than at any previous time.
CHAPTER ONE
The Middle Ages and their legacy
It is usual to regard English painting as beginning with the
When
Tudor period and for this there are several reasons.
Henry VIII abolished Papal authority in England in 1534 and
ordered the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536 he auto-
matically brought to an end the tradition of religious art as it
had been practised in the Middle Ages and in monastic
centres. The break was so complete that painting before and
after seem entirely different things, in subject, style, and
medium. Yet it is not only because the illuminated manu-
script and devotional wall painting were replaced by secular
portraiture that the subjects have been divorced. Medieval
painting was not national in the modern sense, and often
enough there is no telling whether it was the work of a native
A
or foreign artist even when produced in England. notable
instance is the Wilton Diptych, showing Richard II presented
to the Virgin and Child by two Patron Saints. The subject is
English, the conception French. There remains the unverified
or unverifiable possibility that it was painted by an English-
man trained in the French manner, though the evidence of
style causes it to be ascribed in the National Gallery Catalogue
to Trench School, c. 1395 (?)'.
I Roundel of the Virgin and Child, c. 1260
Yet the fact remains that painting was practised in England
for many hundreds of years before the first Tudor came to the
throne, and that at various periods during that time certain
technical attributes are to be found which reappear in more
modern times and may be said to constitute a medieval legacy.
The development of the linear design in which English artists
have always excelled can be traced back to the earliest illumi-
nations, which witness a first great flowering of Christian
art in the British Isles. It may be called an Anglo-Hibernian
art, brilliantly evolved in Irish monastic centres and brought
to Northumbria in the seventh century. Containing some
Byzantine elements its principal feature is that wonderful
elaboration of interlaced ornament derived from the patterns
of metalwork in the Celtic Iron Age, which is to be found in
the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospel, its Northum-
brian equivalent.
The linear style took its way southwards. It was practised in
the scriptoria or monastic studios of York, St Albans, Glaston-
bury, Winchester, Canterbury. We now see something of that
reciprocity of influence between England and the Continent
ofwhich there are later examples. The Celtic style had its effect
on manuscript illumination in the Prankish Empire. In turn
England in the Anglo-Saxon period was influenced by a style
of free outline drawing, ultimately derived from classical
models. The Carolingian Utrecht Psalter of the early ninth
century, once kept at Canterbury Cathedral, with its freely
sketched pen groups became a model for English artists,
especially for those of Winchester, long a principal seat of
m \mxm m 2 The Luttrell
potunt datns noliie Psalter, c. 1340.
Marginal illustra-
tion: Archery. An
observant render-
ing of everyday as-
pects of life gives a
particular value to
this East Anglian
illuminated manu-
script, executed
for Sir Geoffrey
Luttrell ofIrnham,
.»!liWtirltj^^liWV-lUiaSr^i'^waawJMiiBe-- Lincolnshire
