Universidad Nacional de Córdoba

Facultad de Lenguas

PaintingPainting

Cultura y Civilización de los Pueblos de Habla Inglesa I

Marina L. Colomba 2

2007The general character of English painting is defined by the work of great

individuals: Hogarth, Gainsborough, Blake, etc. In none of them can English

painting be called “classical”. Its excellence is of a different kind from that which

belongs to the European tradition. It takes on in the course of time the complexity

that is in part due to the process of social and economic change which so clearly

separate one period from another. English painting alternates between

conservatism and individual progress into freedom of expression. It changes in

aspect with the variable relation of island and neighboring continent.

Historically, the affinities of English painting have been stronger with northern

(with the Netherlands in particular) than with southern Europe. On the other

hand, their place apart from the European “mainstream” has created an

independence of spirit that animated achievement as distinctive and original as

that of Hogarth and Blake. Surveyed in present-day perspective, the history of

English painting reveals a number of outstanding individual contributions to art.

Medieval Painting

It’s usual to regard English painting as beginning with the Tudor period and

there are several reasons for this. The dissolution of the monasteries in 1536

brought to an end the tradition of religious art as it had been practiced 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. The

Illuminated Manuscripts and devotional wall painting were replaced by secular

portraiture. Medieval painting was not national in the modern sense (the feeling

of a nation did not exist), and often there is no telling whether it was the work of

a native or foreign artist.

Painting was practised in England for many hundreds of years before the

Tudors. The development of the linear design in which English artists have always

excelled can be traced back to the earliest illuminations. This may be called an

Anglo-Hibernian art that evolved in Irish monastic centres and was brought to

Northumbria in the 7th C. Its principal feature is the elaboration of interlaced

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ornament derived from the patterns of metal work in the Celtic Iron Age. The

Celtic style had its effect on manuscript illumination in the Frankish Empire and in

turn, in the Anglo-Saxon period, England was influenced by a style of free outline

drawing, derived from classical models. The aim was to educate since people

could nor read or write.

In the development of Gothic painting from the 13th C, England and France

came close together, so close that is possible to speak of an “English Channel

School”. Yet, it’s possible to distinguish an English delicacy of line and a graceful

elongation of the figure in which line plays an expressive part (Productions of the

school of St. Albans where the English monk, Mathew Paris, painted a picture of

himself at the feet of the Virgin and Child).

An English style (in which significance is concentrated on outline rather than

the dimensional substance of the figure) is characteristic in the psalters of the

13th and 14th C. The feeling behind it was to be given expression at the beginning

of the 19th C by William Blake in his insistence on the ‘determinate’ line. The

feeling for line, together with great refinements of colour, appears in English

medieval embroidery, especially that of the 13th and 14th C, famous throughout

Europe as “opus Anglicanum”, in its pictorial aspect reflecting the work of

painters who supplied the embroidery workshops with designs.

The products of the Gothic Age in England are most impressive on a small

scale. There is no such tradition of monumental scale as steadily developed

elsewhere. Time in any case has dealt severely with wall painting, reduced to

fragments by decay or mischance or deliberately defaced and covered over by

Puritanical zeal.

A Late Gothic example is the series of wall painting in Eton College Chapel,

“The Miracles of the Virgin” (1479-1488) painted by William Baker (influence from

the Netherlands).

Faculties which could remain untouched by the collapse of tradition after the

disastrous 15th C were an observation and a delight in recording scenes and

incidents of everyday life which are often encountered in later centuries.

The series of psalters of the 13th C to the 14th C mainly produced in East Anglia

introduces scenes of agricultural work, sports and pastimes. Yet to all outward

appearance English painting starts again after the War of the Roses. The 15 th C

was one of medieval decline.

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Renaissance Painting

Tudor and Jacobean Periods

When the monasteries were dissolved, religious painting disappeared. Secular

patronage now insisted on “portraiture”, and the habit grew up using foreign

painters.

Portraiture had existed in the Middle Ages, especially in the form of royal

iconography. Foreign painters were favored as having been trained in a more

realistic school than the English, and thus being more capable of producing a

satisfactory likeness.

Hans Holbein (1497-1543): He had a superb range of ability, apt not only

for portraiture but for religious composition, mural painting and the arts of

design. His power to bring a living person authentically before us never failed. His

influence on English painting was exerted through the individual portrait. The

influence of Holbein is specific in the art of miniature painting. He showed

simplicity, refinement, and individuality. Gem-like conception, clear and brilliant

colour, a reduction of modeling to decorative simplicity were qualities which

Holbein displays in his own fashion. Subject matter: man in the early setting.

Most of foreign painters came from the Netherlands and were competent

craftsmen of a secondary order, often reflecting in some degree the Mannerist

style prevailing in the 16th century. Some of them are Guillin Scrots, Gerlach

Flicke, and Hans Eworth among others.

Among the native talents is George Gower whose work has a considerable

charm and a feeling of line.

There are also anonymous 16th-century portraits in the Tate Gallery which

have a simplicity or lightness of touch that seems to distinguish them from the

products of foreign origin and a series of anonymous “cult portraits” of the Queen

(symbols of majesty) as the “Ditchley” Portrait of Elizabeth I.

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The most appealing product of the Elizabethan Age is the art of the

miniature. In its intimate nature it was at the opposite pole from the formalized

images which represented autocratic government and from the factory products

of foreign groups. The miniature was an art with an entirely different technique

and origin from that of the foreign oil painters, a development from the

manuscript illumination.

Painters in the Netherlands seem to have been the first to substitute the small-

scale portrait for the religious miniature.

Nicholas Hilliard (1547-1619): He is distinct in the fresh and intimate

character of his work, and the poetic feeling which makes him the kin of the

Elizabethan lyricists. His miniatures were small jewels. Such works were seen as

delightful objects in themselves and as intimate revelations of character and

sentiment of an opposite kind from that formal attitude presented to the world in

the large panel. Blue background, poetic feelings and metaphorical backgrounds

(Metatextual).

Isaac Oliver : There is a superficial likeness in their (Hilliard and Oliver) work,

for example in the frequent use of a brilliant blue background, though there are

differences of more importance. He became connected with the Flemish painter-

coterie in London and the full-size portrait was his ideal. He was more of a

representational painter than Hilliard because he lacked the poetic spirit and

decorative charm of the latter, substituted it with more realism and more formal

splendor.

Oliver’s desire to give full-dress magnificence to the miniature appears in

his work “Sir Anthony Mildmay”. In that work one can see the beginning of the

process by which the miniature lost its independence as an art form and became

a subsidiary of the oil painting.

A transitional phase is represented by the two miniaturists’ sons Lawrence

Hilliard and Peter Oliver.

Baroque Painting

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The Stuart Period

In painting, the Stuart period has several phases, though the import of foreign

portrait artists remained a constant factor (Portraiture was the most important

genre in the 18th C). To some extent, the reign of James I was a continuance of

the Elizabethan Age. Landscape appeals as background (end of 17th C).

Bacon (1585-1627): Animal painting. He embarks on such an elaborate

composition of figure and still-life (The Cookmaid: The ably executed composition

shows how a virtuoso amateur could escape professional restrictions and

assimilates an “advance” European style). He gives evidence of a new trend in

taste in which the younger generation of the Jacobean time reacted against the

elementary and Philistine criteria of their elders.

In portraiture, there is a moderate improvement towards realism.

Mytens (1590-1642): (Dutch) He was able to convey character and to pose

his sitters in a natural manner, while he also showed a distinguished color sense.

Van Dick (1599-1641): He was the source of inspiration to English

portraiture. He was suitable to express the spirit of an autocratic régime (the

essence of Baroque painting). Courtly grace and ease, combined with a certain

dignified aloofness, decorative splendor were displaced in his art.

His portrait of Henrietta Maria is a classic example of the grace and

refinement of detail and color found in the later part of the 17th century.

The relation of figure and background, the aristocratic ease of stance, the

expressive pose of hands, all remained characteristic of the English portraiture

for more than a century.

William Dobson (1610-46): He marks a breakaway from Van Dyckian

elegance. He painted members of the royal family and royalist officers. The most

striking aspect of his work is its realism. In his portraits, he shows a truthful

feeling of character, an absence of artificiality. The solemnity of the times

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(wartime) is also reflected in the portraiture produced during the Commonwealth

period.

The corresponding painter to Dobson on the Parliamentary side was R.

Walker, a much less original artist who imitated Van Dick.

Lely (1618-80): He had a great influence from Van Dick on him. He was an

artist of flexible gifts, although much associated with the portrayal of court

beauties in the frivolous reign of Charles II.

Cooper (1609): With him, the miniature arrived at that point to which it was

scarcely distinguishable in style, light and shade and strength of effect, from oil

painting except by its size. He was able to apply a delicate sense of detail and a

strong feeling for character in a thoroughly original way.

There are many other Stuart miniaturists, but Cooper stands alone. Then, as

regards portrait painting, Lely had no rival.

Two factors break the uniformity of the later 17th century:

1- The emergence of other forms of painting than the portraiture.

2- Certain changes in the portrait painting, the lack of variety on English art

and a faint reflection of what was going on in France, Holland and the

Netherlands now began to appear in England.

Some minor foreign artists were mainly employed to satisfy the awakening

desire for some pictorial rendering: (the Van de Veldes, Brooking, Scott, Monamy,

etc.)

The Catholic tendencies of the Stuarts also inclined favor towards the

European Baroque in the form of decorative mural painting (this style did not

have a religious connotation). The works of two foreigners, Verrio and Laguerre,

applied a new grandiosity to the walls and ceilings of royal and noble dwellings.

The arrival of Venetian decorative painters in the 18th C (Pellegrini and the Riccis)

brought in a phase of mural painting in which appear the higher graces of the

Rococo art.

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English painters were slow to return to mural painting. They were not attuned

to the Baroque style. Robert Streeter and James Thornhill were two of the few

natives that did excellent decorative work.

Thornhill’s “The Triumph of Peace and Liberty” was an array of symbols and

symbolic figures that gives due prominence to the maritime aspect of England’s

strength. He related contemporary matter to an allegorical scheme of design

without loss of decorative magnificence.

With Kneller and Dahl, the roll of naturalized foreigners is almost at an end,

and by the reign of George II, the native English painter was becoming a more

distinct and confident figure.

The beginning of a national tradition in painting

William Hogarth (1697-1764): He teaches a moral lesson through his

painting. He is one of the greatest English artists. He produced portraits which

brought a fresh vitality and truth in the profession. He observed social life with a

critical eye and this was accompanied by a great capacity for dramatic

composition, and by a technical quality which adds beauty to pictures containing

an element of satire or caricature. Even in his most realistic productions, he

instilled a decorative sense.

His first success was in the “conversation pieces” (informal groups of family

and friends surrounded by the customary accessories of their daily life) which

allowed him to treat a picture as a stage. They are art used to tell a story with all

the incidents which any observant eye can discover. They show Hogarth in a

restrained and decorous mood.

As a painter of social life, he displayed his mastery in painting every aspect of

its people and architecture. In some works, he establishes the satirical key of his

drama in a number of acts.

In portraiture, he displays a great variety (children, servants). Though he had

no pupils, he had contemporaries who tended in the same direction such as J.

Highmore, F. Hayman, and A. Davis. Highmore is more distinguished for the

illustrations to some texts. He also did more good works in portraiture.

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Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792): His aim was to raise the status of English art

by a superiority of knowledge and ambition. In his stay in Italy he was in contact

with the works of the Italian masters which influenced the formation of his

philosophy of art and his style. He was the founder of the Royal Academy. He

shows his temperance, conservatism, compromise, moderation and refinement.

To understand his viewpoint, it is necessary to refer to his paintings and to

his “Discourses” which he addressed to the students year by year, constructing

an orderly philosophical system, establishing a hierarchy of great masters and

extracting from their example the essential qualities of the “Grand Style”. This

argument was the reverse of Hogarth’s ideas. He was able to assemble from

European precedent, from Italian masters and from Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dick

(age of innocence) and Venetians a grandiose style.

Reynolds is outstanding in the richness of colour inspired by great European

models. The Grand Style element in Reynolds’s portraiture sometimes gives the

impression of a theatrical adjunct. It is refined into an atmosphere of distinction in

the magnificent series of single figures in which he gives a personal history of his

age and a survey of English character. In his paintings of children he is entirely

natural and unaffected.

Ramsay made an original contribution to the classic age of portraiture.

Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788): Landscape began to play a more

important role. It was announcing Romanticism. His art is in striking contrast with

that of either Hogarth or Reynolds. Whereas these two were essentially

townsmen, Gainsborough was a countryman. His art tended towards an ideal,

which clearly differed from the realistic view of Hogarth. Gainsborough found his

greatest satisfaction in landscape composition in which the figures were “such as

fill a place”.

To say that he tended towards an ideal might seem to place him in close

accord with Reynolds, yet a wide difference appears between the consciously

formed intellectual attitude of Reynolds (with its reference to Italians) and the

free and intrinsic fashion in which Gainsborough sought to “deliver a fine

sentiment”.

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Gainsborough excels with the type rather than the individual, and most of all

in visions of beauty and grace. In his portraitures, landscape and the art of

imaginative composition are uniquely found together. His work presents an

analogy with poetry and music which is absent from that of Hogarth and

Reynolds.

In his formation Gainsborough’s art was influenced by the engraver Gravelot

(French pastoral), Van Dick (portrait paintings), Hayman (open-air conversation

piece).

Technically, Gainsborough was most original both in portraits and landscape.

He seems more “modern” in his drawings and the combination of different media

which makes them a kind of free painting (opaque and transparent colour are

sometimes found together, etc.). Gainsborough’s love of experiment and his

personal quest of the ideal took various directions, especially marked in his later

years. He never ceased to progress and he was able to transcend the routine of

professional portraiture.

George Stubbs (1724-1806): The great increase of country houses in the

18th C, the improvements of agriculture, the development of rural sports such as

horse-racing (Jockey Club) and fox-hunting produced a new genre very related to

landscape. The greatest artist in 18th was Stubbs. The English artist was highly

regarded for his paintings of horses and other animals, including exotic species.

His career was launched by his book Anatomy of the Horse (1766) with 24 plates,

engraved by Stubbs himself, that are outstanding for their beauty and anatomical

accuracy. The book's success placed Stubbs in high demand as a painter,

particularly to produce portraits of horses, often with their owners or grooms, and

conversation pieces, family groupings with a carriage and pair. His paintings of

this type are notable for their elegant composition and calm, quiet atmosphere.

However, other works explore the violence of wild nature. Several of his best-

known canvases show a horse being attacked by a lion, as in the dramatic “Lion

Attacking a Horse”. Stubbs also undertook enamel painting, and some of his

designs were fired by famous English potter Josiah Wedgwood.

Romantic Painters

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The concentration of painters on English landscape in the later years of the

18th C was enforced by the French Revolution and subsequent war which made

travel impossible. This home-keeping habit produced splendid results.

John Constable (1776-1837): He was a master of landscape painting in the

romantic style. He was mainly an oil painter. His paintings, executed entirely in

the open air were an innovation in English art. Constable departed from the

traditions of Dutch and English painting by discarding the usual brown under

painting and achieving more natural, luminous lighting effects through the use

of broken bits of color applied with a palette knife (Impressionism). He

endeavored to portray the effect of the scene, often softening physical details.

He was fascinated by reflections in water and light on clouds.

William Blake (1757-1827): English poet, painter, and engraver. He stressed

imagination over reason; he felt that ideal forms should be constructed not from

observations of nature but from inner visions (good and evil). He was against all

that the 18th C stood for (order, reason, and material values) and he rebelled

against the doctrines of Joshua Reynolds. What is striking is his dislike for nature

(in this age of landscapes). As a painter, he has some imperfections, but he is

good at designing (linear style). He was very individual in thought and in his

poetic imagination. He loved the religious art of the Middle Ages (ideal heaven

and individual power) and the similarity to the medieval illuminated manuscript

appears in the illustrations of his books. His horror of realistic oil painting caused

him devise the species of tempera painting which he called “fresco”.

He was influenced by Renaissance masters and by Michelangelo (evident in

the foreshortening and exaggerated muscular form as seen in “The Ancient of

Days”). Much of his painting was on religious subjects: Biblical stories, allegories

and illustrations for the work of Milton, his favorite poet.

Turner, Joseph M. W. (1775-1851): English landscape painter, renowned for

his vibrant and dramatic treatment of natural light and atmospheric effects in

land and marine subjects, and whose work had a direct influence on

Impressionism. He seems to be the less influenced by his English predecessors.

He traveled widely throughout his career. He was a professor and president at the

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Royal Academy. Turner's manipulated watercolors of landscapes and oil

paintings. His mature work falls into three periods:

Turner's first period is marked by mythological and historical scenes in which

the coloring is soft and details and contours are emphasized.

The paintings of his second period are characterized by more brilliant

coloring and by diffusion of light. During this period he also made illustrations

for books on topography and a collection of watercolors depicting Venetian

scenes.

Turner's artistic genius peaked during his third period. He achieved vibrant

representations of forces such as the strength of the sea and the rhythm of rain

by rendering objects as indistinct masses within a glowing haze of color.

Painting in England

MedievalPainting

MathewParis

“The Virgin and Child” (delicate line with refinements of colour, realism)

William Baker “The Miracles of the Virgin” (1479-1488- Wall

painting)

OcleFamily

Panel painting of the retable of Norwich Cathedral (probably made by a member of the Ocle family)

RenaissancePainting

HansHolbein

“Portrait of Henry VIII” (It is the key of Tudor portraiture in the precise delineation of feature and accessories.)

“The Ambassadors” (1533) “Portrait of Mrs. Pemberton” (Miniature portrait)

NicholasHilliard

“Youth Leaning Against a Tree Among Roses” (Suffering for love is the masterpiece of Elizabethan pictorial art. Metaphorical background)

Isaac Oliver

“Sir Anthony Mildmay” (More realism)

Bacon “The Cookmaid” (figure and still-life)

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BaroquePainting

Mytens “Charles I as Prince of Wales”

Van Dick “Henrietta Maria” (1639)

William Dobson

“Portrait of an Unknown Man” (1643)“John, 1st Baron Byron” (1644) (Portrait of an officer)

Lely “The Artist and his Family” (1658)(Conversation piece)

Cooper “The Duchess of Cleveland” (Miniature- an exquisite product of the Restoration period)

The beginning

of a national tradition

in painting

WilliamHogarth

“The Rake’s Progress” (1732) (Spirited Orgy, emphasize drama)

“The Graham Children” (1742) “Marriage-á-la-mode” (1744) (Establishes the

satirical key of his drama in 4 acts, satiric to marriage for money)

JoshuaReynolds

“Portrait of Nelly O’Brien” (1763) (Sensitivity and nature)“Self-portrait” (1773) (Artistic faith)“Master Crewe as Henry VIII” (1776)

ThomasGainsboroug

h

“Mr. and Mrs. Robert Andrews” (1748-9) “The Morning Walk” (1785) (Perfect in style,

harmony of landscapes and figures)

GeorgeStubbs

“Gimcrack with a Groom, Jockey and Stable Lad on Newmarket Heath” (1765) (Poetic vision of nature, aristocracy)

RomanticPainting

JohnConstable “The Hay Wain” (1821)

WilliamBlake

“River of Life” (1805) (Biblical topic)“Satan Smiting Job” (1825) (Tempera)

Joseph M. W.Turner

“Calais Pier” (1802-3) (Movement of the sea)“Rain, Steam, and Speed” (1844)

Glossary

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Allegories: A painting in which events/characters represent ideas or moral lessons.

Aloofness: Retraimiento, alejamientoDwellings: ResidenciasEmbroidery: BordadoEnamel: EsmalteEngraver: GrabadorFresco: Painting on a wall using watercolors on a surface of wet plasterFull-dress magnificence: CompletoGem: Preciosidad, Tesoro (joya, piedra preciosa)Iconography: The way a particular people/religious group represent ideas in

picturesLyricists: Lírico (poeta)Outlook: Perspectiva. Punto de vista, conceptoPainter-coterie: Camarilla, círculo, tertulia (de pintores)Panel: Panel, cuadro. Grupo (de expertos)Pastoral: Pastoral. Patronage: Padrinazgo, patrocinioPhilistine: Filisteo, individuo inculto.Pictorial: Pictórico, gráfico, ilustrado.Plaster: YesoPortraiture: Retrato, pintura de retratoPortray: RetratarPortrayal/Portrait: RetratoPsalters: Salterio. Libro de los SalmosRender: Representar, homenajear,Sitters: Persona que posa (para un pintor)Stance: Postura, posición (moral o intelectual)Still-life: Bodegón, naturaleza muertaWatercolors: AcuarelaWorkshop: Obrador, tallerZeal: Celo, fervor, ahínco