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The Picturesque and the Homogenisation of Empire Author(S): Jeffrey Auerbach Source: the British Art Journal, Vol The picturesque and the homogenisation of Empire Author(s): Jeffrey Auerbach Source: The British Art Journal, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2004), pp. 47-54 Published by: The British Art Journal Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41614516 . Accessed: 12/09/2014 11:57 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The British Art Journal is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The British Art Journal. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 12 Sep 2014 11:57:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Volumey No.1 TheBRITISH ART Journal The and the of picturesque homogenisation Empire JeffreyAuerbach is morethan a centurysince JR Seeley remarked in The Expansionof England (1883) thatthe BritishEmpire It developedin 'a fitof absence of mind'.1The reasonsfor and motivesunderlying its expansion,whether political, diplomatic,economic, social, intellectual, or religious,are fairlywell known,however much theycontinue to be debated.2In recentyears scholars have also begun to explore theimpact of the empire on theso-called metropolitan centre, especiallypolitically,3 and have even questionedthe very boundariesbetween metropole and periphery, particularly in the culturalrealm.4 Yet serious and fundamentalquestions remainabout the place of the empire in the British mind. How didBritons conceive of and represent their empire, especially duringthe 19th century, the period of its greatest expansion? Howdid they come to regardit as beingmore unified than it actuallywas at the administrative level?5 What, if anything, gave theempire coherence, especially in the half-century before the steamshipand theelectric telegraph? How did theindividual regionsof the empire - 'onecontinent, a hundred peninsulas, fivehundred promontories, a thousand lakes, two thousand rivers,ten thousand islands'6 - becomepart of an imperial whole?What were the vectorsof empire,and if,as many scholarshave recentlysuggested, they should not be characterizedinmetropolitan-peripheral terms, then on what basis? TheVictorian imagination constructed the British Empire througha variety of cultural forms. The most famous of these weresurely the maps of the world with the territories ofthe empire coloured pink, of which manyversions were publishedbeginning as earlyas Victoria'scoronation in 1837 to promoteimperial unity.7 In recentdecades scholars have amplydocumented the role of literature - especially fiction, 1 TahitiRevisited byWilliam Hodges, cl776. © National Maritime Museum, London. butalso children's and travel literature and political speeches MinistryofDefence ArtCollection - in constructingan imageof the people and regionsof the empireas backward,uncivilized, irrational, feminine, exotic, 2 CapeTown, from the Camp's Bay Road by George French Angas, from The Kaffirs Illustrated(1849) decayed,impoverished, and irredeemably 'other'.8 But most ofthe literary analysis that has followed in the wake of Said's path-breakingOrientalism (1978) has focused on theMiddle cultureis transformedinto something that is aesthetically East and India,and to a lesser degreeA fricaand the pleasingand morallysatisfying'.12 Others have focused on Caribbean,neglecting, most glaringly,the whitesettler the constructionof the (noble) savageand the mythof colonies,which were central components of the 19thcentury emptylands.13 But one limitationthat has affected almost all BritishEmpire. Photography, too, has received some ofthese studies, especially those preoccupied with imperial attention,for constructing an empirebuilt around racial lands(as opposedto the peopleof theempire), has been hierarchies,big-game hunting, pristine mountain views, and theirfocus on eithera singleartist or a singlegeographic efficientmilitary campaigns, but photographyadmittedly area.14Without a comparative lens, however, there can be no drew on earlier pictorial traditionsand imagery.9 comprehensiveanalysis of British imperial art, and therefore Advertisements,especially those produced under the no understandingof how thatempire was constructed directionof the state-supportedEmpire Marketing Board, visuallyand pictorially. also playeda role,largely by commodifyingthe empire, The argumentoffered here is thatthe picturesque,the thoughnot until the late 19th and early 20th centuries.10 literaryand visualaesthetic which developed during the Arttoo was criticalin helpingBritish men and women second halfof the 18th century,helped to unite and constructand visualizetheir empire.11 This was especially homogenizethe many regions of the British empire. For the trueof the picturesque idiom, which had a powerfulimpact betterpart of a centurybeginning around 1775, British artists on almostall subsequentforms of imperialrepresentation, who travelledthe empire frequentlyconstructed and includingphotography and advertisingfrom the mid-19th depictedwhat they saw through the lens of the picturesque, centuryonwards. Most of the recent studies in this area have presentingregions as diverseas SouthAfrica, India, Australia, emphasizedthe 'ideologicalwork' of paintings,through and the PacificIslands in remarkablysimilar ways. In the which'the appropriationof land, resources,labour, and processthey integrated the far-flung regions of the empire, 47 This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 12 Sep 2014 11:57:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TheBRITISH ART Journal VolumeX No.1 providinga measureof coherenceand controlthat were WilliamHodges employed when he paintedTahiti Revisited clearlylacking on theground at a timewhen it couldtake (PI 1) around 1776, dividedthe landscapeinto three anywherefrom three to sixmonths to travelfrom London to distances:a darkenedand detailed foreground, a strongly lit Calcutta,a time lag which delayed the circulation ofnews and and deep-tonedmiddle-ground, and a hazybackground. made virtuallyimpossible the executionof government Featuressuch as treesand ruins were to be positionedso as policy.15Although there was, withinthe picturesque to createa balancedcomposition that provided a senseof framework,some freedomto captureand conveylocal bothharmony and variety,and to pushthe viewer's eye to differences,everywhere itwas deployed it served to conceal themiddle distance, as ina stageset. In a typicalpicturesque the hardshipsand beautifythe frequentlyunpleasant scenethere would be a windingriver; two coulisses , or side surroundingsthat characterized life in the imperialzone, screens,which are the opposite banks of the river and which, refractinglocal people and conditionsthrough a single, inconjunction with some hills, mark the perspective; a front formulaiclens.16 screenwhich points out the winding of the river; and a hazy, Moreover,in so faras the picturesquehad initiallybeen rugged,mountainous background. There was also an used to representthe English landscape, depicting imperial identifiablepicturesque tint, the softgolden light of the landscapesin thesesame termsmeant that British artists RomanCampagna, which, as a numberof scholarshave travellingoverseas ended up portrayingso-called peripheral suggested,artists transposedfirst onto the English territoriesas similar to, rather than different from, so-called landscape,and thencarried to thefurthest reaches of the metropolitanterritories. In short, the picturesque was about BritishEmpire.22 thecreation of sameness rather than difference, though this But while scholarsof the picturesquehave generally is a pointthat requires some clarificationas 'sameness' focusedon itsEnglish origins, in thewritings of Knight and carriesa numberof differentmeanings. In the late 18th Price,it is importantto note thatmany of its foremost century,Richard Payne Knight and UvedalePrice, two of the practitionersdrew their inspiration as much from the empire foundingtheoreticians of the picturesque,challenged the itselfas fromthe English Lake District. Hodges, for example, fashionablestyle of landscape gardening exemplified by the wasa studentof Richard Wilson, the Welsh landscape painter workof Capability Brown. They accused him of creating only who was stronglyinfluenced by Claude and one of the 'eternalsmoothness and sameness'in place of whichthey foundersof the Englishlandscape school, but insteadof wantedto see 'roughness',meaning features such as moss- completinghis art education with a GrandTour to Italy as his grownterraces and other intricatedetails to break up teacherhad done,he insteadbecame the draughtsman for otherwisesmooth vistas.17 Cookon hissecond voyage to the Pacific, and carried to India The analysisthat follows, however, uses samenessas an tropicalideas of light and vegetation, in additionto English antonymnot of roughness but of strangeness and difference, ideasabout picturesque composition.23 in orderto takeinto account a certaintension between the Thisexplains, in partat least,a numberof the tensions in picturesqueand the exotic. The artist's purpose in travelling to TahitiRevisited. 24 The paintingcertainly illustrates the India or the South Seas was oftento reporton their essentialelements of the picturesque,but
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