DOCSLIB.ORG

Faces and Places

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Faces and Places FACES AND PLACES I thought it would be helpful to tell you about some of the books I have found inspiring in preparing this talk. As the poster says, this is a very personal ramble but I have had so much enjoyment from the period not least because there are so many places, stately homes, National Trust houses, and many distinguished examples of architecture and many remarkable collections of paintings and other objects, and wonderful period gardens. The list is far from exhaustive and a trawl through the internet will reward you with many other sources, for example there are very readable books by Amanda Vickery, Lucy Worsley and Lucy Ingles. I have avoided dealing with literature but I have had a great deal of enjoyment from the novels of Henry Fielding and Tobias Smollet and dipping into Daniel Defoe’s journalistic Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain. This was a period of wonderful and witty poetry; I’ve included a quote from Alexander Pope on the flyer for this talk. His “Consult the genius of the place in all…” entreats anyone who wishes to build houses or gardens to make their project sympathetic to the place in which the development is to take place. This is often referred to as the ‘Genius Loci’ and has been a guiding principle in English art even up to artists like Paul Nash and John Piper. Kate Retford The Art of Domestic Life – Family Portraiture in Eighteenth-century England [New Haven and London 2006] Not such an easy read unless you find yourself enthusiastic about the period. But to me it was an important guide to portrait painting. Stephen V Sartin Polite Society – Portraits of the English Country Gentleman and His Family by Arthur Devis 1712-1787 [Preston 1983] A book of an exhibition which did a great deal to resurrect the memory of an artist who is a particular favourite of mine. Surprisingly it’s still available from Amazon. Roy Porter has written a number of books on the period my favourite is Flesh in the Age of Reason [Penguin London – undated] Vic Gatrell City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth Century London [London 2007] Definitely one of the books I would take to my desert island, it wouldn’t be the only one though. It’s a rollicking read, but not for the prudish. It paints a striking picture of the London of the period. A second book by this writer equally exciting is The First Bohemians: Life and Art in London's Golden Age [London 2013] Tim Richardson The Arcadian Friends – Inventing the English Landscape Garden [London 2007] His is another book for my desert Island. A comprehensive history of one of England’s greatest art forms Molly Peacock The Paper Garden: Mrs Delany Begins Her Life's Work at 72 [London 2012] An amazing story of a remarkable woman who as well as building grottos made botanical pictures out of cut paper. Her work is held by the British Museum. Timothy Mowl William Kent: Architect, Designer, Opportunist [2011] Mowl has written an amazing number of books on, for example English Gardens and the English Rococo. I am indebted to him for pointing out the correspondence between the rococo and the gothick. He is engaged in writing a series of books on the English garden county by county. I do hope that some of the above will give you as much pleasure they have given me FACES AND PLACES GAWEN HAMILTON – The Ducane and Boehm Family A rather obscure artist born near Glasgow but worked in London WILLIAM HOGARTH –The Strode Family The main subject here is the wealthy city magnate William Strode, seated at table with his new wife Lady Anne Cecil, his relative Col. Strode, and his tutor Dr Arthur Smyth, later Archbishop of Dublin. The paintings on the wall are reminders of their recent tour of Italy. On the floor is the tea caddy JOSEPH HIGHMORE. – Mr Oldham and his Guests Highmore was born in London, the third son of Edward Highmore, a coal merchant. On the revival of the Order of the Bath in 1725, he was selected to paint the knights in full costume. Nathaniel Oldham served with the army in India in his youth, but retired on inheriting a fortune, to pursue his interests as an extravagant collector of curiosities, and as a patron of the arts and the turf. His enthusiasms eventually bankrupted him and he apparently died a debtor in the King's Bench prison. ARTHUR DEVIS - Mr and Mrs Van Harthals – Mr and Mrs Van Harthals and his Guests Arthur Devis was born in Preston, Lancashire, was the eldest son of Anthony Devis. His father was a member of the town council as well as a carpenter and a bookseller. Devis received his greatest number of commissions for portraits between 1748 and 1758. Many of the pictures show the sitters in landscapes. Although portrayed with what seems like precise topographical detail, these views, like all but one of the interiors, were mostly invented by Devis Nothing is known of the Van Harthals. The James Family This group portrait shows Robert James, together with his wife Mary and two daughters Elizabeth and Ann. James, aged fifty-one at this time, was for many years Secretary to the East India Company. Reverend Streynsham Master The Reverend Streynsham Master and His Wife, Margaret of Croston, Lancashire, Arthur Devis, 1743-1744. This grand interior is probably not how Croston Vicarage really looked. JOSEPH WRIGHT OF DERBY – Fleetwood Heskith and his Wife Joseph Wright of Derby, was an English landscape and portrait painter. He has been acclaimed as "the first professional painter to express the spirit of the Industrial Revolution" Both Fleetwood Hesketh and his wife came from wealthy Lancashire landed families. JOSHUA REYNOLDS – Henry Loftus 1st Earl of Ely and his Wife Frances The Honourable from 1751 to 1769 and known as Henry Loftus, 4th Viscount Loftus from 1769 to 1771, was an Anglo-Irish peer and politician. THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH – Mr and Mrs Andrews This portrait is the masterpiece of Gainsborough's early years. It was painted after his return home from London to Suffolk in 1748, soon after the marriage of Robert Andrews of the Auberies and Frances Carter of Ballingdon House, near Sudbury, in November of that year. The landscape evokes Robert Andrews's estate, to which his marriage added property. He has a gun under his arm, while his wife sits on an elaborate Rococo-style wooden bench. The painting of Mrs Andrews's lap is unfinished. The space may have been reserved for a child for Mrs Andrews to hold. GEORGE STUBBS – The Reapers The Haymakers GEORGE ROMNEY – Mrs Johnson and her Son Within twelve months of his return Romney was enjoying great success. This was partly due to what he had learnt in Italy and his shrewd choice of a studio in fashionable Cavendish Square but also because of his emphasis on good value and informality. His prices were consistently lower than those of his main rivals Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds and he chose to abstain from certain artistic rituals such as exhibiting at the Royal Academy. The loose, spontaneous handling and visible brushstrokes of this painting readily demonstrate the distinctive style of portraiture Romney was developing at this time. THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH – Thomas Rumbold and SonRumbold was the third son of William Rumbold, an officer of the East India Company's naval service. He joined the Company's service as a writer at the age of 16, then transferred to the Company's military service. Promoted to Captain in 1757, he served as Clive's aide-de-camp at the Battle of Plassey. He subsequently transferred back to the Civil Service, becoming chief at Patna in 1763 and a member of the Bengal Council from 1766 to 1769; he was mentioned as a possible Governor of Bengal in 1771, but Warren Hastings was appointed..In 1769 Rumbold returned to Britain with a large fortune. JOSHUA REYNOLDS – The Duchess of Devonshire and Child During her years in the public eye, Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire was painted several times by both Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds. The Duchess of Devonshire was a celebrated beauty and socialite who gathered around her a large salon of literary and political figures. She was connected to key figures of the age such as the Prince of Wales and Marie Antoinette. She was an active political campaigner in an age when women's suffrage was still more than a century away. The Spencers and the Cavendishes were Whigs. The Duchess of Devonshire campaigned for the Whigs—particularly for a distant cousin, Charles James Fox—at a time when the King (George III) and his ministers had a direct influence over the House of Commons, principally through their power of patronage. During the 1784 general election, the Duchess was rumoured to have traded kisses for votes in favour of Fox, and was satirised by Thomas Rowlandson in his print "THE DEVONSHIRE, or Most Approved Method of Securing Votes". WILLIAM HOARE – Christopher Anstey and Daughter Christopher Anstey (1724-1805 was a Poet. He is shown here with one of his four daughters who playfully tries to distract him from his work. Her toy is actually a fashion doll like those sent from Paris to guide dressmakers in the latest styles. Its towering feathered hair-style is clearly meant to recall Anstey's satire of such extremes of modern female fashion. JOHAN ZOFFANY – Lord Willoughby de Broke and Family John Peyto, fourteenth Lord Willoughby de Broke, and his wife, Lady Louisa North, appear about to take tea with their three young children He undertook a major rebuilding of the family seat, between 1762 and 1768 to the designs of architect Robert Adam and then had the gardens landscaped by Capability Brown in 1769.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Portraits of the FAMOUS & INFAMOUS
    portraits of the FAMOUS & INFAMOUS rex nan kivell collection Portraits of the Famous and Infamous– Sir Rex Nan Kivell’s Collection Reginald Nan Kivell, born in Christchurch in 1898, assistance of many people who had helped him lived as a boy surrounded by streets named after with his book and his acquisitions. Individual staff Bligh and the mutiny on the Bounty. As a child, from the National Library, dealers, friends, his then as an adult, he was obsessed with voyaging, business partners and his partner of many years, mapping and explorers’ accounts of their travels Mizouni Nouari (born 1929), are all mentioned, and conquests. He was intrigued by the process of some feature a portrait. Nan Kivell’s processes of reinvention that led to someone like James Cook, reinvention helped to secure his public reputation a modestly educated Yorkshire lad, becoming the as a man with roots, heritage and a productive most famous mariner and explorer of the 18th colonial past, something that could overwrite his century, and by the fame and acclaim that such illegitimacy and homosexuality in the public people could attract. For Nan Kivell, the process eye. This reinvention also meant that he could of reinvention began early and continued until his never risk returning to New Zealand and being knighthood in the last year of his life. To escape unmasked, despite entreaties over decades to visit his humble and inopportune origins (he was as a special guest of the government. Nor did he illegitimate, gay and modestly educated), he fled visit Australia, gently declining numerous requests New Zealand in late 1916 to serve, ingloriously, from Prime Minister Menzies and Harold White, in the First World War.
    [Show full text]
  • Select Bibliography
    Select Bibliography The bibliography is divided into two parts: a schedule of general texts 2 the politics of portraiture c. 1660–75 selected readings for those who wish to explore the back- arnold, dana and peters corbett, david, eds., barber, tabitha, Mary Beale (1632/3–1699): Portrait ground of developments described in the book – both A Companion to British Art: 1600 to the Present, of a Seventeenth-Century Painter, Her Family and as a whole and chapter by chapter – followed by a much Chichester, 2013. Her Studio, exhibition catalogue, Geffrye Museum, longer list that is intended to function as an introductory barrell, john, The Political Theory of Painting from London, 1999. guide to research in the field of British two-dimensional Reynolds to Hazlitt: ‘The Body of the Public’, New coombs, katherine, The Portrait Miniature in art between the Restoration and the Battle of Waterloo. Haven and London, 1986. England, London, 1998. To facilitate usage of the more comprehensive bibliogra- bindman, david, ed., The History of British Art, Volume macleod, catharine and marciari alexander, phy, its materials have been organized under the follow- 2: 1600–1870, London, 2008. julia, eds., Painted Ladies: Women at the Court of ing headings: brewer, john, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Charles II, exhibition catalogue, National Portrait Culture in the Eighteenth Century, London, 1997. Gallery, London, 2001. general texts: history (social and cultural) craske, matthew, Art in Europe, 1700–1830, Oxford, marciari alexander, julia and macleod, catha- and the history of art 1997. rine, eds., Politics, Transgression, and Representation the london art world: institutions, exhibi- farington, joseph, The Diary of Joseph Farington, at the Court of Charles II, Studies in British Art 18, tions and the art market vols.
    [Show full text]
  • University of Cambridge
    Painting in Britain from Hogarth to Turner Mark Hallett Yale in London Summer 2014 1 PAINTING IN BRITAIN FROM HOGARTH TO TURNER The course examines painting in Britain during a period of remarkable artistic and cultural change. It looks in particular at the relationship between painting and different forms of artistic display, performance and self-promotion in the Georgian period, and offers close readings of individual practitioners and their works. The course begins with the emergence of William Hogarth as a leading figure within the mid-eighteenth-century British art world and looks in detail at his pictorial series, his portraits and his conversation pieces. The course then moves on to investigate the emergence of a new ‘Age of Exhibitions’ during the 1760s and 1770s. This was a period dominated by the annual displays of contemporary painting held by the Society of Artists and the Royal Academy, and by the portraiture produced by Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, whose works in the genre are studied in depth. The course then investigates the rise of the one-man exhibition in the 1780s and 1790s, before turning to the work of David Wilkie, and exploring the reasons why the kind of genre painting in which he specialised become so celebrated in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Painting in Britain: from Hogarth to Turner ends by studying of the work, careers and exhibition histories of two of the most ambitious landscape painters of the early nineteenth century, J.M.W Turner and John Constable. PRELIMINARY READING:
    [Show full text]
  • John Collet (Ca
    JOHN COLLET (CA. 1725-1780) A COMMERCIAL COMIC ARTIST TWO VOLUMES VOLUME I CAITLIN BLACKWELL PhD University of York Department of History of Art December 2013 ii ABSTRACT This thesis focuses on the comic work of the English painter John Collet (ca. 1725- 1780), who flourished between 1760 and 1780, producing mostly mild social satires and humorous genre subjects. In his own lifetime, Collet was a celebrated painter, who was frequently described as the ‘second Hogarth.’ His works were known to a wide audience; he regularly participated in London’s public exhibitions, and more than eighty comic prints were made after his oil paintings and watercolour designs. Despite his popularity and prolific output, however, Collet has been largely neglected by modern scholars. When he is acknowledged, it is generally in the context of broader studies on graphic satire, consequently confusing his true profession as a painter and eliding his contribution to London’s nascent exhibition culture. This study aims to rescue Collet from obscurity through in-depth analysis of his mostly unfamiliar works, while also offering some explanation for his exclusion from the British art historical canon. His work will be located within both the arena of public exhibitions and the print market, and thus, for the first time, equal attention will be paid to the extant paintings, as well as the reproductive prints. The thesis will be organised into a succession of close readings of Collet’s work, with each chapter focusing on a few representative examples of a significant strand of imagery. These images will be examined from art-historical and socio-historical perspectives, thereby demonstrating the artist’s engagement with both established pictorial traditions, and ephemeral and topical social preoccupations.
    [Show full text]
  • Family of Robert MARRIS of Grasby (D.1591)
    Family of Robert MARRIS of Grasby (d.1591) First Generation 1. Robert MARRIS was buried on 20 Apr 1591 in Grasby, Lincs. Robert Marris was the eldest son of John Marris (d.1552) and Agnes (née Bell) of South Carlton, Lincs. Note: Although Robert Marris is Person 1 in this document, in the full pedigree, he is Person 19.1. His father, John Marris of South Carlton, is Person 18.1. See “Marris of Burton Corner.pdf” on https://www.marrisfamilyhistory.uk/. Robert Marris inherited his father’s lands and tenements in Rothwell and Nettleton. The will of his mother Agnes Marris stipulated that Robert and his wife Alice (see below) should provide Robert’s brother William with "a good and sufficient estate … lands, tenements and hereditaments [owned by] Robert in the parish and fields of South Kelsey”. Robert's first wife was Alice Anderson of Barton upon Humber. He married secondly Grace Beck (on 17 May 1584). I have not located the first marriage; however both Christian names can be confirmed. Alice is named as Robert's wife in the will of Robert's mother (Agnes Marris of South Carlton), and Grace is named as Robert's wife in the will of Robert himself. The Grasby BTs show a Robert Marris signing the register as Church Warden in 1561-62, 1576-77 and again in 1589-90. Robert made his will (PCC Wills - 34 Sainberbe, Prob 11/77, Quire 34) on 12th April 1591 and it was proved on 12th May in the same year. He described himself as a Yeoman of Grisby (i.e.
    [Show full text]
  • Lowell Libson
    LOWELL LIBSON LTD 2 014 • LOWELL LIBSON LTD · 2014 New York: January 25 – February 1 Annual exhibition at Mitchell-Innes & Nash: British Art: Recent Acquisitions & Thomas Gainsborough: The Landscape of Refinement london: february 17 – february 28 Thomas Gainsborough: The Landscape of Refinement Maastricht: March 14 – 23 TEFAF: The European Fine Art Fair London: July 4 – July 11 Master Drawings & Sculpture Week London Art Week London: October 16 – october 19 Frieze Masters LOWELL LIBSON LTD 2 014 • LOWELL LIBSON LTD CONTENTS 3 Clifford Street · Londonw1s 2lf William John Bankes 8 Telephone: +44 (0)20 7734 8686 Fax: +44 (0)20 7734 9997 James Barry 12 Email: [email protected] Louis-Gabriel Blanchet 15 Website: www.lowell-libson.com The gallery is open by appointment, Monday to Friday Francis Cotes 20 The entrance is in Old Burlington Street Alexander Cozens 24 Lowell Libson John Robert Cozens 26 [email protected] Arthur Devis 34 Deborah Greenhalgh [email protected] John Flaxman 39 Jonny Yarker [email protected] Lucius Gahagan 46 Daniel Gardner 50 Hugh Douglas Hamilton 52 Victor-Marie Hugo 58 Sir Thomas Lawrence 60 Edward Lear 68 William Marlow 72 Samuel Palmer 76 Published by Lowell Libson Limited 2014 Sir Joshua Reynolds 78 Text and publication © Lowell Libson Limited All rights reserved Thomas Rowlandson 82 isbn 978 0 9563930 7 4 Cover: a sheet of 18th-century Italian Thomas Stothard 82 paste paper (collection: Lowell Libson) Frontispiece: Francis Cotes RA 1726–1770 Joseph Mallord William Turner 89 Detail from Mary Colebrooke, later Lady Aubrey, 1766 Benjamin West 102 Photography by Rodney Todd White & Son Ltd Designed and typeset in Dante by Dalrymple Joseph Wright of Derby 105 Colour reproduction by Altaimage Printed in Belgium by Albe De Coker Johan Zoffany 112 our annual catalogue relies entirely on the works we have in hand and it is this serendipity that gives each of these volumes an individual character.
    [Show full text]
  • Figures of Empire
    Cover: Sir Joshua Reynolds, Charles Stanhope, third Earl of Harrington, and a Servant (detail), 1782, oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection Figures of Empire has been organized by the Yale Center for British Art and curated by Esther Chadwick and Meredith Gamer, PhD candidates in the History of Art at Yale Figures of Empire: Slavery and Portraiture in University, and Cyra Levenson, Associate Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Britain Curator of Education at the Center. will be on view from October 2 to December 14, 2014. Between 1698 and 1807, roughly eleven thousand The art of portraiture was one key way in which British ships transported at least three million enslaved Britons negotiated their relationship to slavery. Many of men, women, and children from Africa to European the white “sitters” (portrait subjects) in this exhibition colonies in North America and the Caribbean. While chose to be portrayed alongside black servants, who slavery itself was not new, the scale and profitability often were explicitly identified as their chattel slaves. In of the Atlantic slave trade, which the British came to these portraits, qualities that eighteenth-century Britons dominate in the North Atlantic, was unprecedented. valued—freedom, whiteness, and refinement—were Goods from Europe and Asia were exchanged for enslaved imagined in opposition to the bondage and blackness of Africans, who were forcibly carried to colonial plantations. those who arrived in Britain from Africa, the Caribbean, There, in brutal conditions, they labored without pay to or North America as slaves. By the end of the century, produce crops—mainly sugar and tobacco—which were portraiture would also become a means for some people shipped back to Britain for sale.
    [Show full text]
  • Catalogue Number 5
    TIPU, THE DANIELLS AND CO. COMPANY SCHOOL PAINTING IN INDIA TIPU, THE DANIELLS AND CO. COMPANY SCHOOL PAINTING IN INDIA 2 - 11 November 2017 Asian Art in London, 20th Anniversary Cover: Man in a Red Turban Inside covers: A Royal Entourage Hunting Tiger "Calcutta," wrote Robert Clive, the man who conquered Bengal for the East India Company, "is one of the most wicked places in the Universe... Rapacious and Luxurious beyond conception.'� In the late eighteenth century, the British bridgehead in Bengal may have been the City of Palaces, littered with magnificent Palladian mansions, and already the jewel among England's overseas trading stations, but few visitors were very taken by its English inhabitants. They had come East with just one idea: to amass a fortune in the quickest possible time, and most had little interest in either the mores of the country they were engaged in plundering, or indeed in the social niceties of that which they had left behind. The East India Company, the world’s first really global multinational, had grown over the course of little more than a century from an operation employing only 35 permanent staff, and headquartered in one small office in the city of London, into the most powerful and heavily militarised corporation in history: its private army by 1800 was twice the size of that of Britain itself. Calcutta, the Company’s Indian headquarters, was a city where great wealth could be accumulated in a matter of months, then lost in minutes in a wager or at the whist table. Death, from disease or excess, was a commonplace, and the constant presence of mortality made men callous: they would mourn briefly for some perished friend, then bid drunkenly for his effects- his horses and buggies, his inlaid Vizagapatam furniture, even his Indian bibis.� Alexander Fraser, fresh from Inverness, and itching to join his brother William in Delhi, was unimpressed: "The amusements of Calcutta appear very insipid," he wrote to his father in 1808.
    [Show full text]
  • Zoffany and the Conversation Piece
    The Conversation Piece • In the eighteenth century aristocratic society dedicated itself to pleasure. It was permissive and gossiped about all forms of love and hardly anything shocked them except, perhaps, for a wealthy woman to marry a lower-class man. The conversation piece became popular between about 1720 and 1780 as a symbol of the aristocratic life. It shows a group in conversation often in the open. The group is formally dressed yet relaxed and the environment they are in is a natural setting but rigidly presented. • The essential requirement of an eighteenth century conversation piece is that ‘it should be the representation of two or more persons in a state of dramatic or psychological relation to each other’. • Where did the idea of the conversation piece first arise? Notes The Conversation Piece • Wikipedia (modified): The conversation piece was influenced by 17th century portraiture in the Low Countries including merrymaking companies and garden parties painted by artists such as Dirck Hals and David Vinckbooms. In addition, representations of elegant companies and balls by Hieronymus Janssens and the works of Peter Paul Rubens, in particular his Garden of Love (Prado Museum), gave an impetus and direction to the development of the genre. In this last work, Rubens showed how a garden could be used as a setting for amorous dalliance and courtship. • In the Low Countries many group portraits were painted, both of family groups and groups such as Governors or Regents of institutions, or militia officers. Frans Hals, Rembrandt and other artists had adopted a variety of poses to liven up the group portrait, for example the famous Night Watch.
    [Show full text]
  • The Constructions of Johann Zoffany's Colonel Antoine Polier
    Making History: The Constructions of Johann Zoffany’s Colonel Antoine Polier, Claud Martin and John Wombwell with the Artist (1786-7) Katherine J. Arpen A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Art. Chapel Hill 2007 Approved by: Dr. Mary Sheriff Dr. Pika Ghosh Dr. Carol Magee ABSTRACT KATHERINE ARPEN: Making History: The Constructions of Johann Zoffany’s Colonel Antoine Polier, Claud Martin and John Wombwell with the Artist (1786-7) (Under the direction of Mary Sheriff) Following the conquest of North India, the Awadhi capital of Lucknow became the site of significant cultural interaction between Europeans and Indians, with men moving in and among the city’s various communities. Johann Zoffany's Colonel Antoine Polier, Claud Martin and John Wombwell with the Artist (1786-7) presents several such men of European birth in the format of the conversation piece. This paper will treat Zoffany’s painting as an assertion of British control that was in many ways at odds with the city’s flexible cultural boundaries. In considering its connections to British pictorial traditions and the concerns of the East India Company at the end of the eighteenth century, I aim to uncover the ways in which Zoffany’s painting offers the viewer a lens through which to consider the various processes of construction—individual, imperial and artistic—taking place during the early period of British India. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Dr.
    [Show full text]