En quête du grand style : la peinture d'histoire britannique au XVIIIe siècle

Abstract

The British eighteenth century has not only been a period of portraitists, landscape painters and miniaturists. There were also many painters who dedicated themselves to religious, mythological, allegorical, literary and historical subjects, although their role in the development of the arts in Britain has been singularly neglected. Considered since the Renaissance as the most prestigious part of art, because of its universality and difficulty, history painting interested British specialists in this field (Benjamin West, Gavin Hamilton) as well as artists known today for their portraits (Joshua Reynolds, George Romney, Thomas Lawrence) or their landscapes (Richard Wilson, Joseph Mallord William Turner). For all of these painters, the aim was to emulate the greatest masters and thus mark the history of European art. This is the first overview dedicated to British historical painting between the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. This book proposes a scrupulous reconstruction of the network of its theoreticians, artists and consumers.