ART OF GREAT BRITAIN Painting Sculpture
HANS HOLBEIN, THE YOUNGER Hans Holbein, the Younger (1497 -1543), German artist, one of the most accomplished masters of Renaissance portraiture. In 1526 Holbein, carrying a letter of introduction from Erasmus to Sir Thomas More, set out for London. He met with a favorable reception in England became court painter to Henry VIII. Holbein was known chiefly as a painter of portraits. The more than 100 miniature and full-size portraits he completed at Henry’s court provide a remarkable document of that colorful period. In 1543 Holbein was in London working on another portrait of the king when he died, a victim of the plague.
ERASMUS The Dutch humanist, Desiderius Erasmus, was born at Rotterdam, in 1466. During the reign of Henry VIII, he lived in England. In 1519 appeared the first edition of his Colloquia, usually regarded as his masterpiece. Erasmus exposed the abuses of the Church, and did more than any other single person to advance the Revival of Learning.
THOMAS MORE Thomas More was a writer, scholar, statesman, diplomat, political theorist and patron of the arts. He was the foremost English Humanist of his day. He is famous for his book Utopia (1515) and for his martyrdom. As Chancellor to Henry VIII he refused to sanction Henry's divorce of Queen Catherine. More was imprisoned, tried and executed.
HENRY VIII Hans Holbein’s famous portrait of Henry VIII shows the Tudor king as the quintessential Renaissance sovereign. He is most famous for founding the Church of England for having six wives, two of whom he had beheaded.
CHRISTINA OF DENMARK Holbein visited Brussels in 1538, and for three hours Christina sat for a portrait. The English ambassador was arranging for Henry VIII to see the Duchess’s likeness in connection with plans to marry her.
ANNE OF CLEVES Anne of Cleves (1517? -57), 4 th queen of Henry VIII of England, born in Cleves, Germany; marriage annulled by Parliament at king's request; buried in Westminster Abbey
THE FRENCH AMBASSADORS The French Ambassadors (1533) by Hans Holbein the Younger is an oil and tempera painting on wood.
SIR ANTHONY VAN DYCK Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599 -1641), Flemish painter, who was one of the most important and prolific portraitists of the 17 th century and one of the most brilliant colourists in the history of art. (1599 -1641). He came to England in 1632. Charles I and his queen were the painter's first sitters. The artist gave subjects an aristocratic bearing, refined features, and long tapering fingers. The same characteristics appear in his many self-portraits. Van Dyck died in London on December 9, 1641.
CHARLES I IN HUNTING DRESS Anthony van Dyck painted this portrait in 1635. Van Dyck’s elegant, refined style had a lasting influence on English portraiture.
SAMSON AND DELILAH Sir Anthony van Dyck depicted Delilah cutting Samson’s hair as described in the Old Testament.
WILLIAM HOGARTH William HOGARTH (16971764). The English painter and engraver William Hogarth was primarily a humorist and satirist. His best-known works include several series of popular satiric engravings in which he ridiculed the viciousness and folly that he saw in the world around him.
A HARLOT’S PROGRESS SCENE I. ENSNARED The Harlot's Progress begins when a young woman, Mary (or Moll) Hackabout, arrives in London from the country. Presumably she has come to look for work as a servant, but a procuress praises her beauty and suggests a more profitable occupation. In the background an old lecher watches with anticipation. Hogarth's images are stuffed with visual clues and comments illuminating his story. Here, for example, a clergyman on horseback fails to see either the damage his horse is doing - upsetting a stack of pots - or the corruption of Moll's innocence happening right beside him.
SCENE II. PROTECTOR In this image, Moll appears as the mistress of a wealthy Jewish merchant. He has just returned home as Moll overturns the table in an attempt to divert his attention while her clandestine lover makes his way out. Hogarth had a great distaste for the mercantile class and their extravagant life style. Here the merchant's corrupted state is symbolized by his exotic possessions: the tea, the mahogany table, the monkey, and the black houseboy – all derived from colonial trade.
SCENE III. APPREHENDED It is an illustration of the prostitute Moll Hackabout’s humble levée, or morning toilette, in a Drury Lane garret. Moll is loosely dressed and languidly seated on the vehicle of her profession. In the background of the scene, the magistrate has entered Moll’s garret to arrest her. At this moment, Moll is unaware of his presence. The viewer is invited to gaze on her like the magistrate, who observes Moll as he pauses in the doorway.
SCENE IV. BRIDWELL This image depicts Moll beating hemp at Bridewell Prison with other inmates after having been arrested by a magistrate. The inscription on the wall behind her reads, 'Better to Work than Stand thus. ' The presence of a black woman (almost invisible in the background) suggests a parallel between Moll's present situation and slavery.
SCENE V. EXPIRES Out of prison but infected with syphilis and reduced to poverty, Moll is dying. Her servant tries to get the attention of the two doctors, who are more interested in disputing the merits of their prescriptions than in attending to the patient. The servant's deformed nose is a sign that she has suffered from the same disease as Moll. A child, presumably Moll's but ignored by everyone in the room, tries to cook himself a meal.
SCENE VI. FUNERAL The plate on Moll's coffin tells us that she was only 23. The funeral, a gathering of her professional colleagues, is a grotesque mixture of grief (fueled by gin) and indifference. The clergyman's female companion has distracted him from his duties and even from his glass of liquor: just where is his other hand? At the right a woman trying on gloves picks the pocket of the man showing them to her.
MARRIAGE CONTRACT ‘Marriage A-la-Mode’ was the first of Hogarth’s satirical series of engravings about the upper echelons of society. The story starts in the mansion of the Earl Squander who is arranging to marry his son to the daughter of a wealthy city merchant.
TETÉ-А-TETÉ
INSPECTION
TOILETTE
BAGNIO
LADY’S DEATH
“The Graham Children” is a portrait of the children of wealthy parents. Yet the painter has avoided making a stiff, formal composition and has shown the young people with charm and wit.
DAVID GARICK
THE RAKE AT THE ROSE TAVERN William Hogarth became famous with a series of paintings entitled “A Rake's Progress”. The Rake at the Rose Tavern, is part of that series.
THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH Thomas Gainsborough (1727– 88), English portrait and landscape painter, was celebrated for the elegance, vivacity, and refinement of his portraits. His favorite subject was landscape, and he produced some of the first great landscape paintings in England. Yet he won his greatest popularity as a portrait painter. His portraits include 'Mrs. Sheridan', 'The Honourable Mrs. Graham', 'David Garrick', 'Mrs. Siddons', 'Mrs. Robinson (Perdita)', 'The Morning Walk', and 'The Duchess of Devonshire'.
MR. AND MRS. ROBERT ANDREWS. English painter Thomas Gainsborough is famous for such refined and elegant portraits as 'Mr. and Mrs. Robert Andrews'.
MRS. SHERIDAN Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan (about 1785) is a portrait in which naturalistic and romantic styles converge. The artist intended to add some sheep to the background to make the painting more pastoral, but he died before he could accomplish this.
MRS. SIDDONS
THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
THE PAINTER’S DAUGHTERS CHASING A BUTTERFLY
PORTRAIT OF A LADY IN BLUE
JOSHUA REYNOLDS Reynolds was the most successful portrait painter of his day in England as well as a distinguished member of London's intellectual society. The artist was especially well known for his portraits of women and children. In 1764 he founded the Literary Club, whose members included such famous people as authors Samuel Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith, statesman Edmund Burke, and actor David Garrick. In 1768 Reynolds became president of the newly founded Royal Academy, and the next year he was knighted by King George III.
LADY CAROLINE HOWARD
LADY BETTY HAMILTON “Lady Betty Hamilton” features a young girl from a distinguished English family.
NELLY O’BRIEN Nelly O’Brien, painted from 1760 to 1762, is one of his best-known works. It is in the Wallace Collection in London, England.
COUNTESS SPENSER WITH A DAUGHTER
THREE LADIES ADORNING A TERM OF HYMEN
CUPID UNTYING VENUS’ GIRDLE
SARAH SIDDONS AS A TRAGIC MUSE
DAVID GARRICK WITH THE MUSE OF COMEDY AND TRAGEDY
SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE Lawrence, Sir Thomas (1769 -1830), one of the foremost English portrait painters of his day. A child prodigy, he was largely self-taught, although he spent some time at the Royal Academy of Arts. In 1792 he succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as principal painter to King George III, who knighted Lawrence in 1815. Lawrence was made a member of the Royal Academy in 1794 and served as president of the academy from 1820 to 1830. He painted flattering but often superficial likenesses of English beauties and European sovereigns.
THE CALMADY CHILDREN
WELLINGTON
THE CHILDREN OF JOHN ANGERSTEIN Sir Thomas Lawrence created many works using brilliant color and energetic brushstrokes. Painted in 1808, “The Children of John Angerstein” is in the Louvre in Paris, France.
LADY RAGLAN
LORD LIVERPOOL Robert Jenkinson (1770 - 1828), 2 nd Earl of Liverpool, was Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1812 to 1827
QUEEN CHARLOTTE Charlotte Sophia sat to Lawrence in the autumn of 1789. Although Lawrence’s portrait was considered to be very like Queen Charlotte, it failed to please the king and queen and remained in the artist’s possession.
JOHN CONSTABLE John Constable (1776 -1837), English painter, who was a master of landscape painting in the romantic style. Constable’s interest in the effects of light later became an inspiration to the painters of the impressionist movement. Although England was slow to appreciate Constable, France acclaimed his innovations. His 'Hay Wain', shown at the Paris Salon of 1824, inspired the French painter Eugene Delacroix to redo part of the 'Massacre at Chios'. He is today considered, along with Turner, as the leading painter of the English countryside.
FLATFORD MILL
THE CORNFIELD John Constable's painting 'The Cornfield' is on display in the National Gallery in London.
GLEBE FARM Natural light seems to play over the lush green countryside in John Constable's painting entitled 'Glebe Farm'.
SALISBURY CATHEDRAL John Constable created this painting of Salisbury Cathedral in 1823. Sunlight, clouds, and reflections on water fascinated him, and he often painted outdoors rather than in the studio, as was customary at the time.
JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER William Turner (1775– 1851 was renowned for his vibrant and dramatic treatment of natural light and atmospheric effects in land marine subjects. In such works as Snow Storm: Steam Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth (1842, Tate Gallery), Peace—Burial at Sea (1842, Tate Gallery), and Rain, Steam, and Speed (1844, National Gallery), 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 colour.
STONEHENGE
VENICE
SNOWSTORM
NORHAM CASTLE, SUNRISE
ST BENEDETTO, LOOKING TOWARDS FUSINA
A poetic landscape painting by J. M. W. Turner encompassing both an intimate party on the grass and distant hills under a sweeping sky typifies the renowned English facility for landscape painting.
WILLIAM BLAKE William Blake (1757– 1827) was an English poet and artist who exerted a great influence on English Romanticism. His first book, Poetical Sketches (1783), was the only one published conventionally during his life. Blake’s paintings and engravings, notably his illustrations of his own works, works by Milton, and the Book of Job, are realistic in their representation of human anatomy and other natural forms, but also radiantly imaginative, often depicting fanciful creatures in exacting detail. All of Blake’s works were ignored or dismissed until long after his death.
GLAD DAY
WHIRLWIND OF LOVERS (ILLUSTRATION TO DANTE’S INFERNO)
SATAN INFLICTING BOILS ON JOB
THE BODY OF ABEL FOUND BY ADAM AND EVE
G H O S T O F F L E A
LOS In Blake's mythology Los represents the imagination, and corresponds to the loving and forgiving Christ of the New Testament.
NEBUCHANEZZER Nebuchanezzar was the King of Babylon whose arrogance was punished by God. ‘He was driven from among men, and ate grass like an ox. ’
NEWTON To Blake, Newton, Bacon and Locke with their emphasis on reason were nothing more than 'the three great teachers of atheism, or Satan's Doctrine'.
T Y G E R ‘The Tyger’ is often interpreted as a symbol of man's irrepressible urge to create.
PRE-RAPHAELITES Pre-Raphaelites, brotherhood of English painters and poets, formed in 1848. The principal founders were D. G. Rossetti, W. Holman Hunt, and John Millais. They imitated the innocence of style of Italian painters prior to Raphael. They attracted numerous followers, e. g. , Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, before the movement disbanded after 1853. Their works are nostalgic in tone, and brightly colored, with meticulous detail and mannered style.
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI Painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti found the subjects for many of his works in medieval romantic art and literature. Rossetti, like the other Pre. Raphaelites, sought to revitalize art by departing from traditional neoclassicism and Victorian materialism and, instead, producing simple, romantic, and moralistic works.
ROMAN DE LA ROSE His painting Roman de la Rose is based on the medieval poem of the same name and depicts a young poet who dreams of idealized love, symbolized by rosebuds in a garden that represents courtly life.
BEATA BEATRIX The picture shows the death of Beatrice from “The Divine Comedy” by Dante. This painting also reflects Rossetti’s grief after the death of his wife, Elisabeth Siddal, the model for Beatrice, painted from memory after her death.
ECCE ANCILLA DOMINI (THE ANNUNCIATION)
WILLIAM HOLMAN HUNT William Holman Hunt, 1827– 1910, English painter. He was a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and his sincere devotion to its principles can be seen in such paintings as The Light of the World. His paintings —of which perhaps the two best known are Finding of Christ in the Temple and Scapegoat—are minutely detailed and painted in a style characterized by crowded composition and bright, relatively crude colours.
SCAPEGOAT This is the first major painting Hunt made during his first stay in the Holy Land. He had the idea for the picture while studying the Talmud. Hunt's researches disclosed that on the Festival of the Day of Atonement, a goat was ejected from the temple with a scarlet piece of woolen cloth on its head. It was goaded and driven, either to death or into the wilderness, carrying with it the sins of the congregation. It was believed that if these sins were forgiven the scarlet cloth would turn white.
THE AWAKENING CONSCIENCE
STRAYED SHEEP
Sir Edward Burne-Jones, 1833– 98, English painter and decorator. He described a dreamlike, medieval world in such popular paintings as King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid (1884) and Depths of the Sea.
THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE
THE ANGEL
THE MORNING OF THE RESURRECTION
EIGHT WOMEN PICKING APPLES Burne-Jones’s Frieze of Eight Women Picking Apples, painted in 1876, is in the Tate Gallery in London, England.
JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS John Everett Millais (1829 -96) brought realistic detail and a sincere feeling for life into his pictures. Millais’s early paintings are marked by a close attention to detail, but after 1860 he developed a freer and more vigorous style. He was created a baronet in 1885 and in 1896 became president of the Royal Academy. He died in London on Aug. 13, 1896, and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. Among the most noted pictures are Ophelia; The Huguenot; The Vale of Rest; The Princes in the Tower. In his landscapes and in his illustrations for Tennyson's poems and the parables of the Bible, Millais revealed sincerity and skill.
LORENZO AND ISABELLA Sir John Everett Millais’s first Pre-Raphaelite composition was Lorenzo and Isabella, painted in 1849.
OPHELIA
BUBBLES A father of seven children, John Everett Millais often made youngsters the subjects of his work. In Bubbles, a painting created in 1886, a young boy gazes at a soap bubble as it floats in the air above him.
MY FIRST SERMON In My First Sermon Millais presents a beautifully detailed portrait of a little girl listening to her first sermon at church. The girl is solemn-faced and dressed from head to toe in her best Sunday finery. A Bible rests beside her on the wooden church pew.
MY SECOND SERMON In the picture My Second Sermon, Millais realistically captures the familiar sight of a young girl sleeping in a pew during a long Sunday church service.
FORD MADOX BROWN Ford Madox Brown (1821 -1893), English painter, who influenced and was associated with the Pre-Raphaelite group. He is noted chiefly for historical and literary paintings distinguished by vivid colour, a decorative sense, and accurate detail in costumes and settings. Among his best-known works are The Last of England, Christ Washing Saint Peter's Feet, and 12 murals for the Town Hall of Manchester depicting the history of that city.
JESUS WASHING PETER’S FEET Jesus Washing Peter’s Feet, painted between 1852 and 1856, is in the Tate Gallery in London, England.
ROMEO AND JULIET
THE LAST OF ENGLAND Ford Madox Brown captured the apprehension of a 19 th-century emigrant couple in his 1855 painting The Last of England.
WORK
WILLIAM MORRIS William Morris (1834– 96), English poet, artist, craftsman, designer, social reformer, and printer, was first of all a practical, working artist. He designed houses, furniture, wallpaper, draperies, and books – and built or made them as well. His efforts in behalf of good design and quality craftsmanship gave rise to the Arts and Crafts Movement, which influenced taste and raised standards of workmanship throughout Europe. The work of Morris, both in poetry and in the applied arts, is characterized by an emphasis on decorative elements.
WALTER RICHARD SICKERT Walter Richard Sickert (1860 -1942), German-born English painter, who painted urban life and genre scenes. Influenced by the coolly analytical paintings of the French artist Edgar Degas, he painted realistic scenes of London theatres, pubs, music halls, and humble interiors. His enthusiasm for his rough, sometimes sordid, subject matter gave many of his pictures verve and excitement.
BRIGHTON PIERROTS
ENNUI (BOREDOM)
GRAHAM VIVIAN SUTHERLAND Graham Vivian Sutherland, (1903 -80), English modernist painter. At first he was primarily a painter of romantic landscapes but his later paintings abound in strange semiabstract vegetable forms, especially thorns, as well as insect and animal forms that suggest disquieting human parallels. He also painted realistic, brooding portraits of such notables as the English author W. Somerset Maugham and Sir Winston Churchill. His largest work is the tapestry Christ in Majesty (1952 -58) in the new Coventry Cathedral in England.
W. S. MAUGHAM
PAUL NASH Paul Nash (1889 -1946), English painter, celebrated for his war canvases and landscapes, some of which show influences from Surrealist painters. In 1933 Nash was a cofounder of the modernist group Unit One, in which he collaborated with English artists Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, and Ben Nicholson, among others.
VIMY RIDGE English artist Paul Nash was known as a war painter. His Vimy Ridge, completed in 1917, shows a scene in northeastern France after an Allied attack on a German position during World War I.
BEN NICHOLSON Ben Nicholson, (1894 -1982), British artist who introduced continental modernism into England. His work progressed from impressionism through cubism to the phase when Nicholson constructed shallow reliefs made of basic geometric forms painted white or in neutral tones, such as White Relief and Painted Relief. Eventually he evolved his own style of delicately coloured and purely composed abstract paintings, always based on real objects or landscapes.
AUGUST 1956
FRANCIS BACON Francis Bacon (1909 -92) was called the ‘master of the macabre. ’ Using photographs, films, or paintings by other artists as inspiration for his visually disturbing portraits, Bacon twisted, distorted, and smeared figural images to express anger, isolation, and horror. His most powerful works included the 1944 triptych Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, a series based on Diego Velasquez' Portrait of Pope Innocent X; and numerous paintings of the human body.
AFTER THE LIFE MASK OF WILLIAM BLAKE The title, Study for Portrait, suggests that this is an attempt to get at the essence of what a portrait is. The painting apprehends something beneath the visible skin: an inner self, suffering in absolute isolation. There’s a similarity between Bacon’s Blake and Blake’s Flea in their fleshy, monstrous intensity, the authority of a vision seen in darkness. This is a passionate and finally mysterious tribute from one great London artist to another.
BLOOD ON THE FLOOR This strikingly simple theme of a splash of blood on the floor, treated on a monumental scale, is characteristic of Bacon’s late work, where he reduces to a minimum so as to attain maximum effect. Bacon has heightened the shock of the blood on the sandcoloured floor by juxtaposing it against a fierce orange background, where all sense of three-dimensional space is deliberately negated. Such points of reference as the hanging light bulb and toggle, and the wall switch seemingly suspended from its conduit, only increase one’s sense of disorientation.
DAVID HOCKNEY David Hockney, (1937 - ), English painter, draftsman, photographer, and set designer, known for his satirical paintings, his masterly prints and drawings, and his penetrating portraits of contemporary personalities. His works are painted in a bright and deliberately naive style, and their subject matter is drawn from popular culture. A Bigger Splash is one of his best-known paintings. In 1992 he began a series entitled Very New Paintings, in which he uses intense colours and dramatic perspectives to give almost abstract form to the mountain and coastal landscapes near Santa Monica, California, where he has lived since the mid-1960 s.
MR AND MRS CLARK AND PERCY
A BIGGER SPLASH A Bigger Splash is one of Hockney’s many paintings and drawings the artist has done of swimming pools and water.
THREE CHAIRS WITH A SECTION OF A PICASSO MURAL
PORTRAIT SURROUNDED BY ARTISTIC DEVICES
PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST (POOL WITH TWO FIGURES
MAN TAKING SHOWER IN BEVERLY HILLS
Sculpture
HENRY MOORE Moore, Henry, 1898– 1986, English sculptor. His early sculpture was rough and angular. His works in wood, stone, and cement are characterized by smooth organic shapes that include empty hollows. His favorite subjects were mother and child and the reclining figure.
RECUMBENT FIGURE
Three Piece Reclining Figure No. 2: Bridge Prop In creating works like this large bronze sculpture, British artist Henry Moore drew inspiration from the energy and vitality that he found in the art of many ancient cultures.
RECLINING FIGURE
SIR JACOB EPSTEIN Sir Jacob Epstein (1880– 1959) English sculptor who produced bold, often harsh and massive forms in stone and bronze. His best-known pieces include the Oscar Wilde Memorial (1911; Pиre-Lachaise, Paris), a marble Venus (1917; Yale Univ. , New Haven, Conn. ), and a Madonna and Child (Convent of the Holy Child Jesus, London).
THE ROCK DRILL In The Rock Drill (1913), he mounted a cubist influenced bronze torso on top of an actual drill.
(DAME JOCELYN) BARBARA HEPWORTH (Dame Jocelyn) Barbara Hepworth, (1903 -1975), English sculptor, known for her abstract works in stone, metal, and wood. With her husband, the abstract painter-sculptor Ben Nicholson, whom she married in 1931, she was instrumental in creating the English abstract art movement in the 1930 s. In later years her sculptures grew increasingly monumental and slablike, as in the Dag Hammarskjöld Memorial (1964) at the United Nations headquarters in New York City.
MOTHER AND CHILD British artist Barbara Hepworth, pictured here with her stone sculpture Mother and Child, was influenced by Henry Moore, a British artist and a lifelong friend of Hepworth.
