Baroque painting in 18th to late 20th centuries

ENGLISH PAINTING

English art is the body of visual arts originating from the nation of England in the form of a continuous tradition. Britain is probably one of the richest European countries when cultural inheritance is considered. Along with Italy and Germany, it 's a home for many famous art galleries and museums.

Painting in Great Britain is one of the oldest and most important arts. Since prehistoric times, British artists have arranged paints on surfaces in the ways that express their ideas about people and the world. The paintings that artists create have great value for humanity. They provide people with both enjoyment and information. Painting in Britain is rather rich, like in most of the European countries.

English painting began to develop later than in all European countries. That's why some of the greatest foreign masters were attracted to England by the titles of nobility conferred upon them. Holbein, Antonio Мог, Rubens, Van Dyck were almost English painters during longer or shorter periods of their lives.

The first part produces all the information about the development of painting in Britain in different centuries. It has passed several main stages in its development. There were several outstanding events such as Insular period in art, "Golden Age" and formation of English school of painting. A lot of notable work of art survived and now are exhibited at the British galleries.

The English Renaissance

The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England dating from the early 16th century to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that many cultural historians believe originated in northern Italy in the fourteenth century. This era in English cultural history is sometimes referred to as '"the age of Shakespeare" or "the Elizabethan era” taking the name of the English Renaissance's most famous author and most important monarch, respectively. However it is worth remembering that these names are rather misleading: Shakespeare was not an especially famous writer in his own time, and the English Renaissance covers a periodboth before and after Elizabeth's reign.

The English Renaissance, starting in the early 16th century, was late, and relatively little concerned with the visual arts, except for Tudor and Elizabethan architecture; it had a far greater impact in music and literature. Artists of the Tudor Court, mostly from the continent continued to find work in Britain, mainly on portraits, and brought the new styles with them, especially the Flemish and Italian Renaissance styles. Religious art had virtually ceased, and portraiture of the elite had begun to spread to the richer middle classes, at least in the distinctively English form of the portrait miniature.

In the sixteenth century Holbein came to England, bringing with him a much more highly developed pictorial tradition with a much fuller sense of plastic relief Holbein himself was a supreme master of linear design; he could draw patterns for embroidery and jewellery as no one else, but he never entirely sacrificed the plastic feeling for form to that, and in his early work he modeled in full light and shade. Still, it was not difficult for him to adapt himself somewhat to the English fondness for flat linear pattern. Particularly in his royal portraits, e.g. the portrait о Henry VIII was an insistence on the details of the embroidered patterns of the clothes and the jewellery, which is out of key with the careful modeling of hands and face.

Finally, by Elizabeth's reign almost all trace of Holbein's plastic feeling was swept away and the English instinct for linear description had triumphed completely. But the English were not left long in peace with their linear style. Charles I, who had travelled abroad, was bound to see that Rubens represented a much higher conception of art than anything England possessed, and invited him over. He was followed by Van Dyck, who came to stay. And although he could not help feeling the influence of the bias of English taste and learned to make his images more flatly decorative and less powerfully modeled, than had been his wont, none the less, he set a new standard of plastic design.

The painting of Endymion Porter, the friend and agent of Charles I in the purchase of works of art, is generally accounted Dobson's masterpiece. The most striking aspect of the work is its realism. Though Endymion Porter is portrayed as a sportsman who has just shot a hare, there is a stern look about his features which seems to convey that this is wartime.

The solemnity of the times is also reflected in the portraiture produced during the Commonwealth period and one would naturally expect an even greater refection of elegance than that of Dobson during the Puritan dominance. The corresponding painter to Dobson on the Parliamentary side, however, Robert Walker, was a much less original artist and still closely imitated Van Dyckfs graceful style.

Baroque painting in 18th to late 20th centuries

The period from Hogarth to Gainsborough and Turner, that is the period between 1730's and the 1830's, is rightly considered to be the "Golden Age" of English painting. Never at any other time did so many first-class English masters work side by side. Never in any other age did England contribute so much to the history of world art. Quite definite genres such as the portrait, the landscape, genre-painting (that is the portrayal scenes from ordinary life) evolved here. For a long time portrait was the principal, the national genre of the English school. The rich English nobility considered their portraits as a way of showing their superiority.

King Charles I was an ambitious patron and amassed one of the best art collections in Europe, but he still had to rely on imported artists, in particular Rubens and Van Dyck, the latter of whom set the style of relaxed elegance that English portrait-painters continued to aspire to for centuries. But neither left English pupils. In the second half of the century, landscapists imported from the Low Countries introduced this genre to England, though local artists were slow to follow them. From the 18th century, the English school of painting is mainly notable for portraits and landscapes, and indeed portraits in landscapes. Among the artists of this period are Sir Joshua Reynolds, George Stubbs and Thomas Gainsborough. Willinm Hogarth painted far more down to earth portraits and was the first great English print maker.

In the arts, the Baroque was a Western cultural period, starting roughly at the beginning of the 17th century in Rome, Italy. It was exemplified by drama and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music.

The popularity and success of the Baroque style was encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church, which had decided at the time of the Council of Trent that the arts should communicate religious themes in direct and emotional involvement. The aristocracy also saw the dramatic style of Baroque architecture and art as a means of impressing visitors and expressing triumphant power and control.

Some traits and aspects of Baroque paintings that differentiate this style from others are the abundant amount of details, often bright polychromy, less realistic faces of subjects, and an overall sense of awe, which was one of the goals in Baroque art.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word baroque is derived from the Portuguese word "barroco", Spanish "barroco", or French "baroque” all of which refer to a rough or imperfect pearl, though whether it entered those languages via Latin, Arabic, or some other source is uncertain. In informal usage, the word baroque can simply mean that something is elaborate, with many details, without reference to the Baroque styles of the 17th and 18th centuries. Baroque painting is the painting associated with the Baroque cultural movement. The movement is often identified with Absolutism, the Counter Reformation and Catholic Revival, but the existence of important Baroque art and architecture in non-absolutist and Protestant states throughout Western Europe underscores its widespread popularity.

Most important and major painting during the period beginning around 1600 and continuing throughout the 17th century, and into the early 18th century is identified today as Baroque painting. Baroque art is characterized by great drama, rich, deep colour, and intense light and dark shadows. As opposed to Renaissance art, which usually showed the moment before an event took place, Baroque artists chose the most dramatic point, the moment when the action was occurring. Baroque art was meant to evoke emotion and passion instead of the calm rationality that had been prized during the Renaissance. Baroque painting often dramatizes scenes using chiaroscuro light effects. This can be seen in works by Rembrandt, Vermeer and La Tour. The Flemish painter Antony Van Dyck developed a graceful but imposing portrait style that was very influential, especially in England.

The late 18th century and the early 19th century was perhaps the most radical period in British art, producing William Blake, John Constable and Joseph Turner, the latter two being arguably the most internationally influential of all British artists. Turner was noted for his wild, almost abstract, landscapes that explored the effects of light and was a profound influence on the later impressionists.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood achieved considerable influence after its foundation in 1848 with paintings that concentrated on religious, literary, and genre subjects executed in a colorful and minutely detailed style. I he artists included John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and subsequently Edward Burne-Jones.

Alfred Sislev was British, but painted in France as one of the Impressionists. Walter Sickert and the Camden Town Group developed an English style of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism with a strong strand of social documentary. The key homegrown modem art movement at the beginning of the 20th century was Vorticism, whose members included Sir Jacob Epstein, Wyndham Lewis, and David Bomberg. The reaction to the horrors of the First World War prompted a return to pastoral subjects as represented by Paul Nash. Stanley Spencer painted mystical works, as well as landscapes. Surrealism was briefly popular in the 1930s, influencing Roland Penrose and Henry Moore.

Moore emerged after World War II as Britain's leading artist, promoted alongside Victor Pasmore and Barbara Hepworth by the Festival of Britain. Abstract art became prominent during the 1950s with Ben Nicholson, Terry Frost, Peter Lanyon and Patrick Heron, who were part of the St Ives school in Cornwall. Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, John Tunnard and Francis Bacon were contemporary figurative artists. As a reaction to abstract expressionism, pop art emerged originally in England at the end of the 1950s with the exhibition "This Is Tomorrow". David Hockney, Peter Blake and Richard Hamilton were part of the sixties art scene.

Contemporary British art

Young British Artists is the name given to a group of conceptual artists, painters, sculptors and installation artists based in the United Kingdom, most of whom attended Goldsmiths College in London. The term Young British Artists is derived from shows of that name staged at the Saatchi Gallery from 1992 onwards, which brought the artists to fame. They are noted for "shock tactics", use of throwaway materials and wild-living, and are associated with the Hoxton area of East London. They achieved considerable media coverage and dominated British art during the 1990s.

The core of the later Young British Artists originated in 1988, at a time when public funding for art was not readily available. A group of 16 Goldsmiths College students took part in an exhibition called Freeze, of which Damien Hirst became the main organizer as he was still in his second year at the college. Commercial galleries had shown a lack of interest in the project, and it was held in a cheap alternative space, a London Docklands admin block. The event resonated with the “Acid House”warehouse rave scene prevalent at the time, but did not achieve any major press exposure.

A second wave of Young British Artists appeared in 1992-1993 through exhibitions such as "New Contemporaries", "New British Summertime" and "Minky Manky". This included Douglas Gordon, Christine Borland, Fiona Banner, Tracey Emin, Tacita Dean, Georgina Starr and The Wilson Sisters.

One of the visitors to Freeze was Charles Saatchi, a major contemporary art collector and co-founder of Saatchi and Saatchi, the London advertising agency. Saatchi then visited Gambler and stood open-mouthed with astonishment in front of Hirst's first major "animal" installation "A Thousand Years" consisting of a large glass case containing maggots and flies feeding off a rotting cow's head. The contemporary art market in London had dramatically collapsed in mid-1990 due to a major economic recession, and many commercial contemporary galleries had gone out of business. The Young British Artists re-vitalized a whole new generation of contemporary commercial galleries such as Karsten Schubert, Sadie Coles, Victoria Miro, Maureen Paley's Interim Art, Jay Jopling's White Cube, and Antony Wilkinson Gallery. The spread of interest improved the market for contemporary British art magazines through increased advertising and circulation.

The consolidation of the Young British Artists' status was in 1997, when the Royal Academy, which has a reputation as a bastion of conservatism, staged a major, definitive exhibition of their work, Sensation. This was actually a showing of Charles Saatchi's private collection of their work, and he owned the major pieces.

The opening of Tate Modern in 2000 did not provide any major accolade for the Young British Artists, but their inclusion was another affirmation that their status was not open to real questioning. Prospective retrospectives by Hirst were stymied by the fact that Saatchi and not the Tate owned all his important pieces. There were at one time three videos showing by Emin, who subsequently had a room dedicated to her work in Tate Britain. In spring 2003 Saatchi opened a new gallery in London, housed in the County Hall building on the South Bank and the previous Saatchi Gallery in St John's Wood was closed. The new Saatchi Gallery initially exhibited the work of the Young British Artists, with a retrospective by Hirst until Charles Saatchi's new interests were demonstrated in a series "TheTriumph of Painting".

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