Description
At the height of the Napoleonic Wars, a new generation of painters led by the precociously talented David Wilkie took London's art world by storm. Their novel approach to the depiction of everyday life marked the beginning a trajectory that links the art of the Age of Revolution with the postmodern culture of today.
What emerged from the imagery of Wilkie and other early 19th-century British genre painters-among them William Mulready, Edward Bird, and the controversial watercolorist Thomas Heaphy-was a sense that common people were increasingly bound up with the exceptional events of history, that traditional boundaries between country and city were melting away, and that a more regularized and dynamic present was everywhere encroaching upon the customary patterns of the past.
Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
About the Author
David H. Solkin is professor of the social history of art, Courtauld Institute of Art. He is the author of Painting for Money: The Visual Arts and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century England and editor of Art on The Line: The Royal Academy Exhibitions at Somerset House 1780-1836, both published by Yale.
Reviews
". . . fascinating. . . . While the book's narrow focus seems appropriate for specialized/graduate libraries, the essays in each of the six chapters address broader themes of 19th-century visual culture and provide exemplary visual and contextual analysis of standard, and, more often, lesser-known works."- Choice * Choice *
Book Information
ISBN 9780300140613
Author David H. Solkin
Format Hardback
Page Count 288
Imprint Yale University Press
Publisher Yale University Press
Weight(grams) 1996g
