British art and the Seven Years' War
Subtitle: allegiance and autonomy
By: Douglas Fordham.
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Philadelphia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 352
ISBN-13: 9780812242430
Subjects: Royal Academy of Arts (Great Britain) -- History; Art -- Political aspects -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century; Art and society -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century; Art, British -- 18th century; Art and war
Description: "In British Art and the Seven Years' War Douglas Fordham argues that war and political dissent provided potent catalysts for the creation of a national school of art. Over the course of three tumultuous decades marked by foreign wars and domestic political dissent, metropolitan artists--especially the founding members of the Royal Academy, including Joshua Reynolds, Paul Sandby, Joseph Wilton, Francis Hayman, and Benjamin West--creatively and assiduously placed fine art on a solid footing within an expansive British state. London artists entered a golden age of art as they established strategic alliances with the state, even while insisting on the autonomy of fine art. The active marginalization of William Hogarth's mercantile aesthetic reflects this sea change as a newer generation sought to represent the British state in a series of guises and genres, including monumental sculpture, history painting, graphic satire, and state portraiture. In these allegories of state formation, artists struggled to give form to shifting notions of national, religious, and political allegiance in the British Empire. These allegiances found provocative expression in the contemporary history paintings of the American-born artists Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley, who managed to carve a patriotic niche out of the apolitical mandate of the Royal Academy of Arts"--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: The standard bearer; title: Mobilizing the arts; title: Pomp and imperial circumstance; title: Heads of state; title: Bleeding hearts; title: Conclusion.