English School

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Mont Snowdon painted by Richard Wilson (1765)

In painting and art history , the term English school describes a period and the region of origin of painters between 1750 and 1850 rather than a clearly defined painting style or a fixed canon of pictorial themes. It refers to the transitional period of painting in England shortly after the political unification of the two kingdoms of 1707 after the close links with the Reformation Renaissance up to the Pre-Raphaelites (English) Pre-Raphaelites, the 19th century or the arts-and- Crafts movement . A personality who embodies the changed attitude towards painting is next to Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), who was involved in the founding of the Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (RSA, 1754 ), the Society of Artists of Great Britain (1761) and the Royal Academy of Arts (1768). The latter in particular not only offers an exhibition space that is partially controlled by artists - an achievement at the time - but also wants to be a training venue for future artists. In addition to the portraits, which were still influenced by the Baroque , and history painting , there are now new, quasi-moving seascapes and, above all, landscape painting , starting with Richard Wilson (1714–1782, back in England since 1755). Until then (see Great Style / Grand Manner ) landscape was a set piece in portraits, but it can now take its own place in art. Regardless of whether idealization or true-to-life, almost huge, still life of a certain place, the painting style and colors can convey emotions here even without a story staged by figures.

The painter and engraver William Hogarth (1697–1764) in London is named as one of the first "modern" artists to be counted as part of the "English school". At the end of the period there are artists like Charles Lock Eastlake (1793–1865; Secretary of the Fine Arts Commission from 1841, 1st President of the Photographic Society from 1853 and 1st Director of the National Gallery from 1855 ). The development of the painting style and the influences on the style in the epoch can be clearly observed in the extensive and constantly changing work of William Turner (1775–1851), which took up almost all of these painting traditions in oil and watercolor and on By the end of his work he was already working towards impressionism .

John Constable: Seascape Study with Rain Cloud, 1827

Other people attributed to the painting direction

Concepts and their delimitation

The term English school is usually not translated in German - in France and Spain it is. In any case, it should not be confused with a summary of all painting in England since the Romans under one catchphrase. A certain regionalization of the English school in the Kingdom is the Norwich School , which is about to begin .

In Europe as a whole, there is talk of academic art, including academic realism or academicism , in this epoch . This is related to the creation of the art academies and their technical and aesthetic rules. Compare also the term Romanticism in literature, which is also used in England as a generic term for all of art and to which these painters and their work are often assigned.

See also

literature

  • Article in the English-language encyclopedia Britannica about the English school ( online )
  • David Bindman (Author Vol. 2): The History of British Art: 1600-1870 (Volume 2 by David Bindman, Tim Ayers (Ed.): The History of British Art, ISBN 9781854378033
  • David Bindman, Nigel J. Morgan (Eds.): Encyclopaedia of British Art - The Thames and Hudson Dictionary of British Art. Thames and Hudson, 1988 - 2nd A., 320 pages. ISBN 9780500202296
  • Michael Prodger: Constable, Turner, Gainsborough and the Making of Landscape. In The Guardian of November 23, 2012. (Landscape painting was a lowly genre in the mid-18th century, but then captured the popular imagination. Engl. The review of an exhibition at the Royal Academy in London 2012, which shows its various treatment of the subject Landscape shows.)
  • Samuel Redgrave: Dictionary of Artists of the English School. George Bell & Sons, London 1878 ( online )
  • Andrew Wilton, Anne Lyles: The Great Age of British Watercolors (1750-1880). Prestel (for Royal Academy of Arts), 1993. ISBN 3-7913-1254-5

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In the Encyclopedia Britannica (accessed August 25, 2016)
  2. ↑ Andrew Graham-Dixon: A History of British Art, 1999, p. 158 (English)