Joseph Farington (1747-1821) was a professional topographical artist and lived most of his life in London. Through his extensive involvement in the affairs of the Royal Academy, his wide circle of friends, and his membership in several clubs and societies, he touched the life of his time at many points. This diary, which he kept from 1793 until his death, provides a meticulous record of his actions and observations and is an invaluable source for the history of English art and artists. It also constitutes an absorbing record of this period's social, political, and literary...

The ninth and tenth volumes of the diary cover the years from January 1808 up to December 1810. Among the public events that preoccupy Joseph Farington are the wars in Europe and South America and the spectacular scandal that erupted in 1809 over Duke of York's association with Mary Anne Clark.
This period finds Farington embarking on extended tours--one to the north of England and two to the West Country--making sketches to illustrate the survey of Britain, Britannica Depicta, compiled by his friends Samuel and Daniel Lysons. Farington's association with this and other projects...

These eleventh and twelfth volumes of Farington's famous diaries gives his accounts of Academy exhibitions from 1811 to 1813 and discuss the political events of the time. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for studies in British art.

John Constable, one of the most beloved of British painters, is renowned for his poetic approach to nature and his extraordinary use of broken color. In this beautiful two-volume set, the dean of Constable scholars, Graham Reynolds, discusses all the paintings and drawings the artist produced between 1790 and1816, both before and after his breakthrough into the original style that is the basis of his fame. Together with Reynoldss award-winning The Later Paintings and Drawings of John Constable (1984), the books are a catalogue raisonne' of this artists monumental oeuvre.The two...

Joseph Farington (1747-1821), a respectable though not outstanding painter, was active in the social, cultural, and professional art world of his time. His voluminous diaries enrich our perception of this lively and productive age.
Volumes XIII and XIV of the diaries take Farington past his seventieth birthday but show that his keen interest in public and artistic affairs remained undiminished. He rejoices at the end of the long war with France, deplores the conduct of Lord Byron, approves the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and speculates about the probable authorship of the attack...

When the story of modern art is told, British artists are mentioned infrequently or not at all. In this book, distinguished art historians attempt to explain the marginal position of British modern art by examining the development of the London art world--its institutions and individual artists--over the past two centuries.
Chapters discuss artists as diverse as William Hogarth, Sir Joshua Reynolds, W.P. Frith, Walter Sickert, and Henry Moore and also describe academies, public exhibitions, and commercial galleries throughout the era. Introduced by David Solkin, the volume consists of...

Visual arts in Britain between 1550 and 1650 have long been considered part of the classical Italian Renaissance canon. Now a distinguished group of scholars demonstrates that attitudes to classical art were in fact somewhat ambivalent during this period in Britain (or, as it is called poetically, Albion). For town halls and funeral monuments, for paintings and theatrical works, British artists, patrons, and builders made informed choices from the classical vocabulary while continuing to work within systems and circumstances quite distinct from those of classicism. The authors focus on the...

In this rich exploration of the era of the Grand Tour, contributors from the fields of history, art history, literary history and theory, science history, and anthropology investigate the experiences of travelers and their ways of understanding and representing their encounters with the foreign. From the beginning of the seventeenth century through the early decades of the nineteenth century, the practice of the Grand Tour supplied a crucial point of reference for travel and imaginative geography in general. At the same time, concepts of pleasure and enjoyment became entangled with visual and...

This collection of writings by specialists from many disciplines explores a wide range of topics relating to English painter George Romney (1734-1802). The contributors to the book address not only Romney's personality and artistic practice, but also aspects of the cultural context of his work, such as its relation to theater and its diffusion through prints. Key essays discuss the central themes of the artist's work, his rivalry with Sir Joshua Reynolds, and his painting technique. Alex Kidson offers in the introduction a survey of previous writings about Romney and their impact on the...