How was the remote past of Britain imagined in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? What part did the visual arts play in that process? In this book Sam Smiles argues that the ancient Britain of the romantic imagination was a contested world, variously seen as a noble epoch of wisdom and patriotism and as a period of unredeemed savagery and barbarism. The arts, says Smiles, not only reflected these historical debates but actively contributed to them by attempting to bring the archaic past to life.
Smiles examines the interplay of antiquarian research, historiography, and the visual...

Alone of his contemporaries, J.M.W. Turner is commonly held to have prefigured modern painting, as signalled in the existence of The Turner Prize for contemporary art. Our celebration of his achievement is very different to what Victorian critics made of his art. This book shows how Turner was reinvented to become the artist we recognise today. On Turner's death in 1851 he was already known as an adventurous, even baffling, painter. But when the Court of Chancery decreed that the contents of his studio should be given to the nation, another side of his art was revealed that effected a...

Envisioning the Past: Archaeology and the Image is a groundbreaking collection of original essays that brings together archaeologists, art historians and anthropologists to provide new perspectives on the construction of knowledge concerning the antiquity of man.

• Covers a wide variety of time periods and topics, from the Renaissance and the 18th century to the engravings, photography, and virtual realities of today

• Questions what we can learn from considering the use of images in the past...

Envisioning the Past: Archaeology and the Image is a groundbreaking collection of original essays that brings together archaeologists, art historians and anthropologists to provide new perspectives on the construction of knowledge concerning the antiquity of man.

• Covers a wide variety of time periods and topics, from the Renaissance and the 18th century to the engravings, photography, and virtual realities of today

• Questions what we can learn from considering the use of images in the past...

Accompanying a major exhibition at Compton Verney, Warwickshire, this book examines the innate human desire to transcend the limitations of physiology and gravity and to fly. Through an intriguing combination of paintings, sculpture, photographs, drawings, prints and video, including works by Leonardo da Vinci, Jose Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Paul Nash, Peter Lanyon and Hiraki Sawa, the reader will be provided with a unique overview of artists' creative responses to flight, from the earliest imaginings to an era in which space travel has allowed us to glimpse other worlds."

During the Tudor Age the South West was famed for the innovation and endeavor of its people. Devon sea dogs Drake, Raleigh and Hawkins sailed to World s End in their pursuit of treasure and glory, Exeter s Nicholas Hilliard produced exquisite miniature portraits of courtiers while fellow Exonian Thomas Bodley re-founded Oxford University s library, later named the Bodleian in his honor.

These men lived during the religious turmoil and political intrigue of Elizabeth I s reign a time of opportunity for the merchants and traders of Devon. Many grew rich on the fruits of overseas trade...