A novel investigation into art pedagogy and constructions of national identities in Britain and Ireland, this collection explores the student-master relationship in case studies ranging chronologically from 1770 to 2013, and geographically over the national art schools of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Essays explore the manner in which the Old Masters were deployed in education; fuelled the individual creativity of art teachers and students; were used as a rhetorical tool for promoting cultural projects in the core and periphery of the British Isles; and united as well as divided...

The inspirational genius of Germany explores the neglected issue of the cultural influence of Germany upon Britain between 1850 and 1939. While the impact on Britain of German Romanticism has been extensively mapped, the reception of the more ideologically problematic German culture of the later period has been neither fully explained or explored. After the 1848 revolutions, Germany experienced a period of political and economic growth which not only saw it achieving Unification in 1871 but also challenging the industrial and imperial supremacy of Britain at the dawn of the twentieth century....

Traditional post-colonial scholarship on art and imperialism emphasizes tensions between colonizing cores and subjugated peripheries, while the ties between London and British white settler colonies have been comparatively neglected. Artworks not only reveal the controlling intentions of imperialist artists but also in their afterlives were used by others to contest cultural identity within the British ranks frequently assumed to be homogeneous. British Art for Australia, 1860-1953: The Acquisition of Artworks from the United Kingdom by Australian National Galleries represents the first...