VIII—ENGLAND (PART I)
Reading edition
1. Lely and Kneller—Story of their lives. Their rank as artists. Lely's relation to the court of Charles II. Kneller's to that of William and Mary. Similarity of the work of the two painters. The pictures of the Hampton Court beauties of the time.
2. Hogarth—Choice of subjects and manner of treatment. Influence of the Dutch school. Reasons for the great popularity of his work among the English. Historical value. Interest rather than beauty. Engravings. Pictures in the British Museum.
3. Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Romney—The portrait painters of the eighteenth century. Well-known pictures of women and children: the Duchess of Devonshire, Cherry Ripe, The Strawberry Girl, etc. Reynolds' school for painting. Readings from his Discourses.
4. Raeburn and Wilkie—Subjects from humble life. The sentimental story as a theme. Scottish emotionalism in art and in literature; Wilkie's Blind Man's Buff and The Blind Fiddler.
5. Constable—Great painter of English landscape. Intense sympathy with his subject. Appreciation of the artistic value of mists, clouds, and showers. Effect on modern French landscape painters. Great commercial value of Constable's pictures to-day. Paintings in the National Gallery, at South Kensington and in the Metropolitan Museum.
6. Turner—Greatest English landscape painter. Strange story of his life. His eccentricities. Style of his painting. Comparison with Claude and Poussin. Unfortunate choice of pigments and consequent fading of his pictures. Readings from Ruskin's Modern Painters.
Books to Consult—Gleeson White: Master Painters of Britain. Spielmann: British Portrait Painting to the Closing of the XIX Century. Allan Cunningham: Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters and Sculptors. Horace Walpole: Anecdotes of Painting in England.
This program is so full that it may easily be divided between two meetings. Notice beside the artists mentioned those of less distinction: Sir Thomas Lawrence, the portrait painter belonging to the Reynolds school; Blake, the mystical and symbolical artist who influenced the later pre-Raphaelites; and Landseer, the painter of animals (who may be compared with Rosa Bonheur). Illustrate the paper with photographs as far as possible.