British Painting: The Golden Age (World of Art) [Paperback]

William Vaughan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 17, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0500203199 | ISBN-13: 978-0500203194

From Hogarth's first works around 1730 to the death of Turner in 1851, Britain's status as an artistic nation was dramatically transformed.

Hogarth himself brought modern life into painting and treated it with high moral seriousness disguised as satire. Ramsay, Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Lawrence revolutionized portraiture, introducing a new authority and sensibility. The unconventional genius of Blake gave form to a unique mystic vision, while Constable explored nature in a new manner, encouraging developments that were to lead to Impressionism. Finally, Turner took painting into a realm of sublime grandeur, expressing the age of Romanticism as vividly as Byron, Shelley, and Keats were doing in poetry. William Vaughan analyzes the class structure and political background that made British art so distinctive. Using up-to-date research and critical theory, he shows us the colorful world of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when British art was richer and more influential than at any time before or since.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Thames & Hudson (June 17, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0500203199
• ISBN-13: 978-0500203194
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #489,793 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Absolute Gem, January 25, 2003

By 

Ilania Abileah (Morin Heights, Quebec Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: British Painting: The Golden Age (World of Art) (Paperback)

An excellent source for understanding the pictorial achievements of British artists in in the 18th and 19th centuries. The book covers a vaste array of artists and subjects. For this reader, the most important features deal with the social changes due to the industrial revolution; the transformation of landscape painting from the sublime to naturalistic rural countryside, and the contribution of British painting to modernity using effects of light and colour.