The Prime Minister of Taste: A Portrait of Horace Walpole [Hardcover]

Professor Morris Brownell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2001

In this intriguing book, Morris Brownell offers a fresh account of the career and influence of Horace Walpole (1717-1797), the great English man of letters and art historian. Rejecting both the traditional view of Walpole as a trifling collector of curiosities and the more recent assessment of him as a sober social historian and connoisseur, Brownell argues that Walpole grew to become a serious patron, collector, and historian of the arts - "the Prime Minister of Taste". Drawing on vast Walpole archival materials and on his astonishing forty volumes of letters, Brownell describes the formation of young Walpole's taste and interest in the visual arts. Brownell argues that England's leading portrait engraver, George Vertue, converted Walpole from Grand Tour taste in painting to a life-long study of English portraits. The book discusses the significance of Walpole's collection of English historical portraits and French portraits of the ancien regime, and it analyses Walpole's fascination with portraiture, comparing the painted portraits Walpole collected and wrote about to the literary portraits he penned in his letters. Walpole's passion for the art of portraiture was not the trifling pastime he pretended, Brownell says, in fact it was the source of his greatest literary achievement - a gallery of literary portraits of the English aristocracy as fine as the painted portraits of Reynolds and Gainsborough.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Morris Brownell is Foundation Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno, and is the author of a prize-winning book on Pope.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 364 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (May 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300087160
• ISBN-13: 978-0300087161
• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 7.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,788,946 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Very Narrow Biography, May 31, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Prime Minister of Taste: A Portrait of Horace Walpole (Hardcover)

I bought the book thinking it a biography of Horace Walpole. A biography it is, but in a very narrow sense. It almost exclusively deals with Walpole's acquisition of art and the pieces themselves. I saw no discussion of his terms as MP. Also, nothing about his authorship of 'The Castle of Otranto' or the memoirs of George II and George III all of which are still in print today. Very little about his friends outside of art collecting. If your looking to find out about this specific portion of Walpole's life then the book is well written and thorough with many photographs of the pictures in his collection. A general biography it is not.

2 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Brownell Pleases the Palate with Prime Minister of Taste, July 8, 2001

By 

Mary A. Replogle - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Prime Minister of Taste: A Portrait of Horace Walpole (Hardcover)

This biography of Walpole is written by the foremost expert on Horace Walpole, Professor Morris Brownell.

There are interesting anecdotes, witty analogies and rare photographs and illustrations of the English commentator, Horace Walpole and his life and times.

This book is a must-have for anybody interested in English history, literature and monarchy,