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Example of the iconoclasm that began with the initiation of the Reformation by King Henry VIII in 1536. This statue of Virgin and child from the Anwick church in Lincolnshire was desecrated by the iconoclasts, who smashed off the heads and most of the body of Christ. Across England, Wales and Scotland a great deal of art was destroyed.
Hans Holbein the Younger:Portrait of Sir Thomas MoreA German born artist whose work shows the influence of Early Netherlandish painters, in particular in the use of oil.
Hans Holbein the Younger: Double Portrait of Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve (“The Ambassadors”) (1533). The imagery of the painting bears symbolic significance. The oriental rug and the two globes suggest exploration and trade, while the attire of the two ambassadors (secular on the left, clerical on the right) is interpreted by some to suggest reconciliation of the Church and the secular world. Note the distorted image of the skull in the foreground. Seen from the right, the image is clear. This is an example of the experiments in perspective that became popular with the Renaissance and the perfection of these techniques. The ceiling in the library of the College (Building A) is another example of experiments with perspective in post-Renaissance art.
Hans Holbein the Younger: Duchess of Milan Following the death of Jane Seymour, Holbein was sent to continental Europe to paint portraits of five potential brides for Henry VIII. On the basis of these portraits Henry VIII chose the Duchess of Milan. She, however, refused his proposal out of fear that she would lose her head if she failed to give birth to a male heir. The resemblances between this work and the paintings of Netherlandish artists such as Van Eyck and the Master of Flemalle demonstrate some degree of continuity between English art and the art of the continent, a continuity created in no small part by Holbein himself.
Portraiture and Queen Elizabeth Queen Elizabeth understood and exploited the importance of imagery in the maintenance of power. She had innumerable portraits painted of herself using various imagery. In this portrait she stands atop a map of the kingdom, implying her rule of the land.
Nicholas Hilliard: The Pelican Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I (c.1575) Hilliard was limner (miniaturist) and goldsmith to Elizabeth I. The Pelican Portrait is among his most famous depictions of the Queen. The pelican on her broach is a traditional Christian symbol of sacrifice, as it was believed that the pelican mother fed her young with her own blood. Elizabeth boldly compares herself to the figure of Christ, the mother who feeds the people of her kingdom. Note also the rose at the top left and the fleur-de-lys on the right, symbolizing her claim to England and France.
Anthony van Dyck: Charles I (1635) A Flemish painter who worked with Rubens, van Dyck studied in Italy before becoming chief painter for King Charles I in 1632. His work contributed to a new approach to portraiture (particularly royal iconography), depicting subjects in contexts, rather than in static frontal poses. The king is shown at the hunt, not wearing royal attire, though the Latin inscription (Carolus.I.REX Magnae Britanniae) makes clear that he is ruler of Great Britain. Van Dyck’s equestrian depictions show the influence of Titian. As an “imported” master, Van Dyck (like Holbein) indicates England’s reliance on the continent for many of its finest painters.
Sir Joshua Reynolds: Jane, Countess of Harrington (1778) Founder and first president of the Royal Academy, Reynolds was perhaps the most influential figure in English painting of the 18th century and was particularly well known for his portraits. He held a series of 15 lectures on art at the academy in which argued that painters should not copy nature but rather should seek the ideal of beauty in form, a notion of art to which he gave the name “Grand Style.” In practice this amounted to using Greek and Roman works of art as models, as can be seen in this painting, in which the countess is depicted in an idealized moment, frozen in her pose, with a Grecian urn to her left.
Thomas Gainsborough: Mr. and Mrs. Andrews (1748-1750) The so-called landscape portraits of Gainsborough constituted an essentially new genre, a blend of the portrait and the landscape painting. It depicted people in real surroundings, in this case Robert Andrews and his wife on their estate (the oak tree behind them is allegedly still there). The portrait functioned in part to inform the viewer of the extent of Andrew’s estates. The genre can be seen as a sign of the gradual displacement of the portrait in 18th century European art by the landscape, which was to come to dominate much of the art of the first half of the 19th century.
Thomas Gainsborough: The Painter`s Daughters Chasing a Butterfly
William Hogarth: Marriage a-la-mode, Shortly After the Marriage Hogarth is considered by many to have captured the essence of English humor in his often satirical pieces, including parodies of works by masters such as Albrecht Dürer. He also did series that constituted pictorial narratives, thought by some to represent the forerunner to the genre of the cartoon. The success of his work also reflects the growing commercialization of art, which was increasingly available to the middle class.
William Blake: Ancient of Days. Poet and painter William Blake was committed to the study of the Bible as source of religious and artistic inspiration. His prophetic poetry won him the reputation of the spiritual visionary of the Romantic era, but he was also influenced in his painting by motifs from medieval art. This depiction of God, for instance, borrows from medieval manuscript illustrations in which God was shown holding a compass as he created the world. Blake’s interest in medieval art was part of the larger return to the art and motifs of the Middle Ages by the Romantics, including such authors as Sir Walter Scott, Horance Walpole, or even Samuel Taylor Coleridge (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner).
William Blake: A Cradle Song Blake illustrated his own poems
John Constable: Salisbury Cathedral (1825) Unlike his contemporary Turner, Constable focused on the English landscape, returning to the same site numerous times to paint the same scene at different times of day and in different weather. His interest in the cultural landscape of English was influenced by and had an influence on a growing English antiquarianism. Whereas in previous centuries artists had undertaken the so-called grand tour, visiting centers of art like Florence and Rome, now the culture and history of England became a topic of artistic interest. Indeed within Great Britain historians began to take a greater interest in local culture and local cultural history.
John Constable: Stonehenge The choice of topic is again an example of Constable’s interest in the landscapes and cultural history of Great Britain. Constable did numerous paintings of clouds, which was an unusual choice of subjects. This interest in a subject that is ever shifting reflects the change in tastes away from the precepts of Reynolds, who insisted on the perfection of the stable form and the ideal beauty of Greek and Roman models.
Joseph Mallord William Turner: The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons (1835) As a painter fascinated by the effects of light, Turner is thought of by many as a precursor to the impressionists. Like the works of impressionists such as Monet, his paintings captured events and moments, rather than depicting scenes.
Joseph Mallord William Turner: Light and Colour (Goethe's Theory) - the Morning after the Deluge, Moses Writing the Book of Genesis (1843) Note the title of the work, which emphasizes that ultimately light is the subject of the painting. Goethe wrote a scientific treatise on color entitled Farbenlehre, in which he insisted on the influence of boundaries (contrasting colors) on our perception of color. He considered blue and yellow to be opposites that were essential for creating contrast. Turner’s painting reflects his interest in Goethe’s ideas.
Sir John Everett Millais: The Blind Girl (1856), Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Beata Beatrix (1864-1870), Edward Burne-Jones: The Golden Stairs, 1880 Pre-Raphaelites rejected what they thought of as the mechanical approach of European artists following Raphael (hence their name). In particular they disliked the work of Reynolds, who they felt was formulaic and mannered. They sought a return to complexity, rich detail, and vivid colors of Quattrocento Italian art.
William Morris: Snakeshead printed textile, 1876 Like artists across Europe, Morris took an interest in folk motifs. He also regarded applied arts as equal in value to so-called high art. His interest in a return to hand-crafted decorative art was in part a revolt against industrial mass production. He did wall paper, tile, furniture, and architectural designs. The arts and crafts movement of which he was a part sought a return to what in their view was the practice of the Middle Ages of not dividing the arts. One work of art (for instance an altar piece) was painting, sculpture, and architecture in one. The movement hoped to redeem the applied arts from the stigma of utility. Their continued influence is demonstrated by the existence and popularity of museums of applied arts.
Alfred Sisley: Bridge at Villeneuve-la-Garenne (1872) Sisley was British, but painted in France under the influence of the French impressionists, as this painting shows.
Jack Butler Yeats: The Liffey Swim Brother of Nobel Prize poet William Butler Yeats, Jack Butler Yeats shared his brother’s sympathies for the Irish Republican cause, though he was not politically active. This painting depicts the annual swim across the Liffey river in Dublin with O'Connell Bridge visible in the center.
Sir Jacob Epstein: Day and Night (1928) London Electric Railway headquarters Epstein’s work shows interest in primitivism often associated with Picasso and such paintings as Demoiselles D’Avignon
Henry Moore: Reclining Figure (1951) Moore did numerous large sculptures under commission for specific sites. He wrote on the importance of searching for forms in nature, suggesting for instance that an artist use the rocks in a river bed as a source of inspiration.
Lucian Freud: Girl with a white dog, 1951 - 1952, Grandson of Sigmund Freud, Lucian Freud gained a reputation for painting portrait-like depictions with candor and no trace of striving for the ideal.
Lucian Freud: Queen Elizabeth II (2001) Freud’s portrait of Queen Elizabeth II caused something of a scandal. Arguably it is an illustration of a statement he made in an interview with John Richardson (printed in Vanity Fair, May 2000) that, “I paint people not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be.”
Francis Bacon: Study after Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953) Unlike many of his contemporaries, who tended towards abstract art, Bacon made the human being the subject of his paintings. Yet he developed startling new methods of dramatizing these images through distortion. According to Bacon, his aim was order to “unlock the valves of feeling and therefore return the onlooker to life more violently” (David Sylvester, Interviews with Francis Bacon, 1962-1979 9Oxford: Thames and Hudson, 1980) 17.
Richard Hamilton: Just What Is It That Makes Today's Home So Different, So Appealing? 1956, Collage As a representative of the pop art that rose to popularity at the end of the 1950s, Hamilton made works that can be interpreted as reactions against abstract art and expressionism. Hamilton also contributes to the ongoing deconstruction of the opposition between high art and low (or pop) art by making use of materials from such sources as popular gossip magazines.
Damien Hirst: The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991) Well known for his so-called natural history works, in which animals figure in vitrines of formaldehyde, Hirst uses his work as a means of articulating fundamentally existential questions. His work exemplifies the shift away from art as representation or mere aesthetic to art as statement. This is arguably one of the most salient features of European and Western art of the 20th century.
