Landscape Painting in Britain c. 1750–1850

Overview

This module foregrounds the art of landscape and coastal painting in Britain during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with a particular emphasis on the half-century or so marked by two iconic images of rural England: Thomas Gainsborough’s The Harvest Wagon (c.1767) and John Constable’s The Hay Wain (1821). Seminars will balance the close study of individual works of art with a critical reading of selected texts as we consider how changing notions of art, nature and society were negotiated visually around the image of the land and coast. Throughout the semester we will examine the various and often conflicting art-historical approaches that have enlivened landscape studies over the past four decades, as questions of style and the aesthetics of landscape have been set against the social and cultural implications of representing rural Britain in an era of urbanisation, industrialisation, and prolonged war overseas. As well as developing a deeper understanding of the work of some of the most celebrated of all British artists (including Richard Wilson, Gainsborough, Constable and J.M.W. Turner), we will examine the ways in which an ostensible ‘golden age’ of British landscape continues to be invoked in the modern era: by contemporary artists, in the popular media, by politicians and pressure groups, and by the art market.

Aims

By the end of the module students should have acquired the following:

• a good knowledge of the principal makers, techniques and motifs of landscape painting in Britain.
• the ability to articulate and respond critically and creatively to different art-historical approaches to the subject.
• an awareness of the methodological challenges and opportunities associated with landscape painting.
• an understanding of key art-historical concepts associated with landscape, including naturalism, the picturesque and the sublime.
• a critical awareness of how the art of the past continues to inspire political and cultural debate.

Preliminary Reading

• Dana Arnold and David Peters Corbett, A Companion to British Art: 1600 to the Present, Oxford, 2013
• John Barrell, The Dark Side of the Landscape: the rural poor in English painting 1730-1840, Cambridge, 1980
• Andrew Hemingway, Landscape Imagery and Urban Culture in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain, Cambridge, 1992
• Kay Dian Kriz, The Idea of the English Landscape Painter: genius as alibi in the early nineteenth century, New Haven and London, 1997
• Michael Rosenthal, Christiana Payne and Scott Wilcox (eds), Prospects for the Nation: recent essays in British landscape, 1750-1880, New Haven and London, 1997
• Michael Rosenthal and Martin Myrone, eds, Thomas Gainsborough, exh. cat., Tate (London), 2002
• Sam Smiles, J.M.W. Turner: the making of a modern artist, Manchester, 2007
• Saleroom brochure and marketing material for the sale of John Constable’s The Lock (sold in July 2012 at Christie’s, London, for £22.4 million)