19Th Century English Landscape Painters

History does not as a rule divide itself into neat lengths exactly coincident with the centuries, and in a sense the period from William Hogarth to the death of JMW Turner is a single stage of development. But this period does fall, very naturally, into two parts, which correspond roughly with the last seventy-five years of the eighteenth century and the first fifty years of the nineteenth. In the first part the figure-painters, especially the portrait-painters, are dominant, and landscape-painters are struggling for recognition; in the second, landscape comes into its own, and in figure-painting there is a general decline from the standards of Joshua Reynolds and others.

The two painters who above all others gave effective expression to this changed attitude were J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851) and John Constable (1776-1837). Their names are likely to be for ever linked together, but they were men of utterly different type and their approach to nature was essentially dissimilar. Constable, born and bred in the country, brought to his work an intimate familiarity with the homely facts of nature entirely absent from the work of the townsman Turner, which is always filled with a sense of the strangeness and wonder of the world.

19Th Century English School of Landscape Watercolourists

Watercolour painting has been exploited more extensively and successfully in England than in any other country, and the water-colourists of the early nineteenth century constitute one of the chief glories of English art. As we have seen, this school arose in the first place from the work of the topographical draughtsmen, which the demand for engravings of 'gentlemen's seats' called into existence in the eighteenth century.

John Varley (1778-1842) another of these young artists, had a very far-reaching influence on the rising generation. He was a man of ingenious rather than original mind, with theories on composition and natural structure which must have made him an interesting and inspiring teacher, and he became the leading drawing-master of his time. Among his pupils were Samuel Palmer (1805-81), John Linnell (1792-1882), William Turner (1789-1862), W. H. Hunt (1790-1864), Copley Fielding (1787-1855), and David Cox (1783-1859), but besides these he had a great number of amateur pupils, and he probably did more than any one man to form the popular taste in landscape in the early eighteen-hundreds.

David Cox was a more independent artist. His work shows a completely different outlook from Varley's, from whom he can have learned little more than technical tips. He derived more from Girtin, whose broad washes probably found the starting-point of his personal and original handling. Cox was born at Deritend, near Birmingham, and began his career as a colour-grinder at the Birmingham Theatre, being later promoted to scene-painter.

Portrait painting

Portraits were, as elsewhere in Europe, much the most easiest and most profitable way for an artist to make a living, and the English tradition continued to draw of the relaxed elegance of the portrait style developed in England by Van Dyck, although there was little actual transmission from his work via his workshop. Leading portraitists were Thomas Gainsborough; Sir Joshua Reynolds, founder of the Royal Academy of Arts; George Romney; and Sir Thomas Lawrence. Joseph Wright of Derby was well known for his candlelight pictures, George Stubbs for his animal paintings. By the end of the century, the English swagger portrait was much admired abroad, and had largely ceased to look for inspiration abroad.

The early 19th century also saw the emergence of the Norwich school of painters. Influenced by Dutch landscape painting and the landscape of Norfolk, the Norwich School were the first provincial art-movement outside of London. Short-lived due to sparse patronage and internal faction prominent members include 'founding father' John Crome, John Sell Cotman notable for his water-colours in particular and the promising but short-lived maritime painter Joseph Stannard

Sir Joshua Reynolds (16 July 1723 – 23 February 1792) was an influential 18th-century English painter, specialising in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect. He was one of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy. King George III appreciated his merits and knighted him in 1769.

Showing an early interest in art, Reynolds was apprenticed in 1740 to the fashionable portrait painter Thomas Hudson, with whom he remained until 1743. In 1749, Reynolds became friend with Augustus Keppel, a naval officer, and they both sailed on the Centurion to the Mediterranean. Whilst on board, Reynolds wrote later, "I had the use of his cabin and his study of books, as if they had been my own".[2] From 1749 to 1752, he spent over two years in Italy, where he studied the Old Masters and acquired a taste for the "Grand Style". Unfortunately, whilst in Rome, Reynolds suffered a severe cold which left him partially deaf, and, as a result, he began to carry a small ear trumpet with which he is often pictured. From 1753 until the end of his life, he lived in London, his talents gaining recognition soon after his arrival in France.

Reynolds worked long hours in his studio, rarely taking a holiday. He was both gregarious and keenly intellectual, with a great number of friends from London's intelligentsia, numbered amongst whom were Dr Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, Giuseppe Baretti, Henry Thrale, David Garrick and fellow artist Angelica Kauffmann. Johnson said in 1778: "Reynolds is too much under Fox and Burke at present. He is under the Fox star and the Irish constellation [meaning Burke]. He is always under some planet".[4]

Because of his popularity as a portrait painter, Reynolds enjoyed constant interaction with the wealthy and famous men and women of the day, and it was he who first brought together the famous figures of "The" Club. By 1761 Reynolds could command a fee of 80 Guineas for a full-length portrait (Mr Fane); in 1764 he was paid 100 Guineas for a portrait of Lord Burghersh.[5]