writings

British Vision: Observation & Imagination 1750 the the Present

Ford Madox Brown The Last of England

Part I: Defining Observation & Imagination

From the Industrial Revolution onward--from around 1750, Great Britain has played a prominent role in Western Art. From the middle of the 18th century, a recognizably British tradition began to evolve, coinciding with what has been called ‘the first modern society’, guided by a fervent liberalism and influenced by an upcoming class of entrepreneurs and tradesmen and a climate of freedom within what Voltaire referred to as “a country of secularists where individuality constantly asserts itself.” Over the course of time, two characteristics or attitudes have helped define this tradition: the EMPIRICAL stance, or OBSERVATION and the IMAGINATIVE approach, or inclination towards the VISIONARY. England, in particular, has been a place where a specific artistic approach was possible, due to a number of regularly recurring factors, such as new technologies, urbanization, the rise of a new middle class, the climate, isolation, Protestantism, and the limited impact of institutions like the Royal Academy.

In British life from the eighteenth century to the twentieth century, there have been many attempts to establish a national school of art along Continental lines through the creation of official institutions and the publication of theoretical works. The founding of the Royal Academy and the writings of the artist/academician Joshua Reynolds are the best known examples. What interests us here, though, is what took place alongside, or in spite of this academic life. Academicism stands for universal rules and discipline. We will look more closely at that movement which chooses the particular over the general or universal. In focusing on observation and imagination as components of this alternative tradition, we can perhaps begin to discover what makes British art British.

William Hogarth Southwark Fair

The Empirical versus the Visionary

William Coldstream Westminster Abbey

Observation implies a methodical and empirical approach, which is strongly present at certain moments in the history of British Art. It is an adherence to details, a systematic registration of observed facts, a consideration of nature as if for the first time. This kind of observation is very strong in the work of the eighteenth century painter- engraver William Hogarth and the nineteenth century painter John Constable. It also determined the methods of the Pre-Raphaelites, who were very keen to write in detail about their systematic, dedicated manner of working. In the twentieth century, it can be seen in the work of artists like Stanley Spencer, William Coldstream, Euan Uglow, Lucien Freud, Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff.

William Blake Adam naming the Beasts

The meaning of ‘visionary’ is more difficult to define. The term applies best to William Blake, but the tradition that he founded of extremely individual and eccentric allegorical narratives is particularly strong in British art, even today. Within this tradition, we again have the Pre-Raphaelites, with their literary and moralizing subjects. Their tendency toward the symbolic and the unusual, the inspiration of literature, and an interest in early English history show up also in the work of Stanley Spencer. The visionary emphasis on content and expressive form can be seen in the work of Francis Bacon and Graham Sutherland, and the transcendental approach to nature is integral to the work of J.M.W. Turner, Samuel Palmer, and, once again, the Pre-Raphaelites. In more recent art, this approach continues in the work of Henry Moore and the “Land Artists” Richard Long and Hamish Fulton.

Your first task is to define all italicized words and phrases you have just read. Then, through on-line research, briefly familiarize yourself with each of the artists whose names appear in boldface. Record all pertinent information as you normally would in your Investigation Workbook. It is very important to record the artists’ dates as you will later be constructing a timeline.

Look at a selection of each artist’s works in Google Images or other sites and/or sources, download, and print out one or two images per artist for your Investigation Workbook, noting how you think observation and/or imagination as defined here, plays a major role in that artist’s work.

Part II: Origins of The British Imagination

In this stage of our project, we will look at some of the sources of inspiration which artists in these islands have drawn upon over the centuries and have repeatedly returned to in the present age.

Richard Long Mud Hand Circle

In the introduction to his book Albion: The Origins of The English Imagination, Peter Ackroyd searches for an appropriate metaphor to describe the essential character of the English imagination. He compares it with a stream or river, but concludes that the most powerful metaphor is that of a ring or circle, ‘a great ring of pure and endless light’, in the words of the 17th century writer Henry Vaughn.

Ian Hamilton Finlay Sea Poppy 2

Ackroyd emphasises that this ring is indeed ‘endless, having no beginning and no end, moving backwards as well as forwards’. It is, in Ackroyd’s words, an imagination rich with ‘ambiguities and paradoxes’, inclined towards employing ‘eloquence and understatement, melancholy, and firm resolve’, and possessed of an
eagerness to ‘absorb and assimilate influences from abroad’. In your research, you will encounter these and other qualities of an imagination which can be discovered at work not only in British visual art, but also in British literature, music, architecture, and philosophy.

Sources and Subjects of the British Imagination

PATTERNS OF ETERNITY

Tacita Dean Majesty

The Tree

To the ancient Druids, the tree was sacred. Their worship of the forest and of forest forms produced rituals in which the spirits of the oak, the beech, and the hawthorn were honored. English folklore is full of references to trees as images of peacefulness and protection. Ancient English poems describe the woods as places of refuge and sanctuary. Trees were the home to fairies and the roots of the oak were thought to descend into the other world. As a child, William Blake saw angels inhabiting the trees of his village. The oak tree, whose life span can run into the hundreds of years, comes to represent the continuity of time stretching both backwards and forwards.

British Artists for whom the tree becomes an important subject:
John Constable, William Blake, Samuel Palmer,Thomas Gainsborough, John Sell Cotman, John Ruskin, William Morris, Richard Dadd, Stanley Spencer, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Andy Goldsworthy, Michael Craig Martin, Tacita Dean.

The Radiates

The hallmarks of a style and sensibility which have over the centuries been characterized as entirely English can be traced to Celtic “radiate”carvings. The motif of the spiral is employed within a severe and abstract patterning, which implies a movement without beginning or end. The tendency towards elaborate pattern, aligned to surface flatness, becomes increasingly apparent in the development of the British imagination.

British Artists who have employed radiate and/or elaborate patterns in their work: William Morris, Victor Pasmore, Richard Long, Brigit Riley, Richard Deacon, Andy Goldsworthy and Damien Hirst.

Bridget Riley Blaze 1

Genius Loci: A sense of place

The Sea

James McNeill Whistler Harmony In Blue And Silver

The Sea defines an island culture in a multitude of ways. It is both margin and mystery, familiar, yet somehow unknowable. Though it provides sustenance, it can, sometimes within an instant, destroy the lives of those who depend upon it. In the British imagination it has exerted a constant and powerful influence, inspiring painters, poets, and composers, among others. Here are just a few things artists have considered about the subject:

The sea’s immensity.
The depths of the sea.
The deep peace of the sea.
The movements of the sea.
The poetry of light and water.
The ship at sea.
War at sea.
What lies across the sea?
Sea voyages and the exotic.
The heroism of sea-faring peoples.
The sea as a source of melancholy.

Artists for whom the sea has been an important subject: William Blake, J. M. W. Turner, John Constable, James Whistler (American ex-patriot), Ford Madox Brown, John Ruskin, Ben Nicholson, Alfred Wallis and Tacita Dean.

British Landscape

Samuel Palmer Cornfield by Moonlight with an Evening Star

The diversity of Britain’s landscape has inspired an enormous variety of artistic responses over the centuries. Mountains,valleys, rivers, lakes, gorges, forests, fens, moorlands, cliffs, and beaches, footpaths, all forming a complex backdrop to the unfolding of everyday life. For some artists, the landscape becomes absolutely central to their concerns. Here is a list of collected fragments and phrases used by British artists which evoke a rural Britain sometimes of the past and sometimes of the present:

“The notion of the picturesque - nature viewed as a series of pictures.”
“Lost in the primeaval woods”
“So many Hallowed places”
“Follow the winding path”
“Dark hills and dales beyond”
“Here, one may feel the Immanence of God in Nature.”
“A landscape of narrow lanes, rounded hills, woodlands, and ancient stones”
“ A place which provokes both a sense of longing and belonging”
“In this place, time is suspended.”

A fascination with the past has often inspired the British imagination, especially with regard to the landscape, which was considered to be haunted with strange intimations from shadowy vanished worlds, ie, a Catholic World swept away by the early sixteenth century and the Reformation. What other worlds might these be?

British Artists using the landscape as a subject or as a starting point in their investigations:
J.M.W.Turner, John Constable, John Sell Cotman, Thomas Gainsborough, Samuel Palmer, John Ruskin, William Nicholson, Ivon Hitchens, Victor Pasmore, Paul Nash, Stanley Spencer, Graham Sutherland, David Bomberg, Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff, Richard Long, The Boyle Family.

Other subjects important to the British imagination and integral to the making of art:
Women and their changing roles in society
The Body: public and private
The Miniature
Melancholy
Melodrama
The importance of Humor: Satire and the Absurd
Animals and their relationship(s) with man
Terror, the Macabre, and the Supernatural.

Stanley Spencer The Resurrection, Cookham