Introduction

    The English school was also known as the English school of painting. The English School movement spread more or less from the 2d half of the 18th century to the 1st half of the 19th century. The term school usually designates a collection of traditions, processes, a peculiar style in design and a peculiar taste in colouring, all these parameters contributing to the representation of a national ideal existing in the minds of native artists at a given period. However the term school cannot be used in this way to characterize English artists, as there was an absence of any national tradition, and also because each English painter seems to stand by himself. All these separate manifestations were grouped under the name of the English School for the sake of brevity. The full term “English School” was primarily used in late 18th and early 19th century artists’ biographies.

 

 

    Many English portraitists after him were considered as his artistic heirs. Indeed, Van Dyck played an important role and was a great influence for those painters. But something was somehow in contradiction with the idea of an English School: he was born abroad.

    Other scholars thought the English School was born as a consequence of the Grand Tour tradition. In the 17th and 18th centuries, those trips provided the British noblemen with an opportunity to complete their education. The British nobility visited foreign countries where they acquired a large acquaintance with European artistic practices (see Edward Chaney’s outstanding study, available at the English Dpt Library, on the subject). They travelled southward, crossing the English Channel to reach Calais. Then they moved to Paris, Dijon, Lyons, Marseilles, and headed for Spain or Italy. The latter country was the most popular destination because of its prestige, its heritage of Ancient Roman monuments.

    James Thornhill attended those Grand Tour trips and then worked in England. His paintings were made in the Baroque style, prevalent on the continent in the previous centuries.

 

    William Hogarth may be called the first genuine English artist as something which was of paramount importance. Unlike Van Dyck or Holbein, he was English by birth. He lived in London, and practiced as a painter and as an engraver. He worked in the French contemporary style, but perfected it with two new forms:

- The small scale group portraiture also known as the conservation piece

- The modern moral subject which were satirical works full of black humour pointing out to contemporary life and manners of London.

    Though it is difficult to make out when exactly the English School came into existence, it was characterized by two main genres: landscapes and full-scale portraiture.

 

 

THE ENGLISH FULL SCALE PORTRAITURE

The English full scale portraiture was revitalized by two painters of paramount importance:

- Sir Joshua Reynolds who introduced the “Grand Manner” into English portraiture using an extensive repertory of poses derived from Italian art.

 

Thomas Gainsborough who produced works revealing a light fluid technique and a great sensitivity to characterization.

 

 

    We could also cite another major painter: Joseph Wright of Derby. He was remembered for his famous candlelight pictures. For further details, it is warmly recommended to come back to the iconobook menu and find the dossier devoted to him.

 

THE ENGLISH LANDSCAPE TRADITION

    It was a genre in which England has made contributions of the first order. It was a type of painting that enjoyed great popularity in the 18th and 19th century. At first, it depicted hunting and racing scenes which was a peculiarly English form of art.

    We can find this kind of painting in George Stubbs’s works. He was famous for his animal paintings.

 

    However, the English landscape tradition was founded by Richard Wilson. He devoted his art to the depiction of the English countryside. He applied the principles of clarity and order to his paintings.

    Within the landscape tradition, a spirit of romanticism emerged in England and remained dominant in English art. This came to be known as the English Romantic Art. The heyday of that movement came with two landscapists, Turner and Constable.

    They both derived their inspiration from works of earlier continental painters such as Wilson or Gainsborough. However they developed their mature style with a strong disregard for conventions, giving full rein to their subjectivity on the canvas.

    Turner’s works were permeated with poetic art and also with a troubled search for peace in nature. His late works tend towards abstraction. Light dissolves all but the slightest indications of mass, producing pictures of almost disembodied colour.