Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- List of Contributors
- List of Figures
- Introduction
- 1 The Memory and Impact of Oral Performance: Shaping the Understanding of Late Medieval Readers
- 2 Print, Miscellaneity and the Reader in Robert Herrick's Hesperides
- 3 Searching for Spectators: From Istoria to History Painting
- 4 Returning to the Text of Frankenstein
- 5 ‘Casualty’, Mrs Shelley and Seditious Libel: Cleansing Britain's Most Corrupt Poet of Error
- 6 Writing Textual Materiality: Charles Clark, his Books and his Bookplate Poem
- 7 Charles Dickens's Readers and the Material Circulation of the Text
- 8 Victorian Pantomime Libretti and the Reading Audience
- 9 Material Modernism and Yeats
- 10 Changing Audiences: The Case of the Penguin Ulysses
- 11 The Sound of Literature: Secondary School Teaching on Reading Aloud and Silent Reading, 1880–1940
- 12 Intermediality: Experiencing the Virtual Text
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
3 - Searching for Spectators: From Istoria to History Painting
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- List of Contributors
- List of Figures
- Introduction
- 1 The Memory and Impact of Oral Performance: Shaping the Understanding of Late Medieval Readers
- 2 Print, Miscellaneity and the Reader in Robert Herrick's Hesperides
- 3 Searching for Spectators: From Istoria to History Painting
- 4 Returning to the Text of Frankenstein
- 5 ‘Casualty’, Mrs Shelley and Seditious Libel: Cleansing Britain's Most Corrupt Poet of Error
- 6 Writing Textual Materiality: Charles Clark, his Books and his Bookplate Poem
- 7 Charles Dickens's Readers and the Material Circulation of the Text
- 8 Victorian Pantomime Libretti and the Reading Audience
- 9 Material Modernism and Yeats
- 10 Changing Audiences: The Case of the Penguin Ulysses
- 11 The Sound of Literature: Secondary School Teaching on Reading Aloud and Silent Reading, 1880–1940
- 12 Intermediality: Experiencing the Virtual Text
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
In the final decades of the eighteenth century the phrase ‘history painting’ is common currency in the writings of certain distinguished neoclassical artists. The literary output of artists such as Joshua Reynolds, James Barry and Henry Fuseli captures a significant aspect of the professional aspirations of ambitious London-based painters. A history painting was typically a large work, usually in oil, based on classical or biblical literature. Over the years such pictures also focused on significant historical events or notable moments in modern literature – the works of Shakespeare and Milton were common sources for artists in eighteenth-century Britain. However, despite eloquent treatises, lectures and campaigning pamphlets by celebrated artistic figures it is apparent that history painting was an extremely problematic genre. History paintings were generally not popular with the wider public. Nor were they commercially viable as most wealthy British patrons wanted portraits by contemporary artists such as Reynolds and Gainsborough or cherished works by the Old Masters like Raphael, Titian and Rubens.
A fascinating aspect of the writings of James Barry, one of the most compelling advocates of history painting, is his address to the audience. His writings, in large measure, constitute a search for spectators. In essence, Barry tried to create an audience for the kind of art he aspired to create. Yet this appeal to the public illustrated the extent to which the classical rhetoric of art, refined by Barry's Renaissance predecessors, was displaced by the modern vernacular of aesthetics.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Readings on Audience and Textual Materiality , pp. 37 - 50Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014