Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. Plates bright and vivid. Hardcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> THE HISTORY of British landscape painting between 1700 and 1900 can be broadly divided into three phases. During the first sixty years of the eighteenth century the in- fluences of the Netherlandish and Italian Schools predominated but were at the same time becoming assimilated into the makings of a native style. Between about 1760 and 1840 the art of landscape painting in Britain was at its height. At the earlier date Richard Wilson Thomas Gainsborough and Paul Sandby were all reaching maturity in their depiction of landscape. Eighty years later J. M. W. Turner was producing his greatest masterpieces and John Constable had already been three years dead. Among the contem- poraries of these masters were Francis Towne J. R. Cozens Thomas Girtin J. S. Cotman David Cox Peter de Wint and R. P. Bonington. When considered in the context of the landscape art of their time all the artists named are of European stature and form the largest coherent group of British artists to have achieved that status. While these painters were forging ahead in the development of landscape art their French German Italian and Netherlandish contemporaries were mostly content to continue in the accepted traditional styles of their countries. In the second half of the nineteenth century the tables were turned. In Britain landscape art grew weaker and more diluted while on the Continent and in France especially revolutionary advances were made by the Impressionists their precursors and their successors. (MP)