Part 1
Speaking about the peculiarities of English culture and art in the period under consideration, it is necessary to remind at once that in England the bourgeois revolution was far behind, that in this country, unlike France in the end of the 18th century, the bourgeoisie made compromises and concessions to the nobility, but in England before the industrial revolution in other countries, was completed. The industrial revolution (which began in the 60s of the 18th century) not only turned England into a “world factory”, but also provided the British bourgeoisie with economic domination at home and primacy in foreign markets, and, bringing the most severe trials to the masses of this country, led to the formation of the English working class.
Reflection of bitter and historically advanced national experience carries in itself since the end of the 18th century all the brightest phenomena of English culture. Thousands of “freeborn Britons” were turned into proletarians, into an appendage to the machine on the capitalist production, they were united by despair and indignation against this new slavery. It hovered an imminent threat over the other thousands of ruined artisans and landless farmers. That is what gave birth to those rebellious impulses, that thirst for the joy of free labor on the native island, those dreams of a better future for all mankind, which we find expressed directly or indirectly in the poetry of the revolutionary English romanticists, Byron, Shelley and their predecessors, in the English landscape painting with its peak — the work of John Constable, in the Utopian socialism of Robert Owen.
Popular experience is growing, the English proletariat begins an organized struggle for its rights (the Ch artists” movement of 1836-1848), and advanced social thought and art are turned to the scrutiny of the most capitalist reality. At this time, the English social novel school is being formed. Commercial offices and bourgeois lounges, factories and slums — all fall within the field of view of Dickens, Tekkereya, Charlotte Bronte. In the image of the English society they go further than their predecessors — writers of the age of Enlightenment or painter of that era, William Hogarth. They discover that it is not diligence and ability that lead the bourgeoisie to success, but the use of the action of the spring — the law of profit — which is not related to such qualities of the spring; they are excited to show how the same spring presses, disfigures, mutilates other human lives.
In English literature and art since the 40-50s one can also see attempts to escape from the contradictions of bourgeois modernity into the past and fantasy. To return the art of religiosity, which was inherent in him in the Middle Ages, to go into the world of images of ancient legends — that”s the program of the so-called pre-Raphaelites. The fine arts of that time do not go beyond this passive opposition and do not create anything that could be compared with the truth and humanity of the works of British writers, realists. But one of the pre-Raphaelites, poet and artist William Morris, never left the thought of the destitution of the working people in England of his time. And on the past, he looked back, without giving up on this thought. And Morris managed to raise a very important issue for the subsequent development of aesthetic thought and art of the unity of labor and creativity in the folk craft, the need to revive this unity on a new basis.
The first great stage of the development of English art to be illuminated chronologically takes the last decade of the 18th — the first third of the 19th century. Historically, this is the final phase of the industrial revolution in England and it is time for the English bourgeoisie to start a struggle to reconsider in its favor the distribution of rights and privileges between it and the aristocracy. This is a time of turmoil for the machine destroyers, the Luddites, and then mass workers” rallies. It was a time marked by a complex interweaving of social and national conflicts within the country (the intensity of the industrial revolution in Scotland, the situation of oppressed Ireland), wars against the main rivals of the British bourgeoisie — the revolutionary and then Napoleonic France and the United States (the war of 1812-1814) — and the increasing colonial expansion of England.
It is difficult to develop English art during this period. Architecture is gradually losing commonality of search. Even the buildings, made in one, classical tradition, are very different in spirit: heavy, gloomy representatives and overloaded with decor is in the building of the English Bank in London, built at the turn of the two centuries of J. D. Lenin. Some; closer to the elegance of the 18th century. London's ensembles of John Nash (1752-1835); strict, “academic” look of the British Museum, which began R. Merck in 1823. At the same time, the same Merck and Nash are building in the manners of the house, similar to the Gothic castles, especially fond of Gothic D. Wyatt (Foothill Castle), and Nash, in addition, in different villas and pavilions creates a mixed “colonial” style. One such example is the Royal Pavilion in Brighton (1815-1821) with onion domes, horseshoe arches and Chinese motifs in the interiors. A lot of new things at this time in the structures of engineers, in the powerful aqueducts of T. Tel ford (late 18 — early 19 c. ), in his own buildings for the dock Eve. In the Catherine”s Bridge in London, in the granite with wide arched spans of the Waterloo Bridge in London by J. Renny (1811-1817) and the chain bridge in Brighton with cast iron towers, built by S. Tel ford. Brown (1823). The bold expression of design thought on the one hand, on the other — the diversity of imitation styles of the past epoch — these are the contradictory trends in British architecture of these decades. The phenomena of fine arts are even more diverse. This is a cartoon and a heroic portrait. These are grandiose creations of fantasy in the close framework of the book illustration and poverty of thought in huge mythological canvases, These are theatrical and far from the real life genre scenes and beautiful landscapes full of deeply national content.
“England is the homeland of cartoons, “ Pushkin said. Relying on the elements of satire in Hogarth”s heritage, the English graphics of the late 18th and early 19th centuries turned the cartoon into an independent and important branch of art. The cartoon became a weapon in the struggle of the English bourgeoisie with the aristocracy, a means to help win public opinion. The largest figure among cartoonists — James Gil ray (1757-1815). His etchings and engravings with an incisor, painted by hand or with the help of printed boards, exposed the vices of the nobility, led by members of the royal family, misses of ministers, intrigues of all external enemies of the British nation. He saw such enemies in revolutionary France, then in Napoleon, in the “changed” England Paul I, etc. The most successful were portrait cartoons by Gilray. In his cartoons for George III and Queen Charlotte (a series of “Vices”, etc. ), princes and ministers (“Pitt the Frog on the dung heap”, 1791) is a rough, but understandable comedy of positions, the ability to convey a strong grotesque character, portrait similarity. The true sphere of Thomas Rowland son (1756-1827) was a household satire. Charming landscapes in his easily tinted etchings populated by caricature figures that look particularly ridiculous in this environment. So, as if in passing, but the more sarcastically he ridiculed the fashion and habits of the high society, from costume to entertainment and love affairs. George Cruikshank (1792-1878) created several sharp sheets of shameful actions of the authorities in the 10-20s.
continuation should be.....
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