Part 2
In the English graphics of the period under consideration are interesting not only cartoonists, she gave two original and very different masters of book illustration. One of them, Thomas Buick (1753-1828), introduced the technique of engraving on transverse sawing boards, which allowed the use of thin strokes of various directions. Buick illustrated the General History of the Four-Leggeds (1790), The History of British Birds (1797-1804), and a collection of fables (1818). Each carefully made image of an animal among bushes and herbs, birds among the branches is turned into a small, compact decoration of the printed page. The variety of natural forms for this artist is an inexhaustible source of poetic charm.
His peer William Blake (1757-1827) was a great poet, illustrator of his own works and books of other authors. The son of a poor stocking merchant, who had been trained by an engraver for a living at the age of fourteen, he himself was always very poor. He hated injustice and hated machines. As a young man Blake was close to the radical intelligentsia of the London Correspondent Society (1794), in his old age he met admirers in the face of several young landscape artists, of whom the most famous is Samuel Palmer (1805-1881). Most of his life Blake remained very lonely, but he was always an irreconcilable rebel, rising to the defense of humanity. He himself engraved both the text and drawings for his works, inventing special ways of convex etching, he himself printed it all sometimes in two or three colors, sometimes colored it by hand.
Blake inhabits his illustrated poems “Milton” (1804-1809), “Jerusalem” (1804-1820?), etc., created by his own imagination, which were in his strange dreams angry titans and gods, he prophesies the coming purifying shocks to society. He remains the same in the illustrations for Blair”s Tomb (1805), Job”s Book. (1818-1825), in watercolors on biblical subjects (1800-1805) and to the “Divine Comedy” by Dante (1825-1827). The more terrestrial content is distinguished only by its woodcuts to the “Pastorals” Virgil (1820-1821) with English romantic landscapes.
As an artist Blake was almost self-taught. And although he admired the classics, he himself in the drawing always had a certain primitiveness, angularity. And yet sometimes the images of Blake — for example, his “Satan calling for a rebellion of fallen angels” from the watercolors to Milton”s “Paradise Lost” (1807; London, Victoria and Albert Museum) — are impressive in their proud rebellion. Blake”s work, with its distracted rebellion, can be seen as an early stage of romanticism and as an anticipation of symbolism.
It should be noted that English visual art provides many different examples of the formation of romanticism and then the emergence of new trends in it, the same culmination in the development of this complex artistic movement is much more fully expressed by English literature.
Historical and mythological painting was especially revered at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. At the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, in the works of this genre is manifested as if a kind of aristocratic opposition to the common sense of the bourgeoisie — a passion for depicting all sorts of stunning, intimidating effects. This interpretation is even received by Shakespearean subjects in a series of paintings, performed by different artists for the publisher Boy dell and known for engravings from them (1803).
These effects were particularly inclined to the Swiss, who worked in England, Heinrich Fussley (1741-1825), who performed a number of paintings for Boydell, who often referred to the image of delusional nightmares. He had an influence on Blake, but his own creations had nothing to do with Blake”s active humanism. The whole plot can be brought closer to the so-called “Gothic novel”.
The largest portrait painters of the time Return and Laurence — two different lines of development of the romantic portrait, both of which are based on the traditions that have developed in the English portrait painting in the 18th century.
Henry Return (1756-1823) studied in his native Scotland, first with a jeweler, then with portraitist David Martin. On the advice of Reynolds, who maybe he worked for some time, Return went to Italy (1785-1787), then returned to Edinburgh. In the portrait of Sir John and Lady Clark, shown at the Royal Academy in 1792. (London, Bate”s collection), Return, as well as his senior English colleagues, can convey the individuality of each model, but in the grouping of figures, the way their environment is depicted — the foggy Scottish landscape — Return achieves more naturalness. Reborn”s images always have a lot of health, energy. In this respect, he looks like Reynolds and Romney, but goes beyond them in realism, with what it all is expressed (portraits of the artist”s son Henry on a gray pony, 1796, and the young Mrs. Scott-Moncrief, ok. 1814; Edinburgh, National Gallery; portrait of a cheerful old woman in a cap — Mrs. James Campbell, 1805-1812; Glasgow, collection of Thomas). But Reserve always occupies another — the features of the national Scottish character. With the industrial revolution there was a threat of a complete collapse of a kind of patriarchal way of life in Scotland. Love for it and the desire to capture and sing the healthy simplicity of life in the Scottish village is colored by the work of the great Scottish national poet Robert Burns. Thoughts about folk destinies worried contemporary Return Walter Scott. National Scottish character became the real theme of the best portraits of Return, such as monumental portraits in the growth of the elderly McNabe, the head of one of the clans, on the background of the mountains (1803-1813; England, private collection), and Colonel Alistair McDonnell of Gingerly (1800-1812; Edinburgh, National Gallery). McDonnell is painted against the backdrop of the castle”s rugged wall, with a horn and shield hanging on it; he is wearing a Scottish mountaineer”s military suit made of bright tartan (checkered fabric); he is supported by a rifle. For all his impassiveness, the portrait”s atmosphere is truthful, and the artist”s character is natural in his calm determination. This work is not just a story about the passing of the past; it is created to glorify the heritage of the unfailingly colorful, to glorify the strong, enduring characters forged by the history of the Scottish people. It is believed that McDonnell later became the prototype of one of the characters of the novel by Walter Scott “Waverly” — Fergus Minor. Return wrote with bold strokes of the brush, as they say, even without a preliminary drawing of coal. He has paintings, aged in a silver scale. Many of his portraits he built on the comparison of two or three strong specific tones, similar in their combinations to the colors of tartan: green and white, red and white, blue and yellow. In 1815, it was the first time that the tartan was painted, and in 1815, it was the first time that the tartan was painted. Return was elected a member of the Royal Academy, he came to London several times, but worked until the end of his life in Edinburgh.
Thomas Lauren (1769-1830) was a high-profile figure in his lifetime; he became an academician at the age of twenty-five and was president of the Academy from 1820 until the end of his days. Almost nothing is known about whom the skilled draftsman and painter studied with. In the interpretation of the portrait, he took a lot from Reynolds. This is evidenced at least by the early works of Laurence — a portrait of actress Eliza Warren (1790; New York, Metropolitan Museum) and Louvre portrait of banker John Julius Anger stein and his wife (1790-1792). However, instead of Reynolds” inspiration, we meet in people written by Laurence, possession of themselves, the habit of wearing a mask of social courtesy, external gloss, Lost this we will find in a very romantic by design portrait of the Princess of Wales, playing the harp (1802, London, Buckingham Palace).
After the defeat of Napoleon in 1814, Laurence was commissioned to paint portraits of the monarchs and ministers of the countries that made up the reactionary Holy Alliance (1815-1819; Windsor Castle).
continuation should be....