A Guide to Eighteenth-Century Art

Linda Walsh

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781118475553
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Kunst
• Subtopic: Kunstgeschichte

A Guide to Eighteenth-Century Art offers an introductory overview of the art, artists, and artistic movements of this exuberant period in European art, and the social, economic, philosophical, and political debates that helped shape them.

• Covers both artistic developments and critical approaches to the period by leading contemporary scholars

• Uses an innovative framework to emphasize the roles of tradition, modernity, and hierarchy in the production of artistic works of the period

• Reveals the practical issues connected with the production, sale, public and private display of art of the period

• Assesses eighteenth-century art's contribution to what we now refer to as 'modernity'

• Includes numerous illustrations, and is accompanied by online resources examining art produced outside Europe and its relationship with the West, along with other useful resources

1
Institutional Hierarchies: Art and Craft

Establishing a Fine Art Tradition: The Spread of Academies

The French Encyclopedia or Philosophical Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts and Crafts (Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, hereafter the Encyclopédie), published between 1751 and 1772 in 17 volumes of text and 11 of plates, contained articles spanning the full range of human knowledge and activity. The article “Art” was careful to distinguish between on the one hand the liberal arts (also referred to in this period as the “fine” or “beautiful” arts), and on the other the “mechanical” arts such as the manual crafts of glassmaking, weaving or ceramics. From late antiquity, the “liberal arts” had included grammar, rhetoric, dialectic (the debating of different points of view to find reasoned truth), arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. In 1746 the Abbé Charles Batteux (1713–1780) had established in his book The Fine Arts Reduced to a Common Principle (Les Beaux‐Arts réduits à un même principe) a tradition of defining as “fine” the arts of poetry, music, painting, sculpture and architecture. Dance, engraving and landscape gardening were also often included in this category, but anything produced primarily for functional, ornamental or decorative purposes; for example, over‐door, carriage or fire‐screen paintings, was excluded.

Journeyman artists catered for a large market in decorative paintings, textiles and sacred images for homes and churches, and objects of domestic folk art were popular. Many of these have not survived for us to study, but they are valued increasingly highly: the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has, for example, some good samples of eighteenth‐century needlework. These “jobbing” artists created most of the visual culture known to those living outside cities, museums and palaces. The liberal arts were regarded principally as a product of the mind, the “mechanical” of the hand. An association with laborious physical effort (dirty hands), commerce and mass production had tainted for the intelligentsia the reputation of the mechanical arts. The liberal arts had, by contrast, benefited from their association with the dignity of human intellect. The Encyclopédie was in the vanguard of those calling for a change of attitude, and Denis Diderot (1713–1784), author of the article “Art” as well as one of the co‐editors of the Encyclopédie proclaimed:

Craftsmen have thought of themselves as contemptible because we have held them in contempt; let us teach them to think better of themselves.

(Diderot and d’Alembert, 2013; I:717, my translation)

This heartfelt challenge to prejudice reflects eighteenth‐century European concerns with status and hierarchy. These pitted the claims of the intellect and of knowledge (of history, literature, classical and Christian art and culture) against those of manual dexterity; study of the humanities against the messy materials of art; the disinterested artist against the “sordid” seeker of financial gain; and the unique products of genius and the imagination against the mass‐produced. Such prejudices were often based on false assumptions and oppositions. “Craft” products could demonstrate originality; fine or liberal artists were often concerned with copying past art and with financial gain. In eighteenth‐century Europe, however, theoretical statements crystallized into powerful discourse as they were institutionally strengthened and disseminated. By the end of the century the term “artist” was most closely associated with the liberal or fine arts. Prestigious academies of art, especially those conferred with “royal” status, defined their interests primarily in opposition to those of craftsmen. They were dedicated to the gentrification and professionalization of artists (Hoock, 2003, 2–7).

The physical craft of painting (mixing colors, preparing canvases, basic painting and drawing techniques) and sculpture (carving and casting) were taught traditionally through studio and workshop apprenticeships (Hallett, 2014, 41–42). The artist Henri Testelin (1616–1695), Secretary and Professor at the Académie royale, decried the fact that before the foundation of this Academy, painters and sculptors had sunk to the level of mere church decorators (Duro, 1997, 10–11). In 1685 the writer William Aglionby (c.1642–1705) lamented the fact that the British showed so little serious interest in art and treated their artists as “little nobler than Joyners or Carpenters” (cited in Bindman, 2008, 195). In the Biographical History (1769) by the biographer, clergyman and print collector James Granger (1723–1776), consisting of engraved portrait heads of famous Englishmen up to and including the Glorious Revolution of 1688, “Painters” are ranked alongside “Artificers” and “Mechanics,” and below “Physicians, Poets, and other ingenious Persons” (cited in Pointon, 1993, 56). Artists in England were often ranked socially alongside carpenters, farriers and pin‐makers (Brewer, 1997, 290). In Germany Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) admired the neoclassical designs of Flaxman, while deprecating their use in the ceramics produced by Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795):

…the English, with their modern “antique” pottery and wares made of paste, their gaudy black and red art, gather piles of money from all over the globe: but if one is truthful one gets no more out of [this] antiquity than from a porcelain bowl, pretty wallpaper or a pair of shoe buckles.

(Italian Journey (1786–1788), cited in Brewer, 1997, xxiii)

The massive increase in academies of art throughout the eighteenth century responded to the desire for respectability in occupations that had previously enjoyed a more ambiguous status. In this respect, art underwent a similar process to that of other professionalized activities such as medicine.

The term “academy” had first been applied to informal gatherings of philosophers and scholars held by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. It was later applied in the early Renaissance to informal gatherings of artists and amateurs (those with a serious, scholarly interest in art) held in artists’ studios or collectors’ homes, sometimes supported by influential patrons such as members of the Medici family. The first official academy established on more formal lines, to include training, informed discussion, exhibiting opportunities and the representation of artists’ interests with a wider public, was the Academy of the Arts of Drawing or Accademia del Disegno in Florence, later known as the Accademia di Belle Arti, when it merged with other drawing academies in the city. Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) assisted with the inauguration of this academy in 1563, in an attempt to raise the status of artists above that of craft guild members. However the academy incorporated a guild for the benefit of all (not just exclusively the best) artists and continued to offer some training in craft skills. Some recent accounts have played down its success in establishing a higher status for fine artists (Hughes, 1986, 50–61). This was followed in 1593 by the establishment of the Academy of Saint Luke (Accademia di San Luca) in Rome, which implemented more successfully a methodical art education embracing the study of anatomy, geometry, perspective, life drawing, mathematics, proportion, architecture and debates on theory (Percy, 2000, 462–463). The Accademia di San Luca remained the only site of life‐drawing classes in Rome until the foundation in 1754 of the city’s Life Drawing Academy (Accademia del Nudo) set up by Pope Benedict XIV (in office 1740–1758) as an affiliated institution and as a means of bolstering such provision (MacDonald, 1989, 77–91; Percy, 2000, 461). Papal support for these and other Roman academies led to their dominance in public commissions and they received many visiting foreign students, especially those who lacked such facilities in their own countries (Barroero and Susinno, 2000, 49). An academy was established in Milan in 1620.

The Académie royale in Paris (established in 1648) was greatly influenced by its Italian forebears. It benefited from the active support, including funding for salaried posts, of Jean‐Baptiste Colbert (1619–1683), the minister of Louis XIV (reigned 1643–1715) in charge of Fine Arts policy. It enjoyed a virtual monopoly in France over the teaching of “elevated” art, as well as the most prestigious royal commissions. It offered artists the opportunity to exhibit in regular Salons or public exhibitions, and established the paradigm for all subsequent European institutions in the “academic tradition” that aspired to teach and support the visual liberal arts. Its influence spread further through the establishment in 1666 of a partner institution, the Académie de France à Rome (the French Academy in Rome), where its best students were awarded scholarships in order to study at first hand ancient, Renaissance and seventeenth‐century works recommended as models of excellence. A number of art schools and wealthy patrons in other European countries such as the Netherlands and Poland sponsored artists to study at the Académie royale.

The influence of the Académie royale in Paris and of its British equivalent, the Royal Academy of Arts founded in 1768, was extensive throughout the eighteenth century. Both of these institutions, however, were preceded by other groups and societies established to protect the interests and extend the expertise of artists. In France the Académie royale had originated in power struggles in the 1660s between the Maîtrise (a guild representing since the Middle Ages craftsmen of all kinds, including painters) and brevétaires, artists privileged and protected by the court and allowed to operate outside guild restrictions. The foundation of the Académie royale eventually established some clear distinctions; for example, academicians were not allowed to keep shops, “tainted” by association with commerce (Crow, 1985, 23–25). The ground had already been prepared for the craft–fine art distinction through the formation, in early seventeenth‐century France, of a number of private academies, salons and learned societies encouraging intellectual debates about the content and form of the arts. Generous patronage from the royal court and the Catholic Church had rewarded the talents of history painters versed in antique art and educated partly through visits to Italy.

Prior to the foundation of the Royal Academy in London, informal societies and academies had offered artists support with their work. From the late seventeenth century gatherings in London taverns and coffee houses had brought artists into regular contact with collectors, connoisseurs and antiquarians with the wealth, knowledge and social status necessary to support and promote artistic careers (Hallett, 2014, 25–32). This was the case with the Society of the Virtuosi of Saint Luke, a forerunner of the Royal Academy in London with an emphasis on connoisseurship and studying old masters (Hargraves, 2005, 8). Founded in 1689 (and active until 1743) its members included practicing artists and lovers of art. It held meetings in taverns, where portraits and architectural drawings were discussed and some works of art raffled (Bignamini, 1991, 21–44; Figure 1.1). The Rose and Crown Club (c.1704–1745) was a “conversations Clubb [sic]” and almost a parody of the Virtuosis that was active in promoting the genre of the conversation piece or informal group portrait (Bignamini, 1991, 44–61; Hargraves, 2005, 9). A private academy (or fee‐paying art school) in Great Queen Street was set up in 1711–1720 by a group of artists, its first Governor being Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646–1723). This included a life class (Bignamini, 1991, 61–82). Between 1720 and 1768, private academies were set up in Britain not only in London but also in other cities including Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Birmingham (Bignamini, 1989, 443–444). In Edinburgh, the Cape Club was established in 1764 in order to bring together actors, painters, poets and musicians. Some of its members later joined the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, founded in 1781.

Figure 1.1 Gawen Hamilton (1698–1737): A Conversation of Virtuosis … at the Kings Arms, oil on canvas, 87.6 × 111.5 cm, 1735. National Portrait Gallery, London.

Source: © National Portrait Gallery, London.

Such societies were “social formations” in the Marxian sense that contemporary historical, social and market conditions played a key role in their development. They were often founded on and helped to disseminate a discourse of sociability, politeness, gentility and refinement (Myrone, 2008, 196), and prepared the ground for artistic markets, practices and audiences that continued throughout the eighteenth century to provide a wider context for artistic production than that offered by academies of high art. This issue will be discussed further in Chapter 3, but it is perhaps worth mentioning here that communities such as the Society of Dilettanti founded in the early 1730s as a society of art patrons, connoisseurs and Grand Tourists, continued throughout the eighteenth century to bring together over the fine wines and dining tables of gentlemen’s clubs artists, connoisseurs and other arbiters of taste. This particular society sponsored research into antiquities and granted practical support to artists in the form, for example, of travel grants to Greece and Rome.

An important early institution in London was the Saint Martin’s Lane Academy, which brought together members of these early groups and remained active until the Royal Academy was established. This was set up in 1720 by the artists John Vanderbank (1694–1739) and Louis Chéron (1660–1725), and formally re‐established in 1735 by Hogarth (Bignaminim 1991, 83–124). It offered training in anatomy and drawing, including the copying of abstract shapes, parts of the body and of the whole body. Unlike the later Royal Academy it did not give precedence to an Italianate idealizing style, but placed emphasis on the close observation of nature. Under Hogarth’s leadership it offered an alternative to continental academic approaches: the artist disliked intens...