Rococo and Neoclassical Periods

The late 17th and early 18th centuries had been a period of growing national vigour in science, philosophy, political theory, and war. Now, after trailing behind the Continent for so long, England once more began to make an original contribution to the arts. The Palladian movement in architecture, started about 1715 and masterminded by Richard Boyle, 3d earl of Burlington, introduced a relatively pure, "post-baroque" classicism in the design of country houses — for example, at Holkham Hall (begun 1734), Norfolk, by William Kent — that was unique in Europe at the time. For the interiors of some houses, however, the Rococo style was adopted. A new informal type of garden design, the landscape or English garden was invented in the mid-18th century and was imitated all over the Continent. In painting, William Hogarth gained an international reputation and was the first English-born painter in oils to do so. His witty pictures and engravings — Marriage à la Mode, a set of six paintings, (1743-45; National Gallery, London), for example — captured the new secular, satirical, earthy yet morally concerned mood of the age.

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As national wealth accumulated further in the second half of the 18th century, the number of artists rose. A fashion for Italian art became widespread, and many English artists studied in Rome. Portraiture reached a peak in the work of Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough. A new, typically English genre emerged — sporting painting — whose greatest exponent was George Stubbs. This period also saw the rise of Landscape Painting in both oils (Gainsborough, Richard Wilson) and watercolours (Cozens family; Sandby family). The example of Italian Renaissance art prompted an attempt to revive historical painting, that is, the painting of themes from the Bible, classical mythology, and history, in a suitably grand style. Some of those, who did historical painting, such as Gavin Hamilton, were among the pioneers of international Neo-classicism. Such architects as Robert Adam and Sir William Chambers, and sculptors such as John Flaxman, were also contributors to this movement. The coming of age of English postmedieval art was crowned by the founding of the Royal Academy in 1768_; with Reynolds as its first president.

Neo-classicism, in view of its dependence on surviving Greek and Roman models, found expression chiefly in architecture and sculpture. Perhaps the most important single example of the style in English architecture was the Bank of England (1792-1823, rebuilt 1927) in London, by Sir John Soane. Neo-classical sculpture is well exemplified in Flaxman's tomb of the 18th earl of Mansfield in Westminster Abbey (1795-1801).

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Romantic and Victorian Periods

Painting after 1790 tended more toward ROMANTICISM, especially in landscape, where a bold style and an intense feeling for the moods of nature, demonstrated in the art of J. M. W. Turner, John Constable, and many others, made the English school of landscape painting the most vital in Europe. The visionary art of William Blake is another manifestation of romanticism. The fame of English art after the fall of Napoleon in 1815 is shown by the flattering reception of Sir Thomas Lawrence when he toured the Continent to paint the victorious allied sovereigns, generals, and statesmen.

Victorian art, backed by continuing economic prosperity and an expanding middle class, represents an almost equally vigorous development, even though it was less in touch with the Continent than 18th-century art had been. It found its main architectural expression in the Gothic Revival, seen in a renewal not only of church building but also in railway stations, such as Saint Pancras (begun 1860) in London, by Sir George Gilbert Scott, town halls, and the Houses of Parliament (begun 1836) by Sir Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin. The Crystal Palace by Sir Joseph Paxton, built of iron and glass in sections erected on site, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park, London, was an historically significant development.

Victorian popular painting consisted mainly of domestic and historical scenes charged with sentiment and telling an affecting story, but the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, founded in 1848 by Holman Hunt, Sir John Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and others, made more serious claims. These artists sought to combine the pure, unaffected spirit of the Italian artists before Raphael with a meticulous Realism.

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After 1860, Pre-Raphaelitism became dreamier, suffused with a nostalgia for the Middle Ages, and merged with the Arts and Crafts Movement led by William Morris. The late 19th century also produced one other artist of international importance, the Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh, whose Glasgow School of Art (1898-99) is perhaps the last building of real distinction erected in the British Isles. The recent revival of interest in architecture has brought the work of Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens back to prominence, particularly his romantic country houses and his enormous neo-classic Viceroy's House (1913-31; now President's House) in New Delhi, India.