An outline of British Painting

The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England dating from the late 15th and early 16th centuries to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that is usually regarded as beginning in Italy in the late 14th century . Renaissance style and ideas were slow in penetrating England, and the Elizabethan period in the second half of the 16th century is usually regarded as the height of the English Renaissance, which lasted until the mid 17th century, as Baroque style was also slow in reaching England.

England was very slow to produce visual arts in Renaissance styles, and the artists of the Tudor court were mainly imported foreigners until after the end of the Renaissance; Hans Holbein was the outstanding figure . English art was to be dominated by portraiture, and then later landscape art, for centuries to come. Though the form was developed in England by foreign artists, mostly Flemish like Lucas Horenbout, the somewhat undistinguished founder of the tradition, by the late 16th century natives such as Nicolas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver produced the finest work, even as the best producers of larger portraits in oil were still foreigners. The portrait miniature had spread all over Europe by the 18th century.

Baroque cultural movement. The movement is often identified with Absolutism, the Counter Reformation and Catholic Revival, but the existence of important Baroque art and architecture in non-absolutist and Protestant states throughout Western Europe underscores its widespread popularity. Most important and major painting during the period beginning around 1600 and continuing throughout the 17th century, and into the early 18th century is identified today as Baroque painting. Baroque art is characterized by great drama, rich, deep color, and intense light and dark shadows.

As opposed to Renaissance art, which usually showed the moment before an event took place, Baroque artists chose the most dramatic point, the moment when the action was occurring: Baroque art was meant to evoke emotion and passion instead of the calm rationality that had been prized during the Renaissance. Baroque painting in England was dominated by the presence of Rubens and van Dyck, who inspired an entire generation of portraitists. British sculpture was influenced equally by Italian and Flemish styles.

William Hogarth (10 November 1697 – 26 October 1764) was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects". Knowledge of his work is so pervasive that satirical political illustrations in this style are often referred to as "Hogarthian."

John William Waterhouse (baptised 6 April 1849; died 10 February 1917) was an English painter known for working in the Pre-Raphaelite style. He worked several decades after the breakup of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which had seen its heyday in the mid-nineteenth century, leading him to have gained the moniker of "the modern Pre-Raphaelite".Borrowing stylistic influences not only from the earlier Pre-Raphaelites but also from his contemporaries, the Impressionists,his artworks were known for their depictions of women from both ancient Greek mythology and Arthurian legend.

Born in Italy to English parents who were both painters, he later moved to London, where he enrolled in the Royal Academy of Art. He soon began exhibiting at their annual summer exhibitions, focusing on the creation of large canvas works depicting scenes from the daily life and mythology of ancient Greece. Later on in his career he came to embrace the Pre-Raphaelite style of painting despite the fact that it had gone out of fashion in the British art scene several decades before.

Although not as well known as earlier Pre-Raphaelite artists such as Dante Rossetti, John Millais and William Holman Hunt, Waterhouse's work is currently displayed at several major British art galleries, and the Royal Academy of Art organised a major retrospective of his work in 2009.

Thomas Gainsborough (christened 14 May 1727 – 2 August 1788) was an English portrait and landscape painter. He was born the youngest son of John Gainsborough, a weaver in Suffolk, and, in 1740, left home to study art in London with Hubert Gravelot, Francis Hayman, and William Hogarth. In 1746, he married Margaret Burr, and the couple became the parents of two daughters. He moved to Bath in 1759 where fashionable society patronized him, and he began exhibiting in London. In 1769, he became a founding member of the Royal Academy, but his relationship with the organization was thorny and he sometimes withdrew his work from exhibition. Gainsborough moved to London in 1774, and painted portraits of the King and Queen, but the King was obliged to name as royal painter Gainsborough's rival Joshua Reynolds. In his last years, Gainsborough painted relatively simple landscapes and is credited (with Richard Wilson) as the originator of the 18th century British landscape school. Gainsborough died of cancer in 1788 and is interred at St. Anne's Church, Kew, Surrey. He painted quickly and his later pictures are characterized by a light palette and easy strokes. He preferred landscapes to portraits. Cecil Kellaway portrayed Gainsborough in the 1945 film Kitty.

Margaret Burr (1728-1797)

The Blue Boy (1770). The Huntington, California.

Mr and Mrs William Hallett (1785).

John Constable (11 June 1776 – 31 March 1837) was an English Romantic painter. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for his landscape paintings of Dedham Vale, the area surrounding his home—now known as "Constable Country"—which he invested with an intensity of affection. "I should paint my own places best", he wrote to his friend John Fisher in 1821, "painting is but another word for feeling".

His most famous paintings include Dedham Vale of 1802 and The Hay Wain of 1821. Although his paintings are now among the most popular and valuable in British art, he was never financially successful and did not become a member of the establishment until he was elected to the Royal Academy at the age of 52. He sold more paintings in France than in his native England.

Weymouth Bay (c. 1816)

Wivenhoe Park (1816)

Dedham Vale (1802)

Nicholas Hilliard (c. 1547 – 7 January 1619) was an English goldsmith and limner best known for his portrait miniatures of members of the courts of Elizabeth I and James I of England. He mostly painted small oval miniatures, but also some larger cabinet miniatures, up to about ten inches tall, and at least two famous half-length panel portraits of Elizabeth. He enjoyed continuing success as an artist, and continuing financial troubles, for forty-five years. His paintings still exemplify the visual image of Elizabethan England, very different from that of most of Europe in the late sixteenth century. Technically he was very conservative by European standards, but his paintings are superbly executed and have a freshness and charm that has ensured his continuing reputation as "the central artistic figure of the Elizabethan age, the only English painter whose work reflects, in its delicate microcosm, the world of Shakespeare's earlier plays."

Miniature of Elizabeth I, 1572

If you stand in Trafalgar Square with your back to Nelson's Column, you will see a wide horizontal front in a classical style. It is the National Gallery . It has been in this building since 1838 which was built as the National Gallery to house the collection of Old Masters Paintings (38 paintings) offered to the nation by an English Private collector, Sir George Beamount. Today the picture galleries of the National Gallery of Art exhibit works of all the European schools of painting, which existed between the 13th and 19th centuries. The most famous works among them are ‘Venus and Cupid’ by Diego Velazquez, ‘Adoration of the Shepherds’ by Nicolas Poussin, ‘A Woman Bathing’ by Harmensz van Rijn Rembrandt, ‘Lord Heathfield’ by Joshua Reynolds, ‘Mrs Siddons’ by Thomas Gainsborough and many others.

Today the picture galleries of the National Gallery of Art exhibit works of all the European schools of painting, which existed between the 13th and 19th centuries. The most famous works among them are ‘Venus and Cupid’ by Diego Velazquez, ‘Adoration of the Shepherds’ by Nicolas Poussin, ‘A Woman Bathing’ by Harmensz van Rijn Rembrandt, ‘Lord Heathfield’ by Joshua Reynolds, ‘Mrs Siddons’ by Thomas Gainsborough and many others.

In 1897 the Tate Gallery was opened to house the more modern British paintings. Most of the National Gallery collections of British paintings were transferred to the Tate, and only a small collection of a few masterpieces is now exhibited at Trafalgar Square. Thus, the Tate Gallery exhibits a number of interesting collections of British and foreign modern painting and also modern sculpture.

The collection of Turner’s paintings at the Tate includes about 300 oils and 19,000 watercolours and drawings. He was the most traditional artist of his time as well as the most original: traditional in his devotion to the Old Masters and original in his creation of new styles. It is sometimes said that he prepared the way for the Impressionists.

The modern collection includes the paintings of Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall and Salvador Dali, Francis Bacon and Graham Sutherland, Peter Blake and Richard Hamilton, the chief pioneers of pop art in Great Britain. Henry Moore is a famous British sculptor whose works are exhibited at the Tate too. One of the sculptor's masterpieces - the ‘Reclining Figure’ - is at fees Headquarters of UNESCO in Paris.

The Photographers' Gallery was founded by Sue Davies, OBE in 1971 at 8 Great Newport Street, in a converted Lyon's Tea Bar. It was the first independent gallery in Britain devoted to photography. Tom Hopkinson, ex-editor of Picture Post, was appointed as the first chair of the Gallery’s Board of Trustees.

As the UK's primary venue for contemporary photography The Photographers’ Gallery has been instrumental in establishing photography as a serious art form internationally. 

The Gallery was the first public gallery in the country to exhibit key names in international photography, such as Juergen Teller (fashion), Robert Capa (photojournalism), Sebastião Salgado (documentary) and Andreas Gursky (contemporary art), and has been instrumental in establishing contemporary British photographers including Martin Parr and Corinne Day.

  The Photographers' Gallery is the largest public gallery in London dedicated to photography. From the latest emerging talent, to historical archives and established artists – it is the place to see photography in all its forms.

The Courtauld Gallery s one of the finest small museums in the world.

Its collection stretches from the early Renaissance into the 20th century and is particularly renowned for the unrivalled collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings.

The Gallery also holds an outstanding collection of drawings and prints and fine example of sculpture and decorative arts.

The gallery is at the heart of The Courtauld Institute of Art, one of the world’s leading centres for the study of art history and conservation. The collection is an exceptional resource for the Institute’s students, many of whom go on to fill prestigious international positions as curators, scholars, critics, artists and dealers.

The collection of The Courtauld Gallery is the result of a series of outstanding gifts and bequests by some of the leading collectors of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Samuel Courtauld and Count Antoine Seilern. This has created a collection of great depth and quality which retains some of the character of its private origins.

Museums

The British Museum was founded in 1753, the first national public museum in the world. From the beginning it granted free admission to all 'studious and curious persons'. Visitor numbers have grown from around 5,000 a year in the eighteenth century to nearly 6 million today.

The origins of the British Museum lie in the will of the physician, naturalist and collector, Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753).

Over his lifetime, Sloane collected more than 71,000 objects which he wanted to be preserved intact after his death. So he bequeathed the whole collection to King George II for the nation in return for a payment of £20,000 to his heirs.

The British Museum opened to the public on 15 January 1759 . It was first housed in a seventeenth-century mansion, Montagu House, in Bloomsbury on the site of today's building. Entry was free and given to ‘all studious and curious Persons’.

In 1823 the gift to the nation by George IV of his father's library (the King's Library) prompted the construction of today's quadrangular building designed by Sir Robert Smirke (1780–1867).

  During the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Museum has continued to expand its public facilities with the opening of four new permanent galleries in 2008/9:

- Chinese ceramics

- Clocks and watches

- Europe AD 1050–1540

- The Tomb-chapel of Nebamun: Ancient Egyptian life and death

The Museum of London tells the story of one of the world’s greatest cities and its people. It cares for more than two million objects in its collections and attracts over 400,000 visitors per year. It holds the largest archaeological archive in Europe. The Museum has entered a new era with the launch of our £20million Galleries of Modern London in May 2010.

The London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre (LAARC) and the Centre for Human Bioarchaeology form part of the Museum of London’s Department of Archives and Archaeological Collections.

Imperial War Museum is unique in its coverage of conflicts, especially those involving Britain and the Commonwealth, from the First World War to the present day. We seek to provide for, and to encourage, the study and understanding of the history of modern war and 'wartime experience'. We are proud to be regarded as essential sights of London, Cambridgeshire and Greater Manchester.

IWM is a family of five museums: IWM London; IWM North in Trafford, Greater Manchester; IWM Duxford near Cambridge; the Churchill War Rooms in Whitehall, London; and the historic ship HMS Belfast, moored in the Pool of London on the River Thames.

The London Film Museum is the only film museum of its kind in Great Britain, supporting the Film Industry and the talent within it. We are self supporting by way of a minimal entry price, reinvesting back into the museum and within the community, creating a number of local area initiatives that also form an important part of the school curriculum. 

The London Film Museum (previously The Movieum) was founded and created by Jonathan Sands in February 2008 following the success of Star Wars The Exhibition to which he co-promoted at the same venue the previous year. About 80% of the museum’s collection is from his private archive.