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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 November 2009
In studies of English artistic culture of the first half of the eighteenth century, the notion of art-historical consciousness has attracted little attention, in contrast to an immense interest in issues of picture consumption and taste. This article provides a new perspective on the rise of art-historical consciousness by examining publications associated with the Raphael Cartoons, then at Hampton Court. Through a wide range of engraved reproductions and written commentaries, the Cartoons not only came to be the most visible Old Master paintings in England in the period, but also became central to an on-going process whereby ideas about painting were formulated in terms of artistic standards and historical development. The Cartoons publications illustrate a trend in which works of art formerly enjoyed privately by royal or aristocratic collectors became increasingly accessible to wider audiences. In consequence, ideas associated with these works penetrated diverse levels of society and art-historical consciousness assumed a public value.
This article is based on part of a chapter from my D.Phil. thesis, ‘Towards the construction of an artistic canon: publishing painting in England, c. 1660–1760s’ (Oxford, 2008), supervised by Joanna Innes and Linda Whiteley, to whom I am immensely grateful. An early version was presented to the Graduate Seminar in History 1680–1850 at Oxford in November 2007; questions and comments from the audience are greatly appreciated. I also wish to thank the two anonymous referees and the editor for their helpful comments and suggestions.
1 Iain Pears, The discovery of painting: the growth of interest in the arts in England, 1680–1768 (New Haven, CT, and London, 1988); Louise Lippincott, Selling art in Georgian London: the rise of Arthur Pond (New Haven, CT, and London, 1983); John Brewer, The pleasures of the imagination: the emergence of English culture in the eighteenth century (London, 1997).
2 See, for example, Robert W. Jones, Gender and the formation of taste in eighteenth-century Britain: the analysis of beauty (Cambridge and New York, NY, 1998); Peter de Bolla, The education of the eye: painting, landscape, and architecture in eighteenth-century Britain (Stanford, CA, 2003).
3 John Barrell, The political theory of painting from Reynolds to Hazlitt: ‘the body of the public’ (New Haven, CT, and London, 1986); Stephen Copley, ‘The fine arts in eighteenth-century polite culture’, in J. Barrell, ed., Painting and the politics of culture: new essays on British art, 1700–1850 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 13–37.
4 I have purposely chosen to use the term ‘art-historical consciousness’ rather than ‘connoisseurial consciousness’ as I wish to avoid entanglements with the word ‘connoisseur’ which became a target for satire soon after its adoption in English contexts, as well as to suggest a new way of considering eighteenth-century ideas about painting. For an account of the fortune of ‘connoisseur’, see Mount, Harry, ‘The monkey with the magnifying glass: constructions of the connoisseur in eighteenth-century Britain’, Oxford Art Journal, 29 (2006), pp. 167–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Attempts at cataloguing English painters did appear, notably in Bainbrigg Buckeridge's ‘An essay towards an English-School, with the lives and characters of above 100 painters’, appended to the English translation of Roger de Piles's treatise, The art of painting, and the lives of the painters (London, 1706). Subsequent discussions on artistic standards, however, mostly referred to continental masters.
6 Clare Haynes offers another perspective on the importance of the Raphael Cartoons as a capital example of Catholic pictures being naturalized in Protestant England; see her Pictures and popery: art and religion in England, 1660–1760 (Ashgate, 2006), ch. 3, pp. 46–73.
7 Antony Griffiths, The print in Stuart Britain, 1603–1689 (London, 1998); Blackett-Ord, Carol and Turner, Simon, ‘Early mezzotints: prints published by Richard Tompson and Alexander Browne’, Walpole Society, 70 (2008), pp. 1–206.Google Scholar
8 Griffiths, A., ‘Early mezzotint publishing in England – I: John Smith, 1652–1743’, Print Quarterly, 6 (1989), pp. 242–57Google Scholar. For Cooper, see Timothy Clayton, ‘Edward Cooper’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (Oxford, 2004).
9 Timothy Clayton begins his account of serious print publishing in England with projects to engrave the Cartoons, The English print, 1688–1802 (New Haven, CT, and London, 1997), ch. 2, ‘This noble undertaking: prints for virtuosi’, pp. 49–74.
10 See John Shearman, Raphael's Cartoons in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen, and the tapestries for the Sistine chapel (London, 1972); Arline Meyer, Apostles in England: Sir James Thornhill and the legacy of Raphael's tapestry cartoons (New York, NY, 1996).
11 B. Mandeville, The fable of the bees: or, private vices, publick benefit: with an essay on charity and charity-schools: and a search into the nature of society (3rd edn, London, 1724), p. 374.
12 See Martin Rosenberg, Raphael and France: the artist as paradigm and symbol (University Park, PA, 1995); C. Goldstein, ‘French identity in the realm of Raphael’, and G. Perini, ‘Raphael's European fame in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, in M. Hall, ed., The Cambridge companion to Raphael (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 237–60, 261–75.
13 Richard Graham, A short account of the most eminent painters both ancient and modern (London, 1695), p. 270. It was appended to John Dryden's translation of Du Fresnoy's De arte graphica.
14 For the development of academies in England, see Ilaria Bignamini, ‘The “academy of art” in Britain before the foundation of the Royal Academy in 1768’, in Anton W. A. Boschloo, ed., The academies of art (The Hague, 1989), pp. 434–50. In his recent work on Hogarth, Robin Simon discusses English responses to French academic practice and the role of Raphael's Cartoons in this context; see Hogarth, France and British art: the rise of the arts in eighteenth-century Britain (London, 2007), passim.
15 Clarke's print collection has been catalogued and can be accessed online: http://prints.worc.ox.ac.uk/. Clayton, Timothy, ‘The print collection of George Clarke at Worcester College, Oxford’, Print Quarterly, 9 (1992), pp. 123–41Google Scholar.
16 Timothy Clayton rightly claims: ‘If we seek to understand the meaning and influence of works of art in this period it is to prints that we should turn first’. The English print, 1688–1802, p. xi.
17 Spectator, 226 (19 Nov. 1711), in The Spectator (8 vols., London, 1712–15), iii, p. 323.
18 Thomas Atkinson, A conference between a painter and an engraver (London, 1736), pp. 6–7.
19 Some of the Cartoons had been the subject of prints by Italian and French printmakers. The models used in these cases were drawings or tapestries. See the typescript catalogue of the exhibition, ‘From Marcantonio Raimondi to the postcard: prints of the Raphael Cartoons’, held in the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1995.
20 Vertue, George, ‘Note-books, iii’, Walpole Society, 22 (1934), pp. 15Google Scholar, 42. Vertue's note-books i–vi were published in Walpole Society, 18 (1930), 20 (1932), 22 (1934), 24 (1936), 26 (1938), 30 (1950) (henceforth Vertue i–vi). Vertue mentioned that Jervas had access to Hampton Court because of his friendship with Mr Norrice, keeper of pictures and frame maker to the crown. See also Clayton, ‘The print collection of George Clarke’, p. 132.
21 See Clayton, The English print, 1688–1802, pp. 36–9.
22 The Death of Ananias and Paul and Barnabas at Lystra.
23 Vertue iii, pp. 15, 42.
24 Portrait prints and maps had been advertised in newspapers in the second half of the seventeenth century. See C. H. L. George, ‘Topical portrait print advertising in London newspapers and the term catalogues: 1660–1714’ (Ph.D. thesis, Durham, 2005); S. Tyacke, London map-sellers, 1660–1720: a collection of advertisements for maps placed in the London Gazette, 1668–1719 (Tring, 1978).
25 It was also advertised in the Daily Courant (22 May 1707) and in the London Gazette (6–10 Nov. 1707). Arline Meyer does not mention this advertisement, and mistakes the set advertised by Henry Overton in the Tatler of 1709 for that by Gribelin, Apostles in England, p. 23.
26 Vertue vi, p. 186.
27 Ibid., p. 184.
28 For Gribelin's life and a catalogue of his entire works, see O'Connell, S., ‘Simon Gribelin (1661–1733) printmaker and metal-engraver’, Print Quarterly, 2 (1985), pp. 27–38.Google Scholar
29 Vertue vi, p. 186. The print was later prefixed to William Parsons's English translation of André Félibien's treatise Tent of Darius explain'd: or the queens of Persia at the feet of Alexander (London, 1703).
30 Shaftesbury commissioned Paolo de Matteis to execute the painting on the basis of ideas articulated in his treatise. The painting is now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
31 Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, ed. Lawrence E. Klein (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 150–1.
32 London Gazette, 12–15 Nov. 1709; Tatler, 69, 15–17 Sept. 1709.
33 See T. Clayton, ‘Henry Overton’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (Oxford, 2004).
34 A catalogue of maps and prints from off copper-plates which are printed and sold by Henry Overton (London, 1717), pp. 3, 24.
35 For the Virtuosi of St Luke, see Bignamini, Ilaria, ‘Art institutions in London, 1689–1768’, Walpole Society, 54 (1988), pp. 19–148.Google Scholar
36 See John Bowles's 1728 catalogue, p. 31 and his 1753 catalogue, p. 85.
37 Vertue vi, pp. 186–7. Robin Simon notes that it was John Talman, an Englishman actively involved in the artistic scene in Italy, who suggested that Nicolas Dorigny should engrave the Cartoons; see Hogarth, France and British art, p. 15.
38 Horace Walpole, A catalogue of engravers, who have been born, or resided in England (Strawberry-Hill, 1763), p. 109; Clayton, The English print, 1688–1802, p. 49.
39 Vertue vi, p. 187.
40 Rev. William Gunn, Cartonensia: or, an historical and critical account of the tapestries, in the palace of the Vatican; copied from the designs of Raphael of Urbino (London, 1831), p. 25.
41 Bignamini, ‘Art institutions in London, 1689–1768’, p. 64.
42 See Jean H. Hagstrum, The sister arts: the tradition of literary pictorialism and English poetry from Dryden to Gray (Chicago, IL, 1958); J. S. Malek, The arts compared: an aspect of eighteenth-century British aesthetics (Detroit, IL, 1974).
43 Spectator, 226 (19 Nov. 1711), iii, pp. 323–4.
44 Ibid.
45 Vertue iii, p. 11.
46 Vertue vi, p. 187.
47 It was listed in John Bowles's 1753 catalogue.
48 London Journal, 137 (10 Mar. 1722), p. 4.
49 See their 1754 catalogue, pp. 15, 38.
50 See H. J. S. Howard, ‘The English illustrated Bible in the eighteenth century’ (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford, 2005), p. 123.
51 Ibid., p. 91.
52 See Clayton, The English print, 1688–1802.
53 For Pond and Knapton's publications, see Lippincott, Selling art in Georgian London, pp. 128–48. Studies of John Boydell have focused on his commissioning and publishing of the Shakespeare Gallery in the 1780s and 1790s; see Sven H. A. Bruntjen, John Boydell, 1719–1804: a study of art patronage and publishing in Georgian London (London, 1985), for an account of Boydell's early career.
54 Spectator, 226 (19 Nov. 1711), iii, p. 322.
55 For the theological content of the Cartoons and its relevance to religious climate in early eighteenth-century England, see Meyer, Apostles in England, pp. 67–9.
56 Richardson shortly developed the method of judging painting into a ‘science’ in his Two discourses (London, 1719). For Richardson's life and works, see Carol Gibson-Wood, Jonathan Richardson: art theorist of the English Enlightenment (New Haven, CT, and London, 2000).
57 Jonathan Richardson, An essay on the theory of painting, in The works of Mr. Jonathan Richardson, facsimile of the 1773 edition (Hildesheim, 1969), p. 28.
58 Ibid., pp. 52–3.
59 Ibid., p. 62.
60 Ibid., pp. 62–3.
61 Jonathan Richardson Sr himself never went to the continent. He sent his son, Jonathan Richardson Jr there, and the Account was composed by Richardson Sr based on his son's notes taken on the tour.
62 Richardson, An account (London, 1722), p. 94.
63 Ibid., pp. 250–1. Richardson's assertion that Raphael's Cartoons at Hampton Court were superior to Raphael's Stanze in the Vatican attracted attack by Nicholas Vleughels, the director of the Académie de France in Rome; see Simon, Hogarth, France and British art, p. 156.
64 See Dickey, S., ‘The passions and Raphael's Cartoons in eighteenth-century British art’, Marsyas, 22 (1983–5), pp. 33–46Google Scholar; Meyer, Apostles in England, pp. 52–67; Krysmanski, B., ‘Benjamin Ralph's School of Raphael (1759): praise for Hogarth and a direct source for Reynolds’, British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 24 (2001), pp. 15–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
65 The plates had first been published in 1722 as Recueil de XC Têtes, tirées des Sept Cartons de Actes des Apôtres, peints par Raphl. Urbin.
66 For the Society of Artists, see Matthew Hargraves, Candidates for fame: the Society of Artists of Great Britain, 1760–1791 (New Haven, CT, and London, 2005).
67 A description of the Cartons of Raphael Urbin, in the Queen's Palace (London, 1764), advertisement.
68 It was listed as no. 3 among a total of sixteen drawing books advertised in pp. 7 and 8 of The compleat drawing-book (London, 1755) published by Robert Sayer.
69 The price was listed in John Boydell's 1773 catalogue, p. 49.
70 There were several English versions of Le Brun's expressions. The earliest is The conference of Monsieur Le Brun … upon expression, general and particular (London, 1701). For Le Brun's ideas and influence, see J. Montagu, The expression of the passions: the origin and influence of Charles Le Brun's Conférence sur l'expression générale et particulière (New Haven, CT, and London, 1994).
71 The school of Raphael: or, the student's guide to expression in historical painting (London, 1759), Introduction, p. 2.
72 Meyer points out that this engraving was Hogarth's ‘angry response to the success of two sets of caricature prints that Pond published between 1736 and 1742’. Apostles in England, p. 64 n. 189. For Pond, see Lippincott, Selling art in Georgian London, p. 134.
73 See Ronald Paulson, Hogarth's graphic works (3rd rev. edn, London, 1989), no. 264; H. Walpole, Anecdotes of painting in England (4 vols., Twickenham, 1765–80), iv, p. 22; Krysmanski, ‘Benjamin Ralph's School of Raphael’, p. 26. For Thornhill's copying of the Cartoons, see Meyer, Apostles in England.
74 G. Bickham, Deliciæ Britannicæ (London, 1742), p. iii.
75 A description of the Cartoons at Hampton-Court (London, 1758), pp. 67–8.
76 A description of the Cartons of Raphael Urbin, in the Queen's Palace (London, 1764), p. 17.
77 An historical and chronological series of the most eminent painters (London, 1739), p. 18.
78 Following Roger de Piles's opinion, criticism of Raphael focused on his deficiency in colouring. Even Jonathan Richardson did not fail to acknowledge this.
79 J. G. Cooper, Letters concerning taste (London, 1755), p. 24.
80 Roger de Piles awarded Raphael and Rubens an equal score of 65 out of 80 in his ‘balances des peintres’ in Cours de peinture par principes (Paris, 1708), which was published in English as The principles of painting (London, 1743).
81 Rubens's Luxembourg Gallery depicting the life of Marie de Medici did inspire the print-seller Thomas Bowles to initiate a series of prints of the Most remarkable transactions of the reign of Charles I, published in 1728, see Clayton, The English print, 1688–1802, pp. 56–7.
82 Reynolds, Discourses on art, ed. Robert R. Wark (New Haven, CT, and London, 1997), pp. 59–60, and passim.
