British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries

Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art / Cambridge University Press, 1992. Hardbound. NF/NF. Blue cloth with gold lettering; rose dj with color illustration; 407 pp. with mostly bw illustrations throughout;. Contents as follows: Introduction and notes to the reader -- Abbreviations for frequently cited periodicals -- Abbreviations for books -- Indices -- Titles -- Previous owners -- General index -- Concordances -- Old-new titles -- Old-new attributions -- Old-new dates -- New-old accession numbers -- List of artists Extensively annotated. British masterpieces of grand-style portraiture and landscape painting are explored in this volume. Portraits such as Thomas Gainsborough's Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, as well as pictures by George Romney and Sir Henry Raeburn, attest to the influence of Sir Anthony van Dyck's more sophisticated European style on artists of the period. John Constable's Wivenhoe Park, Essex and Joseph Mallord William Turner's Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Moonlight are some of the best examples of British art of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This volume is devoted to the paintings in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., that were produced by British artists, or by foreign artists who spent the greater part of their working lives in Britain, from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. Composed mainly of paintings acquired by such prominent nineteenth-century industrialists as Andrew Mellon and P.A.B. Widener, the core of this important collection is a series of portraits by such masters as Gainsborough, Lawrence, Raeburn, and Romney, who represent the "golden age" of British painting. Brilliant landscapes by Constable, Turner, and Wilson, among others, attest to another genre in which British artists have long excelled. Arranged alphabetically by artist, full catalogue entries articulate the history, style, content, and context of each work, with technical notes offering insight into the artists' working methods. The volume also contains introductory biographies of each artist, as well as an up-to-date bibliography for each painting.