While there have been monographs on British artist-travellers in
the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, there has been no
equivalent survey of what the writer, Henry Blackburn, described as
'artistic travel' a hundred years later. By 1900, the 'Grand
Tourist' became a 'globe-trotter' equipped with a camera, and
despite the development of 'knapsack photography', visual recording
by the old media of oil and watercolour on-the-spot sketching
remained ever-popular. Kenneth McConkey's exciting new book
explores the complex reasons for this in a series of chapters that
take the reader from southern Europe to north Africa, the Middle
East, India and Japan revealing many artist-travellers whose lives
and works are scarcely remembered today. He alerts us to a
generation of painters, trained in academies and artists' colonies
in Europe that acted as creches for those would go on to explore
life and landscape further afi eld. The seeds of wanderlust were
sown in student years in places where tuition was conducted in
French or German, and models were often Spanish, Italian, or North
African. At fi rst the countries of western Europe were explored
afresh and cities like Tangier became artists' haunts. Training
that prioritized plein air naturalism led to the common belief that
a well-schooled young painter should be capable of working
anywhere, and in any circumstances. At the height of British
Imperial power, and facilitated by engineering and technological
advance, the burgeoning tourism and travel industry rippled into
the production of specialist goods and services that included a
dedicated publishing sector. Essential to this phenomenon, the
artist-traveller was often commissioned by London dealers to supply
themed exhibitions that coincided with contracts for
colour-illustrated books recording those exotic parts of the world
that were newly available to the tourist, traveller, explorer,
emigrant, or colonial civil servant. These works were not, however,
value-neutral, and in some instances, they directly address
Orientalism, Imperialism, and the Post-Colonial, in pictures that
hybridize, or mimic indigenous ways of life. Behind each there is a
range of interesting questions. Does experience live up to
expectation? Is the street more desirable than the ancient ruin or
sacred site? How were older ideas of the 'picturesque' reborn in an
age when 'Grand Tours' once confi ned to Italy, now encompassed the
globe? McConkey's wideranging survey hopes to address some of these
issues. This richly illustrated book explores key sites visited by
artist-travellers and investigates artists including Frank
Brangwyn, Mary Cameron, Alfred East, John Lavery, Arthur Melville,
Mortimer Menpes, as well as other under-researched British artists.
Drawing the strands together, it redefi nes the picturesque, by
considering issues of visualization and verisimilitude,
dissemination and aesthetic value.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
