Painting with Fire - Sir Joshua Reynolds, Photography, and the Temporally Evolving Chemical Object (Hardcover)

Painting with Fire shows how experiments with chemicals known to change visibly over the course of time transformed British pictorial arts of the long eighteenth century--and how they can alter our conceptions of photography today. As early as the 1670s, experimental philosophers at the early Royal Society of London had studied the visual effects of dynamic combustibles. By the 1770s, chemical volatility became central to the ambitious paintings of Sir Joshua Reynolds, premier portraitist and first president of Britain's Royal Academy of Arts. Valued by some critics for changing in time (and thus, for prompting intellectual reflection on the nature of time), Reynolds's unstable chemistry also prompted new techniques of chemical replication among Matthew Boulton, James Watt, and other leading industrialists. In turn, those replicas of chemically decaying academic paintings were rediscovered in the mid-nineteenth century and claimed as origin points in the history of photography. Tracing the long arc of chemically produced and reproduced art from the 1670s through the 1860s, the book reconsiders early photography by situating it in relationship to Reynolds's replicated paintings and the literal engines of British industry. By following the chemicals, Painting with Fire remaps familiar stories about academic painting and pictorial experiment amid the industrialization of chemical knowledge.

General

Imprint:	University of Chicago Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	February 2020
Authors:	Matthew C. Hunter
Dimensions:	254 x 178 x 24mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover - Cloth over boards
Pages:	304
ISBN-13:	978-0-226-39025-3
Categories:	Books > Arts & Architecture > Photography & photographs > General Books > Professional & Technical > Technology: general issues > History of engineering & technology Books > Arts & Architecture > Art forms, treatments & subjects > Painting & paintings > General
LSN:	0-226-39025-X
Barcode:	9780226390253

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