London Exhibitions of Contemporary Art, 1760-1782: The impact on landscape painting and its reception

The institution of annual exhibitions of modern British art has been accredited with the initiation of a consumer-led commercial market which obviated the need for patronage. I argue that the simplistic acceptance that exhibitions were successful in establishing a market for landscape painting between 1760 and 1782 cannot be substantiated. However, two overtly mercantile initiatives, an auction of contemporary British art in 1763 and the subsequent concession to allow exhibitors to mark their work for sale from 1764, did initiate a limited retail market centred on exhibitions. Although these commercial opportunities were embraced by some landscape painters, I argue that this market was no substitute for patronage which remained important. George Barret and Richard Wilson, founder members of the Royal Academy, marked a selection of their exhibits for sale. I propose they resorted to this commercial practice only when commissions failed to provide financial security. Exhibitions exposed landscape painting, for the first time, to public scrutiny and instigated critical reviews in newspapers. I argue that reviews of the exhibitions between 1760 and 1782 reveal a transformation in the critical response to landscape painting. Connoisseurial rhetoric, based on classically-inspired aesthetic evaluations, was superseded by emphasis on accurate representations of Nature and the ability of landscape painters to evoke subjective responses from perceptive viewers. Nevertheless, there was little correlation between critical acclaim and commercial success; Thomas Gainsborough despite fulsome praise failed to sell his landscape paintings. In 1769, the Royal Academy was established and Joshua Reynolds, in his Discourses, introduced a theoretical platform for evaluation of British art. Landscape painting was marginalised. I suggest that this led to a reduction in the number of landscape exhibits, and a fall in critical interest. However, the exhibitions between 1775 and 1782 exposed the marked disjunction between academic theory and critical response to landscape painting. While history painting was adjudged by Reynolds to be the only genre capable of eliciting an affective response, landscape painters, especially Gainsborough and Joseph Wright of Derby, were increasingly lauded for the emotional impact of their landscape exhibits. I suggest that these changes in critical response were prescient. The reviews of exhibited landscape paintings presaged the language later espoused for the nineteenth-century landscape paintings of John Constable and J.M.W Turner, recognised as the founder members of the British school of landscape painting.

Grantor dc:publisher

Oxford Brookes University

Year dc:date

2017

Author dc:creator

• Flew, Virginia Wintringham

Contributors dc:contributor

• Craske, Matthew
• Payne, Christiana

Statement dc:rights

• All rights reserved

Language dc:language

en

DOI dc:identifier

https://doi.org/10.24384/76zf-ss02

OAI identifier oai:identifier

tle:2f8e8721-92e9-4018-b958-72d31dea56b8:d6bd9758-527a-46cd-bfe2-c433766e8fca:1