Search results
Christian virtues are found throughout many other nineteenth-century publications, including many missionary texts for children. Although Bennet was vague as to the exact nature of a vice, within the broader genre of religious writings, and religious educational texts in particular, other publications were more forthcoming. For example, an early eighteenth-century book on the methods for erecting Charity
beaten off. 5 In Academic art, representations of the rebellion in genre scenes outnumbered battle paintings. 6 This was, in part, because the rebellion had been characterised more by guerrilla fighting than by set-piece battles, but it was also a reflection of the newspapers’ obsession with the individuals caught up in the revolt rather than perceiving it as a political and military struggle. The sense
better to consider broad genres rather than to follow certain attitudes which allegedly reveal ‘patterns’ of Western hostility or admiration. Such ‘patterns’ are, in fact, simplifications. China has remained multi-layered in our consciousness, and old themes are constantly refurbished, never rejected with any finality. It is the genres that may help to illuminate our own history, and the subtleties of
terms of two separate but related issues. The first is the status of battle painting within the hierarchy of academic art; the second is the lack of patronage, either from the state or from individuals. The status of battle painting as a genre was, as we shall see, the subject of some confusion. In France the patronage and encouragement of the emperor Napoleon had elevated battle painting to the exalted
sculptors. Generous patronage would support the most ambitious artists to develop the genres which could not thrive on private, and therefore small-scale, commissions. This would add to the glory of the ‘national school’ of art. 1 It was perceived as the perfect occasion upon which ‘desirable’ forms of art could be called forth. Such enthusiasts as Benjamin Robert Haydon lobbied for the scheme to foster
The period from 1874, the year of the Ashanti expedition, until 1914 saw a dramatic increase in the number of battle paintings displayed at public exhibitions. Statistical analysis of the exhibits at the Royal Adacdemy shows that, even allowing for the general increase in the quantity of pictures, the number of battle pictures tripled the pre–1855 figures. 1 All military subjects, genre as well
. The pictures themselves work ideology in a specifically pictorial way and play a role in negotiating ideas about the military in Britain. In the post-Waterloo period there was intense debate as to whether the genre should exist in Britain. The pervasive myth of anti-militarism made it impossible for the state to endorse the patronage of overtly propagandistic battle paintings in the High Art manner favoured by
same degree of analysis devoted, for instance, to novels. And this is true despite the fact that, emerging as they did hand and glove with the modern nation, and engaged fundamentally in both representing and producing national consciousness, the genres of the novel and the political cartoon, from their inception, formed an inter-animating dyad. Even before cheap mechanical reproduction made illustrations for novels increasingly feasible towards the end of the eighteenth century, the power and allure of visual caricature could motivate a novelist like Henry Fielding
in world history. It concentrates almost exclusively on exhibitions held in Britain, France and the United States of America, as these nations were responsible for defining the shape and scope of events everywhere. Known in Britain as Great Exhibitions, in France as Expositions Universelles and in America as World’s Fairs, under the guidance of the three the genre became a self
Updike reportedly once remarked that biographies are nothing but ‘novels with indexes’. 1 This delightfully scathing quip epitomises a certain sense that biography is a spurious enterprise, a genre to be defined in terms of its limits, and best approached with a healthy dose of suspicion. Even where it has not been brushed aside with quite such dismissive disregard, it is notable that biography has not