No description available.

Began as a compositional analysis of the oil-on-canvas portraits painted by John Singer Sargent, this thesis uses a selection of those images to relate national identity, cultural and social history within cosmopolitan British and American high society between 1890 and 1910. Close readings of a small selection of Sargent’s portraits are used in order to undertake an in-depth analysis on the particular figural details and decorative elements found within these images, and how they can relate to nation-specific ideologies and issues present at the turn of the century. Thorough research was undertaken to understand the prevailing social types and concerns of the period, and biographical data of individual sitters was gathered to draw larger inferences about the prevailing ideologies present in America and Britain during this tumultuous era. Issues present within class and family structures, the institution of marriage, the performance of female identity, and the formulation of masculinity serve as the topics for each of the four chapters. These subjects are interrogated and placed in dialogue with Sargent’s visual representations of his sitters’ identities. Popular images of the era, both contemporary and historic paintings, as well as photographic prints are incorporated within this analysis to fit Sargent’s portraits into a larger art historical context. The Appendices include tables and charts to substantiate claims made in the text about trends and anomalies found within Sargent’s portrait compositions. This close statistical reading of Sargent’s portrait oeuvre, while at times a subjective exercise, had not before been undertaken on this scale in art historical literature. The resulting data has been compiled to see if there is a correlation between compositional elements and nationality of sitter.

No description available.

No description available.

When the history painter Benjamin West (1738-1820) died in March 1820, he left behind a remarkable monument to his life and work in his residence at 14 Newman Street, in London’s fashionable West End. Here, he had created an elaborate ‘palace’ of art, dedicated to history painting and to himself – his artistic genius, his artistic heroes, and his unique transatlantic identity. This impressive establishment was nearly fifty years in the making and part of an elaborate strategy to develop an artistic reputation as the pre-eminent history painter of his generation. While his studio has been considered by scholars as a place of pilgrimage for dozens of American students, its physicality and contents have never been thoroughly explored. Using a variety of evidence, including bank records, contemporary descriptions, and visual material, this thesis reconstructs much of this important space and collection to reveal how it was shaped and utilised by West. It combines a documentation of the spaces and objects with an analysis of their use and meaning in terms of the painter’s engagement with art theory, pedagogy, practice, collecting, display, and legacy. West, who was History Painter to George III, inhabited 14 Newman Street from 1774 to 1820, a period of dramatic expansion and cultural ambition in the London art world. Indeed, this thesis argues that 14 Newman Street and its impressive contents were more than just a history painter’s ‘palace’ of art but a place symbolic of the ideals and ambitions of British art. Following an introduction that more fully defines the aims and scope of this thesis, four chapters explore the significance of West’s house, his collections, and their display in this context. Chapter one provides an overview of his home and studio, and considers how it was designed with West’s various audiences in mind. The scope and character of his impressive collection is examined in the second chapter with a particular focus on a selection of Old and New World objects that represent particular areas of strength within the corpus of the collection. Chapter three examines the collection as a public and private artistic resource for West and his students as well as a statement of his commitment to the grand tradition. In chapter four, West’s self-promotion and exhibition strategies at Newman Street are addressed, highlighted by his exhibition of The Death of Lord Nelson in 1806. Developed in the dynamic context of the establishment of the Royal Academy, the proliferation of public exhibitions, and ongoing debates about national art, West’s collection and studio at 14 Newman Street exemplified the aspirations of British art.

This thesis analyses European themes in the work of the American painter RB Kitaj. It focuses most closely on the 1960s, a relatively under-researched period of his work, certainly compared with the 1970s and 80s, in part because most of the existing literature follows Kitaj's reading of his own oeuvre. Using canvases from the 1960s as examples, the thesis examines Kitaj's concerns with the history of the European Left prior to World War II. Study of these paintings reveals how, even at this early stage of his career, Kitaj conflated autobiography and history. A comparison of Kitaj's published and draft texts, written during and after these paintings were made, shows him altering their meaning according to his current concerns. This, in turn, shows how his revisions influenced later scholars' readings. Furthermore, due attention is given to two important, though often overlooked, bodies of work from the 1960s: the screenprints and the installation made at Lockheed for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Both reveal a sustained engagement with European themes, such as the Industrial Revolution, Modernism and its legacies, and Jewish history. Whereas Kitaj emphasised the centrality of Judaism to his work throughout the 1970 and 80s, he downplayed his concern with technology and Modernism, although both continued to inform his imagery until well into the 1980s. His shift away from new technology (eg photo-screenprinting) and a Modernist aesthetic, in favour of life drawing, is analysed against contemporary artistic debates in Britain, together with his fascination with the evolving history of the European Left during the 1970s. Kitaj's work reveals a sustained but constantly modulating, at times conflicted, meditation on European history and culture from an American perspective. In the final analysis, however, his engagement with Europe is, perhaps, the result of a spiritual and psychological impulse rooted in his personal and family history.