This piece of painted satire is [Alfred] Munnings’ attack on those British connoisseurs stupid enough to take the upstart Spanish Picasso seriously. Andrew Graham-Dixon, A History of British Art III: My Wife, My Horse & Myself
The greatest British painters of the 18th century – Gainsborough, Reynolds and Stubbs – weren’t conservative little Englanders but the men who put British art on the map. ibid.
Some of the most memorably discreet pictures of the 18th century … [were] painted by Scottish artists. ibid.
Hogarth was the guilty conscience of the Augustine age. He looked behind the elegant houses of the well-to-do into a different and darker world. ibid.
William Blake described Joshua Reynolds as a scoundral and a knave. ibid.
Mr & Mrs Andrews: the very essence of Gainsborough. ibid.
The very greatest British artist of the 18th century: his name was George Stubbs. ibid.
Modern painting was invented in Britain in the first half of the 19th century. John Constable and J M W Turner were the Darwin and Einstein of 19th century art. The painters who broke more radically with the conventions of the past than any of their contemporaries and any to have come after them. Andrew Graham-Dixon, A History of British Art IV: Modern Art
When he was a young man Blake was hired to make precise drawings of the tombs here in Westminster Abbey. They clearly had a profound effect on him. ibid.
Blake anticipated a whole generation of Victorian artists and architects. ibid.
James Gilray has been remembered as a caricaturist but he’s another excavator of the Self. ibid.
Constable’s The Hay Wain is a national institution. But like many celebrated pictures it’s been obscured by its fame. It might be difficult to image now but when Constable painted it in 1821 this picture was a manifesto for change. ibid.
Turner: He painted Hannibal crossing the Alps in 1812. ibid.
‘We have been preceded in this great path by the illustrious Monsieur Turner.’ ibid. Impressionists’ letter
In 1844 Turner completed one of the most brilliant paintings of his latter years: Rain, Speed & Steam. It’s subject was an early steam train. Andrew Graham-Dixon, A History of British Art V: All Change
The first smogs descend; their world literally became darker. The art critic John Ruskin coined a disturbing phrase for it. He called it, The Stormcloud of the 19th Century. ibid.
[David] Wilkie is a muh less punishing artist than Hogarth. Much less of a caricaturist. There’s gentleness in his characterisation. ibid.
William Frith: The Derby Day has a cast of thousands. ibid.
In 1836 Augustus Pugin, who has worked with Barry on the Houses of Parliament, published this curious perspective … Contrast. ibid.
Morris’s visual brilliance. In the craft traditions of the East he brought a whole new vocabulary of shape and patterning to Western design. ibid.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was one of the founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. ibid.
Rachael Whiteread: 193 Grove Road, an East End terrace house, had been scheduled for demolition. But with the permission of Bow neighbourhood council, the sculptor Rachel Whiteread built a concrete mould inside the house, then stripped away the exterior walls. The result was the ghostly modern sarcophogus which she called House. Andrew Graham-Dixon, A History of British Art VI: Our House
The story of British art in the 20th century is frustrating, exhilarating and uncomfortably revealing. ibid.
Henry Moore was probably the most famous British artist of the 20th century. ibid.
Hepworth learnt too from international modern art. ibid.
Painters and sculptors had been coming to St Ives since the 19th century. ibid.
Bacon: Great art must rise out of the slime. ibid.
Bacon pushed this disturbing element in Sickert’s theatre to a terrible hysterical climax. ibid.
Renaissance: The greatest intellectual and artistic achievement of the last 2,000 years. The word means rebirth. Andrew Graham Dixon, Renaissance I: Body & Soul, BBC 1999
By returning to the past in this way, Renaissance man created a whole new universe. He laid the foundations of modern science, explored the nature of space and time, and put the Americas on the map. ibid.
John the Baptist by Donatello is one of the masterpieces of the Renaissance. ibid.
A time of great change but so was the period that preceded it. ibid.
The body in Italian painting began to bleed. ibid.
This chapel was painted by Giotto, the celebrated Florentine master, and a businessman t’boot. ibid.
These frescoes are proof that there was more to Byzantine art than the formality and other worldliness of its mosaic and icon traditions. ibid.
A constant traffic of people and ideas between East and West. ibid.
[Giovanni] Bellini’s work is the window through which the Renaissance is best seen. ibid.
Church of the Frary: Over the altar hangs Titian’s great masterpiece, The Assumption of the Virgin. ibid.
The Renaissance was always bigger than one place. But for a short and crucial period the city of Florence became its capital … The great Florentine masters broke the mould. Andrew Graham-Dixon, Renaissance II: The Pure Radiance of the Past
Michelangelo’s statue of David, the single most celebrated sculpture in the world, has become the emblem of the Renaissance in Florence. ibid.
It was the mystical dimension of perspective which held out the greatest appeal. ibid.
Whose work epitomises the energy and the genius of the Renaissance Florence, and that’s Donatello. ibid.
Donatello’s David: This is one of the first erotic sculptures of the Renaissance. ibid.
The great Renaissance palaces may seem irrelevaant to the contemporary world, but if you examine what really went on in these opulent surroundings I don’t think it’s too far-fetched to say that this was where the modern artist first emerged. Andrew Graham-Dixon, Renaissance III: Journey of the Magus
It was the Medici who played midwife at the birth of creative genius. ibid.
The fresco is by Pierre de la Francesca, and in spite of fading it shows off his studied highly symmetrical way of placing figures. ibid.
The more advernturous artists at the time were increasingly aware of the market for their talents. ibid.
The first genuine Renaissance man: Leon Battista Alberti. ibid.
Sandro Boticelli: Painted in the late 1470s the Primavera was a wedding picture for the Medici. ibid.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Adoration of the Magi. It’s not just the atmosphere of this unfinished painting which is turbulent and elemental, the figures are too. These are disturbed magi, traumatised rather than entranced by the nativity. ibid.
It’s as if Leonardo’s true genius could only flourish underground. ibid.
1499: The Renaissance was about to enter its greatest crisis. Andrew Graham-Dixon, Renaissance IV: Apocalypse
The Renaissance is often thought of as the triumph of reason over superstition, but the truth is it reached its climax in a world that was ablaze with religious fear and fervour. ibid.
In growing cities like Nuremberg a new invention, printing, was being used to promote radical new ideas and images. ibid.
Albrecht Durer, the greatest artist of Renaissance Germany, published his own images of the terrors of the Apocalypse. ibid.
He [Pope] employed the 27-year-old Raphael to decorate his private library with an assembly of great men past and present. ibid.
There’s a new restless energy about Raphael’s style, influenced both by Michelangelo and by the ever more forceful demands of his patrons. ibid.
Venice metamorphosed into something more than a place; it became a state of mind. Andrew Graham-Dixon, Renaissance V: Light & Liberty
Trade was the lifeblood of Venice. At the start of their history Venetians ferried salt and fish up the rivers of Italy in exhange for the grain they couldn’t grow. ibid.
In the 16th century the Venetians invented the ghetto … Ghetto was an island where they [Jews] were locked up at nightfall. ibid.
Venice’s stability was a source of wonder. ibid.
The republic began to picture itself as a second Rome. ibid.
Venice had acquired a taste for the Gothic style of the north. ibid.
A man who was to make Venetian art famous around the world. His name was Titian. Titian’s gift was for drama and life. ibid.
In Venice, Rennaisance art became more covetable and collectible than ever before. ibid.
Scuolo Grande de San Rocco: Jacopo Tintoretto, who worked for 23 years to create its 60 monumental canvasses. ibid.