Sir Joshua Reynolds, leading portrait painter and founding President of the Royal Academy, was born 300 years ago. He was the most influential British artist for over a century.
British
Two last Pre-Raphaelite artists, Evelyn De Morgan and Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, brought narrative painting to a close in the twentieth century.
In the latter half of the 19th century, a new narrative form developed, primarily among British painters: the open narrative, or problem picture.
Two artists painted panoramas full of miniature stories, which assembled into broad summaries of contemporary society: Frith and Ford Madox Brown.
Two new narrative themes that became distinctive in the mid-19th century were contemporary English poetry, and the legends of King Arthur.
Unwittingly, and outside their manifesto, the Pre-Raphaelite Brethren developed a new British narrative painting.
A painter of superbly composed and crafted religious and other narrative, a key figure in art education, who enjoyed the support of Queen Victoria.
One of the greatest British narrative painters of the 19th century, a small selection of his best from Eris picking a golden apple in 1806 to the slaveship of 1840.
For 20 years, Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery tried to establish an English School of History Painting. Or was it just a ploy to make money from prints?
How West failed in his aim of bringing a revolution to history painting by depicting ‘modern history’, and was repeatedly upstaged by others.
The Eclectic Light Company 