The Splendid Pages of British Art of 18th Century

Queen Anne began her reign in 1702.
The War of the Spanish Succession began in the same year

Oil by Adriaen van der Weff

The Duke of Marlborough singing
Dispatch at Blenheim .
Oil by Robert Alexander Hillingford
Battle of Blenheim. Part of the
War of Spanish Succession.

The act of union between England and Scotland was passed in 1707. It made them one country, although the Scots kept their own legal system, church, and educational system

August I Georg, elector of Hannover
became King Georg I of Great Britain in 1714

In September 1714 the Highlands of Scotland rose in rebellion

James Francis Edward Stuart
In an attempt to claim
the throne James Stuart
landed at Peterhead
in December 1714
Prince of Wales, son of
deposed James II of England

Robert Walpole
1st Earl of Oxford,
the 1st Prime minister of Great Britain
10 Downing Street became the Prime Minister's official residence in 1732

King George II
of Great Britain
and Ireland
Elector of Hannover,
Duke of Brunswick – Lüneburg
He was the last British king
to lead an army into battle

Prince
Charles Edward Louis
Philip Casimir Stuart, the Young Pretender
He had promised his father
James Stuart that he would capture
the throne

Battle of Prestonpans
The Jacobites first victory over Government forces.
21st September 1745

The early 18th century
England suffered
from an epidemic
of gin drinking
William Hogarth
Gin Lane

John Wesley
He created a new
religious movement

In the 18th century there was an agricultural revolution in England

Death of General Wolf
In 1756 Britain was drawn
into the Seven Years War with France

British King
George III
He didn't leave power to
the ministers like his
predecessors, but tried
to gain more power
for himself.

The Anti – Catholic Gordon Riots
In London in 1780

In the late 18th century everyday life in Britain was transformed
by the industrial revolution.

A number of
technological
advantages made the
industrial revolution
possible. In 1709
Abraham Darby began
using coke to melt
iron ore.

In 1712 Thomas Newcomen made steam engines
to pomp water from coal mines

James Watt
James Watt patented
a more efficient steam engine
and in the 1780th it was adopted
to driving machinery

Sir Richard Arkwright
In 1771 Richard Arkwright
opened cotton-spinning mill
with a machine called
a water frame, which was
powered by a water mill.

In 1779 Samuel Compton
invented a new cotton – spinning
machine called a spinning mule.

In the early 18th century most towns did not have a purpose built theatres

In the late 18th century theatres were built in most towns.

The first daily newspaper
in England was printed
in 1702 and The Times
began in 1785

“… a great, learned, polite and commercial nation…”

William
Hogarth

Sir Joshua Reynolds

Thomas
Gainsborough

Let observation with extensive view,
Survey mankind, from China to Peru;
Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife,
And watch the busy scenes of crowded life;
Then say how hope and fear, desire and hate,
O’erspread with snares the clouded maze of fate,
Where wav’ring man, betrayed by vent’rous pride.
To tread the dreary paths without a guide;
As treach’rous phantoms in the mist delude,
Shuns fancied ills, or chases airy good.
How rarely reason guides the stubborn choice,
Rules the bold hand, or prompts the suppliant voice,
How nati(x)ons sink, by darling schemes oppress’d,
When vengeance listens to the fool’s request
Fate wings with ev’ry wish th’affictive dart,
Each gift of nature, and each grace of art,
With fatal heat impetuous courage glows,
With fatal sweetness elocution flows,
Impeachment stops the speakers pow’rful breath,
And restless fire precipitates on death.

William
Hogarth

The new gate prison

Prisoners

Hogarth
started his
earliest art
as an engraver.

Harlot's Progress

Harlot's Progress

A Racke's progress
Hogarth made this series in 1735. He showed in eight pictures the reckless life of Tom Rekwell, the son of a rich merchant, who wasted all his money on luxurious living.

Beggar's Opera

John Gay

Through all the Employments of Life
Each Neighbour abuses his Brother;
Whore and Rogue they call Husband and Wife:
All Professions be-rogue one another:
The Priest calls the Lawyer a Cheat,
The Lawyer be-knaves the Divine:
And the Statesman, because he's so great,
Thinks his Trade as honest as mine.

Beggar’s opera (fragments)
Captain Macheath stands in shackles. His wife Polly is imploring her father Peachum, a criminal mastermind and fence , to intervene on Macheath’s behalf.
Lusy Lockit kneels before her father, who wears keys on his belt.

The other figures are not actors, but theatre patrons who, according to custom, were privileged to sit on the stage

Miss Lavinia Fenton
Miss Lavinia Fenton
premiered the lead role
of Polly in the Beggar’s Opera
in 1728

Marriage a la mode

Marriage a la mode

The visit
to the Quack doctor
The Countess's
Morning Levee

Killing of the Earl

The Lady’s Death

Mrs Georgiana Cavendish

Duchess of Devonshire
by sir Joshua Reynolds

Joshua Reynolds

Ladies and gentlemen, an academy in which the polite arts may be regularly cultivated is at last opened among us by royal influence. This must appear an event in the highest degree interesting, not only to the artists, but to the whole nation.
We are happy in having a prince who has conceived the design of such an institution, according to its true dignity, and promotes the arts, as the head of a great, a learned, a polite, and a commercial nation; and I can now congratulate you, gentlemen, on the accomplishment of your long and adorn wishes.
There are at this time a greater number of excellent artists than were ever known before at one period in this nation. And we are patronized by a monarch, who, knowing the value of science and of elegance thinks every art worthy of his notice that tends to soften and humanize the mind.
I would chiefly recommend that an implicit obedience to the rules of art, as established by the great masters, should be exacted from the young students. They should be considered as perfect and infallible guides as subjects for their imitation, not for criticism.
I am confident that this is the only efficacious method of making a progress in the arts.

Dr. Beattie

The Three Ladies, Adorning the Term of Hymen

“This letter will be delivered to you by Miss Montgomery, who intends to sit to you with her two sisters, to compose a picture, of which I am to have the honor of being possessor. I wish to have their portraits together in full length, representing some emblematic or historical subject; the idea of which, and the attitudes which will best suit their forms, cannot be so well imagined, as by one who has so eminently distinguished himself by his genius and poetic intention.”

Mrs. Siddons
as a Tragic Muse

I grant indeed that fields and flocks have charms
For him that grazes or for him that farms;
But when amid such pleasing scenes I trace
The poor laborious natives of the place,
And see the mid day sun , with fervid ray,
On their bare heads and dewy temples play;
While some, with feebler heads and fainter hearts,
Deplore their fortune, yet sustain their parts:
Than shall I dare these real ills to hide
In tinsel trappings of poetic pride?
No; cast by Fortune on a frowning coast,
Which neither groves nor happy valleys boast;
Where other shepherds dwell with other mates;
By such examples taught, I paint the cot,
As Truth will paint it, and as Bards will not:
Nor you, ye poor, of letter’d scorn complain,
To you the smoothest song is smooth in vain;
O’ercome by labour, and bow’d down by time,
Feel you the barren flatt’ry of a rhyme?
Can poesy soothe you, when you pine for bread,
By winding myrtles round your ruin’d shed?
Can their light tales your weighty griefs o’erpower,
Or glad with airy mirth the toilsome hour?

Thomas
Gainsborough

Sudbury in Suffolk

“… Nature was his teacher
and the woods of Suffolk
his academy…”

Mr. and Mrs. Andrews

Peasant girl
gathering sticks

The Blue Boy

Sir Joshua
Reynolds
Thomas
Gainsborough

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Setting and spending and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up – gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. – Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Mrs Richard Brinsley Sheridan

William
Hogarth
Sir Joshua Reynolds
Thomas
Gainsborough