The Modern Landscape in British Painting, 1870-1920

FAIN: FT-51443-03

Anne L. Helmreich
Getty Publications (Fort Worth, TX 76129-0001)

This project investigates the impact of modernization and modernity on representations of landscape in Britain from 1870 to 1920. Through landscape paintings British artists responded to suburbanization, industrialization, and war as well as changing attitudes to nature spurred by new scientific paradigms. In turn, critics interpreted landscape paintings as expressions of national and personal identities. Concomitantly, landscape painting became a key point of deliberation between British artistic tradition, exemplified by John Constable and J. M. W. Turner, and modernism, including Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. The NEH stipend would enable me to complete essential archival research at Tate Archives and Slade School of Art.

Associated Products

Nature's Truth: Photography, Painting, and Science in Victorian Britain (Book)
Title: Nature's Truth: Photography, Painting, and Science in Victorian Britain
Author: Anne Helmreich
Abstract: Drawing on sources ranging from artists’ letters to scientific treatises, Nature’s Truth illuminates the dynamic relationship between art and science throughout the nineteenth century. Anne Helmreich reveals how these practices became closely aligned as artists sought to maintain art’s relevance in a world increasingly defined by scientific innovation, technological advances, and a rapidly industrializing society. Eventually, despite consensus between artists and critics about the need for “truth to nature,” the British arts community sharply contested what constituted truth and how truth to nature as an ideal could be visually represented. By the early twentieth century, the rallying cry could no longer hold the reform movement together. Helmreich’s fascinating study shows, however, that this relatively short-lived movement had a profound effect on modern British art.
Year: 2016
Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780271071145
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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