How was the remote past of Britain imagined in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? What part did the visual arts play in that process? In this book Sam Smiles argues that the ancient Britain of the romantic imagination was a contested world, variously seen as a noble epoch of wisdom and patriotism and as a period of unredeemed savagery and barbarism. The arts, says Smiles, not only reflected these historical debates but actively contributed to them by attempting to bring the archaic past to life.Smiles examines the interplay of antiquarian research, historiography, and the visual arts in constructing an image of Britain from prehistoric times to the arrival of the Saxons. He discusses such topics as the lengthening of prehistoric time in the contemporary view, the status of antiquarian learning, and the celebration of ancestral peoples as an offshoot of the growing sense of national identity. He describes the Celtic revival during the late eighteenth century, with its iconography that fashioned a pictorial repertoire for megaliths, bards, Druids, and the patriotic leaders Boadicea and Caractacus, who fought off the Romans. He also explains why the Victorians downgraded the Celts and replaced them with the Saxons, preferred by Victorians because they were Christians, because they were English (rather than British), and because they had established organized kingdoms. Illustrated with images from a wide range of sources, this is the first major interdisciplinary examination of the British image of antiquity that has a particular significance for art historians and historians alike. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

The Image of Antiquity: Ancient Britain and the Romantic Imagination (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art)

Arts & Photography

SMILES, Sam

History & Criticism

Paul Mellon Centre

J.M.W. Turner is probably the greatest painter Britain has ever produced. Disturbingly original and astonishingly prolific, he rose from the obscurity of a barber's son to bequeath a rich and complex legacy. Paintings such as Rain, Steam and Speed have become British icons, and the phrase "Turner sky" is known to students of art around the world.Despite this fame, or perhaps because of it, Turner's work has often been misunderstood, his intentions simplified. Here, Sam Smiles investigates Turner's artistic and literary influences, his political views, and the extraordinary evolution of his approach and techniques. Examining how Turner produced effects that lay beyond the competence of other artists--dissolving form, rendering diaphanous expanses of light, and using color with the utmost subtlety and control--the author contradicts Turner's own claim that his only secret was "damned hard work."In the process, Smiles retrieves the meaning of Turner's art from critical misconstruings. He finds in Turner not a recorder of light and landscape but a fascinating artist who foreshadowed modernism and used landscape to deliver profound ruminations on society, politics, technology, and the human condition. Turner's sophisticated artistic personality emerges, rendering his art more compelling than ever.

J.M.W. Turner

Individual Artists

Princeton University Press

Alone of his contemporaries, J.M.W. Turner is commonly held to have prefigured modern painting, as signalled in the existence of The Turner Prize for contemporary art. Our celebration of his achievement is very different to what Victorian critics made of his art. This book shows how Turner was reinvented to become the artist we recognise today. On Turner's death in 1851 he was already known as an adventurous, even baffling, painter. But when the Court of Chancery decreed that the contents of his studio should be given to the nation, another side of his art was revealed that effected a wholescale change in his reputation. This book acts as a guide to the reactions of art writers and curators from the 1850s to the 1960s as they attempted to come to terms with his work. It documents how Turner was interpreted and how his work was displayed in Britain, in Europe and in North America, concentrating on the ways in which his artistic identity was manipulated by art writers, by curators at the Tate and by designers of exhibitions for the British Council and other bodies.

J. M. W. Turner: The making of a modern artist

Manchester University Press

Samuel Palmer Revisited

Varied and deliberately diverse, this group of essays provides a reassessment of the life and work of the popular nineteenth-century artist Samuel Palmer. While scholarly publications have been published recently which reassess Palmer's achievement, those works primarily consider the artist in isolation. This volume examines his work in relation to a wider art world and analyses areas of his life and output that have until now received little attention, reinstating the study of Palmer's work within broader debates about landscape and cultural history. In Samuel Palmer Revisited, the contributors provide a fresh perspective on Palmer's work, its context and its influence.

Reference

Routledge

Varied and deliberately diverse, this group of essays provides a reassessment of the life and work of the popular nineteenth-century artist Samuel Palmer. While scholarly publications have been published recently which reassess Palmer's achievement, those works primarily consider the artist in isolation. This volume examines his work in relation to a wider art world and analyses areas of his life and output that have until now received little attention, reinstating the study of Palmer's work within broader debates about landscape and cultural history. In Samuel Palmer Revisited, the contributors provide a fresh perspective on Palmer's work, its context and its influence.

Tate British Artists: J.M.W. Turner

J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) is probably Britain’s greatest painter. Both profoundly original and astonishingly prolific, he helped transform landscape painting into an expressive art form of enormous range and power. This book reveals the extent to which Turner wanted his paintings to communicate intellectually as well as emotionally and how he used landscape as a vehicle for deep ruminations on society, politics, and the human condition. Sam Smiles discusses and illustrates the whole range of Turner’s work.

Tate

This series of affordable monographs focuses on the lives and careers of important British artists from the 18th century to the present day. J.M.W. Turner is probably the greatest painter Britain has ever produced. Both profoundly original and astonishingly prolific, he helped transform landscape painting into an expressive art form of enormous range and power.

Tate Publishing is proud to announce a new series on important international artists, beautifully designed and with superbly printed reproductions. The Essential Artists series provides, in each volume, everything necessary for the enjoyment and understanding of the world’s greatest artists:

The Turner Book: Tate Essential Artists Series

Howard Hodgkin: Time and Place

Modern Art Oxford

Accompanying a major exhibition at Compton Verney, Warwickshire, this book examines the innate human desire to transcend the limitations of physiology and gravity – and to fly. Through an intriguing combination of paintings, sculpture, photographs, drawings, prints and video, including works by Leonardo da Vinci, José Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Paul Nash, Peter Lanyon and Hiraki Sawa, the reader will be provided with a unique overview of artists' creative responses to flight, from the earliest imaginings to an era in which space travel has allowed us to glimpse other worlds.

Flight and the Artistic Imagination

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Paul Holberton Publishing

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by SMILES, Sam. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by SMILES, Sam

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by SMILES, Sam. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Image of Antiquity: Ancient Britain and the Romantic Imagination (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art)

J.M.W. Turner

J. M. W. Turner: The making of a modern artist

Samuel Palmer Revisited

Samuel Palmer Revisited

Tate British Artists: J.M.W. Turner

Tate British Artists: J.M.W. Turner

The Turner Book: Tate Essential Artists Series

Howard Hodgkin: Time and Place

Flight and the Artistic Imagination