Academic Sessions: Glasgow 2010
AAH Annual Conference 2010
15 - 17 April, University of Glasgow
Hogarth and the Vernacular Renaissance in 18th-century Britain
Session Convenor:
Robin Simon, University College London, r.simon@ucl.ac.uk editor@britishartjournal.co.uk
Hogarth is a key figure within an eighteenth-century ‘renaissance’ in Britain of the vernacular heritage in the visual arts, theatre, music and letters. His own attempts at establishing a British school are best understood in this context, within a London full of European émigrés, several of whom were his close colleagues. This ‘renaissance’ was a reaction to the perceived dominance of continental European culture, especially that of Italy and France. It was noted by Voltaire, who was in London to witness developments 1726-8 and whose comments on Milton in particular are directly related to Hogarth’s innovations in ‘history’ painting based upon vernacular literature. Hogarth published his aesthetic treatise The Analysis of Beauty in emulation of the growing French literature on the subject and as part of his establishment of an indigenous academic training at the St Martin’s Lane Academy. Crucial disciplines such as anatomy formed part of the academy’s curriculum from its inception, and continued with the foundation of the Royal Academy in 1768.
Speakers:
Robin Simon (University College, London)
Hogarth, Satan and Voltaire
Eric J. Weichel (Queen’s University, Canada)
‘Most horribly done, and so unfortunately like’: Émigré Artists at the Court of St. James, 1714-1745
Anne Dulau Beveridge (Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow)
The Anatomist and the Artists: Hunter’s involvement with artists
Mark A. Cheetham (Department of Art, University of Toronto)
Hogarth’s Analysis of Beauty: Seeing ‘in English’