Key Pages:

Home


Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology

 

 

Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology & the Ancient World
Brown University
Box 1837 / 60 George Street
Providence, RI 02912
Telephone: (401) 863-3188
Fax: (401) 863-9423
[email protected]

Imaging British History - Patriotism, Professional Arts Practice, and the Quest for Precision
Sam Smiles, University of Plymouth

This paper looks at the infancy of attempts to represent the past, especially those images produced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Rather than see these early illustrations as awkward first steps in the development of archaeological illustration, I intend to restore to them something of the complex world that brought them into being. Debates about the value of illustration within the antiquarian community show that scholars were keenly aware of the utility of images. This desire, in turn, needs to be seen within broader understandings of the relationship between images and the dissemination of scientific knowledge and the quest for objectivity in notation. In complete contrast, contemporary art theory emphasized the place of the imagination when painting history. As a result, competent artists could find themselves torn between these two competing understandings of how the past should be approached. And despite these methodological differences, artists of both tendencies, precise or imaginative, were susceptible to patriotic celebration of their ancestors' achievements: even the most scrupulously studied image need not be impartial. To explore these tensions in the field of representation, I will explore a variety of case studies in which artists illustrated Britain's past, from the time of Stonehenge to the high middle ages.


Speakers and Titles