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| Francesco Zuccarelli Landscape with Cadmus killing the Dragon ca. 1765 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
"The subject of this painting it taken from Book 3 of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Cadmus, the mythological founder of Thebes and brother of Europa, while on his journey to Thebes is called upon to overcome a dragon sacred to Mars. The serpent, which dwells in a cave beside a spring in the primeval forest, destroys the hero's companions when they come to collect spring water. Protected by a lion-skin and armed with a javelin, Cadmus first throws a massive boulder at the dragon, then backs it against an oak tree and spears it to death. Zuccarelli renders the scene with great accuracy of detail, but characteristically reduces Ovid's towering monster to proportions that do not interfere with the pleasantly Arcadian landscape, making the hero's victory reassuringly predictable. Similarly, the mangled remains of Cadmus's numerous companions have been reduce to two figures lying on the ground as if asleep. Zuccarelli was one of several Italian artists who travelled to England in the eighteenth century. His idealised views found great favour with English audiences, and he rapidly achieved success, becoming a founder-member of the Royal Academy in 1768."
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| Benjamin West The Bard 1778 oil on panel Tate Gallery |
"Thomas Gray's poem The Bard, published in 1757, was based on the now-discredited tradition that Edward I ordered the massacre of the Welsh bards. Gray describes how the sole surviving bard stood on Snowdon and cursed King Edward before throwing himself into the Conway River beneath. It is one of the earliest literary treatments of passionate and heroic action in a wild natural setting which link the Sublime with the Romantic movement. The poem inspired many artists, including Benjamin West, de Loutherbourg, Blake, Fuseli, and John Martin. Here, the bard holds a harp, associated with the bardic tradition and a symbol of Wales."
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| George Garrard Coombe Hill 1791 oil on card Tate Gallery |
"Garrard was chiefly an animal painter and sculptor. His oil sketches of landscapes in and around London, painted in the 1790s, were made for his own pleasure or to develop technical facility. They served no very important part of his art and are perhaps so fresh precisely because of this."
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| George Stubbs Newmarket Heath with a Rubbing-Down House ca. 1765 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
"This is one of a pair of small landscapes, with the picture of the same title in a private collection. They are the only landscape studies without figures known to exist by the artist. They remained in Stubbs's studio for the rest of his life and were frequently referred to for later compositions. The pictures were kept as a pair until sold separately in 1958. Four rubbing-down houses stood on Newmarket Heath in the eighteenth century; one still stands. Rubbing down involved wiping sweat off horses after exercise or racing, using wisps of straw or rough cloths. The house in the foreground of this picture seems to have been reserved for horses belonging to royalty and to members of the Jockey Club."
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| Henry Fuseli Percival delivering Belisane from the Enchantment of Urma ca. 1783 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
"Conventionally, history paintings were based on a literary or historical source familiar to educated viewers. The artist's role was to select from the story a crucially significant moment that would convey a sense of nobility and moral certainty. The success of this strategy of course depended on the viewer knowing the story, and so knowing what would happen next. Fuseli, however, admitted that he invented the saga of Percival and Belisane shown here. His paintings tended to emphasise spectacle and sensation rather than the noble themes and moral lessons which Reynolds's view of the 'great style' demanded."
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| Samuel Scott An Arch of Westminster Bridge ca. 1750 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
"This work celebrates an important event in the history of London: the building of Westminster Bridge. The bridge, shown near completion, was the first to be built over the Thames in over 600 years. During the 11 years of its construction it was painted by many artists, including Canaletto and Richard Wilson [directly below]. The arrival of Canaletto in England in 1746 may have stimulated Scott to compete by producing similar views of London scenery, particularly along the Thames."
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| Richard Wilson Westminster Bridge under Construction 1744 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| William Blake Moses Indignant at the Golden Calf ca. 1799-1800 tempera on canvas Tate Gallery |
"Moses was called by God to Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments, written on two slabs of stone. One commandment was 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me'. However, in Moses's absence, the Israelites were worshipping a statue of a golden calf. When Moses saw this he broke the stone slabs in fury. In Blake's own mythology, a character named Urizen makes iron laws to repress Man. Blake links Urizen with God and Moses who made the laws of organised religion, which Blake wanted to see destroyed."
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| Egbert van Heemskerk III The Doctor's Visit ca. 1725 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
"The Heemskerk family of painters, originally from Haarlem, settled in London in the 1670s. Heemskerk senior specialised in low-life scenes set in shops, taverns or meeting houses. He appears to have trained a son as a painter, who was also a singer at Sadler's Wells. Heemskerk junior was a coarse imitator of his father's work, adapting similar compositions with updated costumes. The subject of a dying man surrounded by lamenting family and friends, and by representatives of the church, the law, and of medicine, was a popular one and exists in many versions."
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| Joseph Mallord William Turner and Thomas Girtin Rome - The Colonnade of St Peter's ca. 1795-97 gouache, watercolor Tate Gallery |
"This view, with many diminutive figures, is taken from the south side of Bernini's colonnade, looking north towards the Vatican buildings. It was painted more than twenty years before Turner first saw the Piazza of St. Peter's. It seems probable that the pencil work was by Thomas Girtin, with washes added by Turner. It is presumably a copy rather than an original invention. The fact that this is an essentially accurate architectural subject, though with greatly exaggerated scale, indicates a source in one of the painters of architectural capricci in eighteenth-century Rome, such as Giovanni Paolo Panini."
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| William Pars Rome - The Forum ca. 1775 watercolor Tate Gallery |
"William Pars travelled to Italy in 1775 on a studentship given to him by the Society of Dilettanti, a dining club which sponsored and promoted the study of classical art and the creation of new works in the classical style. Pars spent much of his time in Rome, alongside other prominent British landscape painters including Francis Towne, John 'Warwick' Smith, and Thomas Jones, to whom he presented this watercolour of the Roman Forum. Pars remained in Italy until his death in 1782, when, despite his being 'a robust, hearty fellow' he contracted 'dropsy of the breast' apparently caused by standing in water while sketching."
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| George Lambert and Francis Hayman View of Copped Hall in Essex from the Park 1746 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
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| George Lambert and Francis Hayman View of Copped Hall in Essex from across the Lake 1746 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
"These paired views of Copped Hall show the groundbreaking steps Lambert was making in landscape painting by the 1740s. Here, almost for the first time, a country house is shown as an integral aspect of the English landscape. The careful recording of particular landscape features gives way to an overriding fascination with the nuances of light and atmosphere. Such views were often conceived as pendants or pairs, displaying different aspects of a property, but Lambert was innovative in introducing contrasting weather conditions. Here, the summer calm of the parkland complements the breezy freshness of the lake view. The pair was commissioned by MP John Conyers when he inherited the Tudor mansion. He demolished it two years after these were painted to make way for a new Palladian house. In addition to painting landscapes, George Lambert worked as a scene painter in London's theatres. He collaborated with several artists, including Hogarth and Samuel Scott. The figures in these views were painted by the portraitist and decorative painter Francis Hayman."
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| Joseph Highmore The Good Samaritan 1744 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
"Illustration of the parable of the Good Samaritan from the Gospel of St Luke. The Samaritan has bound the wounds of an injured man attacked by robbers and is helping him to his feet. Heading off into the distance behind them are the priest and the Levite who have ignored the man's plight. The painting was made for the aristocrat John Sheppard, possibly for a private chapel in his home at Campsey Ashe in Suffolk. This makes it a comparatively rare example of a sacred subject commissioned from a British artist by a secular patron."
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| Matthew William Peters Lydia ca. 1777 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
"This provocative painting of a courtesan lying in bed is one of four known versions of a picture made by Matthew Peters for Richard Grosvenor, later 1st Earl Grosvenor. One of these pictures was almost certainly exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1777 as A Woman in Bed, the first and last time Peters exhibited such a frankly sexual subject. Contemporary critics appreciated the work, although they were concerned that it was unsuitable for public display. The Morning Chronicle of 26 April 1777 noted: 'We cannot help thinking that the inviting leer of the lady, and her still more inviting bosom, ought to be consigned to the bedchamber of a bagnio, where each would doubtless provoke a proper effect; in the present situation they serve to prevent the pictures around them from being so much seen and admired as their merits demand, for every man who has either a wife or daughter with him, must, for decency's sake, hurry them away from that corner of the room'." By the late 1770s Peters, who was clearly worried about the damage that such works were doing to his reputation as a serious artist, gave up painting courtesan pictures. Indeed, following his ordination in 1781, and his subsequent appointment as Honorary Chaplain to the Royal Academy, he was highly embarrassed by them, expressing a profound regret 'that he ever devoted his talents to such subjects'."
– quoted passages based on notes by curators at the Tate in London