The matter of style: Thomas Gainsborough, the portrait in a landscape, and the mark of the modern painter.
Item
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Title
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The matter of style: Thomas Gainsborough, the portrait in a landscape, and the mark of the modern painter.
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Identifier
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AAI9807988
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identifier
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9807988
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Creator
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Rempel, Lora.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Carol Armstrong
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Date
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1997
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Art History
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Abstract
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In late eighteenth-century England, the rise of the appreciation of stylistically distinctive painting went hand-in-hand with the unprecedented imperative to develop one's signature "mark" of distinction as a painter. This dissertation examines the mature work of Thomas Gainsborough--arguably the most style-conscious English painter of the eighteenth century. Applied to Gainsborough's full-length portraits of women, style registers in two different yet intertwined ways: his sensitivity to matters of stylish feminine fashion and his investment in the formal matters of painting, which is to say the formal aspects that comprise his own signature style of painting.;The institutional framework in which Gainsborough participated after 1768--namely the Royal Academy--is closely examined as is his artistic relationship with his closest rival, Sir Joshua Reynolds. Gainsborough's mixing of the genres of landscape and portraiture provides the basis for his development of a distinctive portrait style, which is further enhanced when, upon his arrival in Bath at the end of 1758, his spectacularization of contemporary feminine fashion becomes a key feature of his large-scale portraits. The issue of Gainsborough's style is inextricably intertwined with his commitment to formal experimentation, a commitment that is evident in his crossing of boundaries between different media. His most innovative techniques evolved from his experimentations in drawing, watercolor, and pseudo-landscape "assemblages;" the fruits of his experimentation in these media were imported to his large, commissioned portraits. Finally, I aim to locate Gainsborough's distinctive style within the context of critical shifts in the increasingly commercial art market, the rise of art criticism, and emerging attitudes toward aesthetic judgement in late eighteenth century England.;"The Matter of Style" is an intentionally shifting phrase that slips from addressing the importance of style as a manner of painting (one which may on the one hand be circumscribed by historical circumstances yet on the other hand be the outcome of a painter's unique skills and sensibility) and style as a subject that is unequivocally fashionable, indubitably stylish. Both senses of the phrase are conveyed most compellingly in Gainsborough's portraits of fashionably-dressed women in landscape settings, pictures in which the mimetically representational objects of fashion and nature simultaneously provide the vehicles and set the limits of their painterly dissolution.* ftn*Originally published in DAI Vol. 58, No. 9. Reprinted here with corrected title.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
