3/21/2023 0 Comments Sublime genreHe is shown reading at home in his study, seated before a fireplace, holding a large open book with Ancient Greek text just visible inside. In Portrait of the Artist’s Son, Jonathan Richardson Junior, in his Study c.1739 (Tate T13207, fig.2), the sitterclosely resembles his father as a young man. Our insight into his ideas about portraiture and sublimity can therefore help to illuminate our understanding and appreciation of his art practice. Tate T07956Richardson was a painter who himself specialised in portraits. The fact that Van Dyck hides the sitter’s lack of eyebrows with a veil, for example, was thought by Richardson to add grace to the composition. He said that the sitter’s dress and demeanour, as well the calm sorrow expressed in her eyes, were entirely appropriate for a grieving wife and would therefore cause the spectator to want to emulate her dignity. Richardson claimed that the portrait of Frances Cecil inspired the spectator to behave in a more moral way. In a method indirectly derived from Pseudo-Longinus, who claimed that it was not absolute perfection but the superlative qualities of certain elements which led to the sublime, Richardson showed that even if all the elements of an artwork did not score top marks, if some were deemed truly excellent that was enough to make it ‘sublime’. Richardson singled out a portrait of Frances Cecil, Countess Dowager of Exeter by Sir Anthony van Dyck – a lost painting which he knew from a print in his own collection – as a case study of sublimity (fig.1). But it is precisely through the diversity of Richardson’s case studies that we can understand far more what the sublime meant at the time, as what all his examples have in common is the composition’s strong effect on the viewer and the interaction between sitter and spectator. Scholars have used this apparent confusion to show how the sublime could not be relevant to art of the period. He gives as further examples works by Van Dyck, Rembrandt and the Italian Baroque artist Federico Zuccaro. In the first edition of An Essay on the Theory of Painting (1715) Richardson proposes the art of Michelangelo as being sublime in the second edition ten years later he offers Raphael. As the artworks and artists that he offers as examples are wide-ranging they are often used to demonstrate how difficult it was to define a visual sublime in the early eighteenth century. Elsewhere he draws upon the idea that simplicity itself can be effective and sublime, not only in language but also in art. For example, like Pseudo-Longinus, Richardson says that the painter should aim to capture the sublime and accept imperfection as part of this, highlighting the importance of surprising and not merely pleasing. ![]() Richardson knew the ancient text by Pseudo-Longinus well and drew upon it heavily in many of his theories about art, not just portraiture.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |