Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
British art from 1540 to 1810
The collection's earliest works are richly bejewelled portraits of the Elizabethan and
Jacobean nobility, the most striking being the richly symbolic Portrait of Captain
Thomas Lee, a bare-legged swashbuckling English soldier. Another eye-catching work
is the
Cholmondeley Ladies
, who were born on the same day, married on the same day
and “brought to bed” on the same day, but are not now thought to be twins. Despite
a smattering of English talent -
William Dobson
's portrait of courtier
Endymion Porter
is a perennial favourite - the Stuarts relied heavily on imported Dutch talent such as
Van Dyck and Peter Lely (several of whose “lovelies” are usually on display) and the
German Godfrey Kneller, who used to sign himself “Pictor Regis” such was the
longevity of his royal patronage.
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Hogarth and Constable
You can be guaranteed a good selection of works by the first great British artist,
William
Hogarth
, including
O the Roast Beef of Old England
, a particularly vicious visual dig at
the French, whom Hogarth loathed.
John Constable
's most famous work,
Hay Wain
,
hangs in the National Gallery, but the same location - Flatford Mill in his native Stour
valley in Suffolk - features in many of the paintings owned by the Tate. Another
painter to look out for is
George Stubbs
, for whom “nature was and always is superior
to art”, and who portrayed animals - horses in particular - with a hitherto unknown
anatomical precision.
Gainsborough and Reynolds
Works by
Thomas Gainsborough
and
Joshua Reynolds
are sprinkled across several
rooms. Of the two, Reynolds, first president of the Royal Academy, was by far the more
successful, elevating portraiture to pole position among the genres and flattering his
sitters by surrounding them with classical trappings as in
Three Ladies adorning a Term
of Hymen
. Gainsborough was equally adept at flattery, but preferred instead more
informal settings, concentrating on colour and light, as in
Giovanna Baccelli
. At the
outset of his career, Gainsborough was also a landscape artist, often painting the Stour
valley in Suffolk, where he - like Constable - was born.
The Pre-Raphaelites
Tate is justifiably renowned for its vast collection of paintings by the
Pre-Raphaelites
,
seven of whom formed their Brotherhood, the PRB, in 1848 in an attempt to re-create
the humble, pre-humanist, pre-Renaissance world. One of the first PRB paintings to be
exhibited was
Rossetti
's
Girlhood of Mary Virgin
, which was well received by the critics,
but his
Annunciation
, with its emaciated heroin-chic Virgin, the model for which was his
sister, caused outrage. So too did
Millais
'
Christ in the House of His Parents
; Dickens
described the figure of Jesus as “a hideous, wry-necked, blubbering, red-headed boy in a
bed-gown”. Millais also got into trouble for
Ophelia
, after his model, Elizabeth Siddal,
caught a chill from lying in the bath to pose for the picture, prompting threats of a
lawsuit from her father. Siddal later married Rossetti, and is also the model in his
Beata
Beatrix
, painted posthumously, after she died of an opium overdose in 1862. Other
classic PRB paintings in the collection are Arthur Hughes'
April Love
, Henry Wallis's
Romantic hero
Chatterton
, John William Waterhouse's
The Lady of Shalott
and Burne-
Jones'
King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid
, all inspired by poems by Lord Tennyson.
The Academy and the Impressionists
Throughout Tate Britain, the term “British” is very loosely applied, so you'll find several
works by the French artist,
James Tissot
, whose Impressionist take on English life (and, in
particular, English ladies in frilly frocks) was very popular.
Lord Leighton
's
Bath of Psyche
is
a typical piece of Victorian soft porn, the likes of which made him by far the most
successful Royal Academician of his generation. Moralizing paintings such as
