Art in Europe, 1700-1830: a history of the visual arts in an era of unprecedented urban economic growth

Abstract

Hogarth's pugnaciously xenophobic Gates of Calais, Giambattista Tiepolo's grandiose murals at Wurzburg, Goya's satirical engravings, Los Caprichos, and Canova's chastely classical sculptures could hardly be more different but all are aspects of the same period. In an era of unprecedented change - rapid urbanization, economic growth, political revolution - artists were in the business of finding new ways of making art, new ways of selling art, and new ways of talking about art. Matthew Craske creates a vivid picture of 18th- and early 19th-century art in Europe, taking a critical view of such conventional categorizations as the Rococo, the Neo-Classical, and the Romantic. He engages with crucial thematic issues such as changes in taste and manners and the impact of enlightenment notions of progress, and at the same time goes beyond the usual geographical limits of surveys to take in St Petersburg, Copenhagen, Warsaw, and Madrid. The result is a holistic survey which sets the art of the period firmly in its social history.