Paintings, Films and Fast Cars: A Case Study of Hubert von Herkomer

Abstract

In a recent conversation with Bruno Latour, the French philosopher Michel Serres visualized his concept of modernity through the image of the automobile. The car, Serres argued, could not be defined as uniquely of one period or as belonging exclusively to the modern, being ‘a disparate aggregate of scientific and technical solutions dating from different periods … The ensemble is only contemporary by assemblage.’ This metaphor offers a highly productive way of looking at the history and forms of visual culture in Britain in the early twentieth century, when the technological and commercial possibilities of nineteenth‐century optical developments were filtering into all aspects of cultural production and consumption. The article examines this moment via a case study of the artist Hubert von Herkomer; offering a reassessment through an examination of his paintings, films and fast cars and thereby proposing a reframing of the history of British visual culture through the integration of still and moving images.