Albrecht Dürer, Melencolia I, 1514.
In his Melencolia, Albrecht Dürer depicts an artist as a brooding angel; Sir Thomas Lawrence described himself as a ‘mill-horse’. Which was it? From the Renaissance to Modernism, what sort of people became artists? How did their profession work and how was it regarded? Were they misunderstood in their lifetime or is it we who misunderstand them today?
Join Desmond Shawe-Taylor, former Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures at the Royal Collection Trust as he explores these questions by concentrating on artists pre-1900, looking at every aspect of their careers with a wide range of examples. Painting was generally profitable, yet a prosperous artist might still be regarded as a well-trained craftsperson. Even when Italian theorists of the 16th century upgraded artists to honorary poets, they were still subject to the market. The successful blended genius with diplomacy; others were more truculent and self-assertive.
What is sometimes called the ‘Romantic view of the Artist’ predates Romanticism by three hundred years, but something did change during the 19th century. Increasingly the artists we admire were despised by their contemporaries and vice versa. Our favourites survived rather than prospered, living on the margins of society and supporting each other. What caused this strange reversal? Have we overcorrected and what are the implications for our understanding of art today?
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This is an online event hosted on Zoom which can be watched live, or on-demand for one month afterwards. You will receive your link to access the event in your email confirmation and the on-demand link after the event ends.