The Revolution in Eighteenth-Century Art: Ten British Painters 1740-1840

Between the mid-18th and mid-19th centuries, European art was a maelstrom of various styles and influences. Robert R. Wark (Early British Drawings in the Huntington Collection), former curator of the Huntington Art Collections in California, explains this pivotal era in his lucid, concise volume, The Revolution in Eighteenth-Century Art: Ten British Pictures 1740-1840. Wark uses 10 paintings and drawings by the likes of Hogarth, Reynolds, Blake, Constable and Turner to illuminate the competing trends of the period, showing how they were sometimes embodied in the work of a single artist and how they eventually gave way to modern art. (May)