Portraiture and the Conversation Piece

Much painting had been done in England by a handful of native artists well into the eighteenth century, although it was foreign artists that had dominated the market for paintings. British artists could not form a style that was original and one they could call their own, thus they were seldom admired. In the early eighteenth century British aristocrats usually employed foreign artists to do their portraits. It was not until William Hogarth, local artwork …

…key artists that made them so popular, from van Dyck to Reynolds. We also examined closely the works of a very influential British painter, Thomas Gainsborough. The paintings discussed, though by the same painter, were very different in their nature. The eighteenth century was a breakthrough century for British art, without these key artists and the popularity of portraiture and the conversation piece, art in Britain may have still been left up to foreign artists.