Portraits, Painters, and Publics in Provincial England 1540 - 1640 - Hardcover

Tittler, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199585601 ISBN 13: 9780199585601

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2012

Synopsis

In this, the first comprehensive study of post-Reformation provincial English portraiture, Robert Tittler investigates the growing affinity for secular portraiture in Tudor and early Stuart England, a cultural and social phenomenon which can be said to have produced a 'public' for that genre. He breaks new ground in placing portrait patronage and production in this era in the broad social and cultural context of post-Reformation England, and in distinguishing between native English provincial portraiture, which was often highly vernacular, and foreign-influenced portraiture of the court and metropolis, which tended towards the formal and 'polite'.

Tittler describes the burgeoning public for portraiture of this era as more than the familiar court-and-London based presence, but rather as a phenomenon which was surprisingly widespread, both socially and geographically, throughout the realm. He suggests that provincial portraiture differed from the 'mainstream', cosmopolitan portraiture of the day in its workmanship, materials, inspirations, and even vocabulary, showing how its native English roots continued to guide its production. Innovative chapters consider the aims and vocabulary of English provincial portraiture, the relationship of portraiture and heraldry, the painter's occupation in provincial (as opposed to metropolitan) England, and the contrasting availability of materials and training in both provincial and metropolitan areas. The work as a whole contributes to both art history and social history: it speaks to admirers and collectors of painting as well as to curators and academics.

About this title

About the Author

Robert Tittler has researched, taught, and published for over forty years, producing ten books and some fifty scholarly articles and essays on the urban, political, social, economic, and cultural history of the Tudor and early Stuart eras. He prefers to work at the edges of his subjects rather in their centres, hoping to knit those subjects together with the edges of adjacent issues. His studies of town halls and political authority (Architecture and Power, 1991), of the impact of the Reformation on urban political life (The Reformation and the Towns, 1998), the experiences of individual urban residents in relation to the whole (Townspeople and Nation, 2001), or of portraiture and civic identity (The Face of the City, 2007), all work towards those ends, as does this present book.

Review

"The book is a richly rewarding read: the subject probably required a social historian because it needed someone able to see beyond aesthetic judgment to different kinds of value. And the subject deserves the historian it got -a scholar who habitually works at a level of local prominence: whose interest in people who would have been well known to their peers, but who remain largely hidden from us, has led him to pursue the lives of individuals who historians and art historians alike have often seen as being 'faceless'." --History

"Tittler's thoroughly researched and well-referenced book is both scholarly and readily accessible to anyone interested in the early modern period... This book provides a valuable evidence base for researchers in other, related fields... an excellent book." --Journal of British Studies

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0199585601
• ISBN 13: 9780199585601
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 216