Volume 18, Number 10 · June 1, 1972
The English Invade Paris
By Francis Haskell
"Peinture Romantique Anglaise"
Petit Palais (Paris) Winter/Spring, 1972
Four years ago the museums of Detroit and Philadelphia sponsored an exhibition of 'Romantic Art in Britain, 1760-1860.' I did not see it, but to judge from the catalogue,[*] itself an outstanding contribution to our knowledge of the subject, the exhibition was as impressive as it was imaginative and pioneering, for it brought to general attention a number of artists who, until then, had been little known except to specialists, but who could certainly stand alongside their more famous contemporaries. Moreover, the fact that the exhibition was organized outside Great Britain, by officials of museums that contain distinguished examples of European art, gave an entirely new perspective to the characterization of the works on display. Indeed, in one of the sparkling essays included in the catalogue, Robert Rosenblum attempted to lift the study of British art out of the ghetto to which it has so often been relegated and to give a brief general survey of its relationship to wider currents of European painting than the endlessly repeated, but little verified, parallels between Constable and the School of Barbizon, and Turner and the Impressionists.
Review, 2634 words
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