Jonathan Richardson

the long version

"Gibson-Wood describes art consumption in England in Richardson's time as well as the debates concerning native versus continental painting. She argues that Richardson's personal and written responses to these circumstances quintessentially embodied 'bourgeois' English Enlightenment ideals and the Lockean principles underpinning them. The first part of the book examines Richardson's personal life, professional career, literary aspirations, activities as a collector, and his relations with such contemporaries as Alexander Pope. In the second part Gibson-Wood sets Richardson's writings in the contexts of earlier art theory and of other genres of contemporary writing, concluding that his art-theoretical programme was a radically English one that upheld the ability of freethinking Englishmen - including painters - to establish their own aesthetic criteria."--BOOK JACKET.