British vision

the long version

"British Vision presents some of the most celebrated works in British art history, selected from public and private collections in Europe, Britain, and the United States by Robert Hoozee, drawing on the expertise of Andrew Dempsey, John Gage, Mark Haworth-Booth, and Timothy Hyman. Among the artists whose work appears in British Vision are William Hogarth, Thomas Gainsborough, George Stubbs, William Blake, Henry Fuseli, John Constable, J.M.W. Turner, Richard Dadd, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, Stanley Spencer, Graham Sutherland, Francis Bacon, and Lucien Freud." "Essays by a group of distinguished art historians focus on two defining characteristics of British art, observation and imagination, seen within the context of society, landscape, and the visionary. Together, they set forth important arguments about what makes British art recognizable, what gives it its typically "British" style, and how British artists have contributed to the history of art as a whole. The two central themes that emerge are the British talent for observation and the tendency toward the visionary and the eccentric. This illustrated catalog is a record of the most comprehensive exhibition of British art to be displayed in recent years, and represents a unique opportunity to discover the creative forces that shaped British art over two centuries."--Jacket.