FURTHER INFORMATION

Essay: The Romantic Tradition in British Painting & Literature

Mark Evans
Senior Curator of Paintings

Romanticism permeated the arts throughout Europe during the late 18th and 19th centuries. In Britain its greatest achievements were in the fields of poetry and painting. The works of William Wordsworth and S.T. Coleridge, as well as J.M.W. Turner and John Constable, are celebrated for their lyrical beauty and praise of the natural world. They remain an active force in British cultural life. From 1857 until 1897, the Victoria and Albert Museum housed the first National Gallery of British Art, and the Museum remains home to the national collection of watercolours and miniatures, as well as to distinguished holdings of oil paintings, drawings and prints. Consequently, the development of Romanticism in Britain may be studied in incomparable depth and breadth at the V&A. This essay is abridged from the catalogue of the V&A touring exhibition The Romantic Tradition in British Painting 1800-1950 (2002-3). All the works illustrated in it are from the collections of the V&A, and many are on display in its Paintings galleries.

Part 1. Blake and Reynolds
Part 2. Romance, Sublime, Picturesque
Part 3. Girtin, Turner and Constable
Part 4. The Exotic
Part 5. Romantic Love
Part 6. The Pre-Raphaelites
Part 7. Neo-Romanticism