Exhibition notebook - The Golden Age of English Painting

FRENCH LANGUAGE

At a time when in France, for more than a century, the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture had been perpetuating its classical teaching, in England, the Royal Academy was founded in 1768, under the reign of George III.

Despite their apparent willingness to apply the precepts of the institution, English painters, in their practice, will never cease to play, influence or emancipate themselves from it.
Some respond to the laws of the market, others to the needs of their aesthetic project. Reynolds incorporates the "great style" into the portrait, Gainsborough makes a free touch, Fuseli and Blake choose the escape from the dream and visions, while Cozens, Constable, Turner or Martin each use the landscape in their own way to experiment with new pictorial techniques.
It is this period of invention and new practices, this wind of freedom, that has been called the "Golden Age of English painting".