Samuel Johnson's Attitude to the ArtsClarendon Press, 1989 - 195 pages This book challenges the traditional view that Johnson knew and cared little about the fine arts. Brownell goes beyond pejorative anecdotes that exaggerate and misrepresent Johnson's attitudes toward music, painting, architecture, and landscape gardening, and presents evidence that Johnson was thoroughly familiar with the arts of his time, contributing to their patronage as something of a Handelian, friend of painters and architects, and a student of landscape more discerning than William Gilpin. Showing that Johnson's repeated expressions of disgust for the arts were part of a Socratic pretense designed to tease and challenge his contemporaries, the book illustrates that he deliberately chose to play the iconoclast at the very moment when the arts were reviving in England, when taste was becoming de rigeur, and the Royal Academy was being founded. |
Table des matières
A Bull in the Chinashop of Taste | 1 |
Ignorant of the Science of Music 98 | 18 |
Total Ignorance in That Department | 37 |
Droits d'auteur | |
11 autres sections non affichées
Expressions et termes fréquents
anecdotes architect architecture Barry beautiful Benjamin West Biographical Blackfriars Bridge BM Satires Boswell Boswell's Bridge Committee British Art building Burney Burney's caricatures Castle Catalogue Chambers's Charles Burney Chinese Clarendon criticism Dictionary Discourses Dovedale drawing Dryden's eighteenth century elliptical arches English engraved essay Fanny Burney garden Garrick George Gilpin Handel Haven and London Hawkins Hawkins's Hebrides Henry history painting Hogarth Horace Walpole Ibid idea Idler ignorance illustrated James James Boswell JB Journals John Gwynn John Smeaton Johnson wrote Johnson's prejudice Johnsonian Journey landscape Library literary Lowe Lowe's Mylne's opera Oxford painter Paul Mellon picture picturesque plate Poems poet poetry Pope portrait of Johnson Preface quoted remark Robert Mylne Royal Academy Samuel Johnson scene Shakespeare Sir Joshua Reynolds SJ Letters SJ Misc SJ Portraits Society of Artists Society of Arts Somerset House taste Thomas Thrale tion Tour vols Westminster William Chambers writes Yale