"Writing the Lives of Painters": Biography and Artistic Identity in Britain, 1760-1810 (review)

Artists' biographies have recently received intensive art-historical attention, mostly from scholars of Renaissance and modern art. The literature on eighteenth-century artists' biographies remains noticeably thinner, an unfortunate and misleading neglect. One could argue that the eighteenth century is the bridge between the poetic literary biography, commonplace in early modern Europe and exemplified by Giorgio Vasari's Vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, et archittetori, and the more overtly empirical, individually oriented, and psychologically driven narratives that make up the contemporary norm. Karen Junod takes up this historical transformation in her book, which adds substantially to our understanding of biography as conceptualized during a formative period in art's history. This is an urgently needed scholarly contribution, made all the more welcome through its carefully delineated argument and elegant prose.

Junod's text sits at the contact point between art history and literary studies. She defines her subject as the literary genre of artists' biography, but notes that in the half-century between 1760 and 1810 that genre eluded easy definition. Biographies changed enormously during this period, particularly in Britain, and artistic biographies were written by and about a motley group of individuals. This variety is one of the period's challenges, and Junod wisely does not try to exert an oppressive linearity onto her material. She demonstrates, however, that there was a progression, one leading from biographies emphasizing practical information about art to texts that engaged broader conceptualizations of artistic authorship, agency, and creativity.

Junod begins with a discussion of how biography aided in the formation of a distinct British school. The long-posited interrelationship between art and life, a cornerstone of art writing since antiquity, assumed specifically British characteristics during the eighteenth century, a time that experienced the burgeoning medium of the novel, persistent challenges to artistic professionalization, the growth of exhibition culture, and the proliferation of anecdotes about artists' activities. Junod notes that the British school remained inchoate until the nineteenth century and that the artist biography became a kind of "managing critical tool" (40) in which notions of art, character, and taste could be formulated and critiqued.

The book's first section looks at compendia of artists' lives, beginning with Horace Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting in England (1762-80). Walpole conceived his book as a patriotic historiography organized according to the reigns of successive British monarchs. His narratives include descriptions of pictures and other information considered necessary to determining artistic quality. Walpole mostly omits speculations about the creative process and contains only sketchy references to artistic genius. Junod next turns to William Beckford's Biographical Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters (1780), an important text that has not received anything near its scholarly due. Beckford's book is a satire of the Vasarian biographical tradition, purporting as it does to tell the lives of imaginary painters in hilarious, often bizarre narratives. Junod argues that Beckford adapted elements of the picaresque novel in order to recast the artistic anecdote, one of Vasari's most beloved literary motifs, from a moment of condensed creative insight to one of simple illogical nonsense. This is one of Junod's most vibrant and informative discussions.

Junod then shifts to published studies of individual artists, framing them as precursors to the artist's monograph that developed in the later nineteenth century. She examines John Nichols's Biographical Anecdotes of William Hogarth (1781), in which the anecdote became a biographical particular rather than a creative metaphor. In this way, Nichols fed audiences' thirst for mundane details about artists' lives. Junod then turns to Thomas Gainsborough to posit the sketch as a guiding principle in both interpretations of his art and narratives about his life. Then comes a fascinating discussion of George Morland's dissolute existence, namely how it was treated in the numerous biographies published after his death in 1804. Junod shows how a notion of eccentricity melded into eighteenth-century...