Romantic Circles

Significance

In Passages from the Life of Charles Knight—the abridged, American version of Knight’s three-volume autobiography, Passages of a Working Life during Half a Century: with a Prelude of Early Reminisces—Knight describes his “awakening feeling for the preservation of our historical monuments,” intending to fire a similar appreciation in working class citizens (429). In contrast with the other views of Richmond and its castle in this plate, this scenic perspective invites the viewer to imagine him or herself viewing the castle from the banks of the Swale River. William Gilpin similarly intended his tours of various parts of the British Isles to be accessible to all. Kim Michisaw interprets Gilpin's use of landscapes as an attempt to give the viewer entry into the illusionistic, picturesque spaces of images (84-86).  Eighteenth-century England sought to unite the diverse peoples of the British Isles by drawing upon a common historical heritage. Anne Janowitz notes how British national identity became intricately associated with nature itself: the physical remains of centuries-old architecture in the British countryside were seen as tangible evidence of a common history and thus of contemporary political unity. Furthermore, the picturesque aesthetic which developed later in the century glorified decayed structures from the medieval period because they had been subsumed into the land: stained, overrun, and rent by insects and vegetation (Ruskin qtd. in Lowenthal: 157). Consequently, in that medieval ruins were associated with the picturesque qualities of the British countryside and were identified as markers of historical continuity, inculcating an appreciation of these ruins in the masses seemed an ideal way to unify and educate them.Knight’s article in the London Magazine clarified his opinion regarding the need “to provide adequate excitements, and reasonable gratifications, for the intellectual activity of the working classes” and their children (Education of the People 3). The sciences, history, and geography were the primary subjects of focus. But the arts featured prominently as well, evidenced by his frequent inclusion of copies of artworks from antiquity and contemporary times. These art objects were often used as illustrations for moral lessons (Anderson, Pictures for the People 137). Although these publications did participate in a general, reform movement mentality which sought (in the 1830s and '40s) to quell the civil unrest among the working classes by means of education, they reflect a more prominent goal for Knight. This goal aimed at the transmission of “one of art's central traditions: that body of thought which equated art with moral elevation and advanced civilization, and artists with virtue and industriousness” (Anderson, Pictures for the People 137).Knight’s collection of engravings and commentary on the “Antiquities [sic] of a great Nation” described the “richest treasures that we have derived from a long line of ancestors” (Old England 1). Originally issued in parts and available to “all ranks of people, at the cheapest rate," Knight’s publication participated in the “education of the people” by reinforcing Romantic notions of the elevated status of the arts (Old England 1): the volume specifically encouraged the idea of drawing as a polite and useful art for all classes, and also implicitly emphasized and contributed to the construction of political unity via a knowledge of history (Bermingham 77-78).