Romantic Circles

Significance

The constellation of ten images in Charles Knight’s volume on British history creates a rich set of perspectives on the historic site of Pevensey Castle. The picturesque aesthetic, first advocated by the Rev. William Gilpin, was often applied to medieval ruins. One technique of this aesthetic involved the creative re-assemblage of elements observed in nature to create a harmonious image (see Gilpin's "On Picturesque Beauty," London, 1792; 8). Gilpin’s advice was directed toward the amateur artists and tourists of the British countryside. Although these images seem to reflect a greater degree of detail, probably signifying that they are “truer”-to-life renderings of Pevensey, they are compositionally similar to the piece-by-piece reconstruction required by Gilpin’s process of creating the picturesque. For Gilpin, parts assembled together produce a beautiful whole, but in this plate from Old England, the various views (schematic renderings, drawings of entryways, and interiors of the Keep) provide a more complete understanding of the site of Pevensey as a whole. Kim Michasiw notes how Gilpin inserts figures into his images who interact with the ruins as a means of engaging viewers (Michasiw 84-86). Similarly, Knight’s engravings depict visitors to Pevensey in order to help viewers imagine the site as if they were actually there. Gilpin’s series of guide books, famous by the beginning of the nineteenth century, were intended for amateur artists and tourists of the British Isles; the work made his art accessible to all. Knight had similar ambitions with his volume on English history. 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;1). 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 artwork 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" (Old England 1), Knight’s publication participated in the “education of the people” by reinforcing Romantic notions of the elevated status of the arts: the volume specifically encouraged the idea of drawing as a polite and useful art for all classes (Bermingham 77-78), and also implicitly emphasized and contributed to the construction of political unity via a knowledge of history.