Two rowboats fearlessly navigate massive, strangely shaped blocks of ice without any apparent trouble. Such an image, depicting both the threat of untamed nature and the successful human exploration of that nature, results in an uncanny combination of implicit danger and imperialist (as well as pragmatist) confidence.
One of Sir George Back's most picturesque images from Narrative of the Arctic Land Expedition, "Beverly's Falls" also subtly challenges that convention with its lowered viewpoint, the realistic scale of its subjects, and Back's sublime-inflected description of the scene in the accompanying narrative.
The artwork of Sir George Back, Royal Navy explorer of the Canadian Arctic, invites our reexamination of the paradigms of Romantic visual culture via its depiction of the “otherness” that the Arctic represented to the British during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as the difficulty of physically navigating that landscape. A compelling combination of the picturesque, sublime and “true-to-nature”—a combination sometimes found in just one image—Back’s artwork is almost equally aesthetically and scientifically driven, and as such walks a peculiar line that evades merely imperialist, picturesque, sublime or scientistic tropes.
This intimate domestic scene portrays two lovers who, because of their profound absorption in each other, are simultaneously spectator and spectacle.
St. Bartholomew’s Fair was one of the highlights of the London social season, drawing crowds from all strati of society.
This image depicts a cockfight, with special emphasis on the diversity of spectators in attendance and their singularity of purpose (gambling).
In this illustration of William Combe's comic text, Dr. Syntax seeks the picturesque in the theater.
This illustration, created by John White to accompany William Combe's written history of Westminster, gives an interior view of the Abbey and depicts several of its monuments. The bottom border of the image includes the names of the persons to whom the monuments are dedicated, along with corresponding numbers for identification.
This image depicts an art exhibition and sale at Christie's, London's famous auction house, drawing attention not only to the displayed artwork but also to the busy social scene.
