ENGLISH NEO-CLASSIC ART: STUDIES IN INSPIRATION AND TASTE by David IrwinReview by: F. J. B. WATSONJournal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 114, No. 5124 (NOVEMBER 1966), pp. 1039-1040Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and CommerceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41371718 .

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November 1966 notes on books

ENGLISH NEO-CLASSIC ART : STUDIES IN INSPIRATION AND TASTE. By David Inviti . London , Faber , 1966. 845 net

A good deal has been written in recent years about the origins of neo-classicism, but it has been concerned principally with the relative importance of the rôles played by France and England in creating the new style in architecture and the decorative arts. Apart from one little known article by Jean Locquin which appeared half a century ago and Professor Waterhouse's Henrietta Herz lecture of 1954, almost nothing has been written about the English contribution to neo-classical painting and little enough about the sculpture which forms the subject of Mr. Irwin's stimulating, thoughtful and richly illustrated book.

The part played by the English in both fields was important. To most readers it will come as a surprise to learn that an Englishman, Gavin Hamilton, and an American, Benjamin West, were already producing paintings in an advanced neo- classic idiom in Rome before 1761, the year when Vien showed his Jeune Corinthienne at the French Salon, an event generally regarded as the first step in the history of neo-classical painting. This was well over a decade before David produced his first neo-classic picture. Indeed, when David came to paint his Hector and Andromache in 1783 he paid tribute to Gavin Hamilton's pioneer rôle by pillaging the principal figure from Hamilton's painting of the same subject completed twenty- two years earlier.

Early in this book Mr. Irwin quotes Dallaway's remark on the flourishing state of the arts in England at the end of the eighteenth century as compared with its beginning: 'no circumstance has tended so much to improve the national style of design and painting as the introduction of so many genuine antiques or correct copies of them'. Gavin Hamilton's contribution was seminal in this respect also. He was one of the most intelligent excavators of the day and, as a dealer, was largely responsible for forming such outstanding collections of classical sculpture as those of Lord Shelbourne, Charles Townley, William Weddell of Newby and Henry Blundell of Ince-Blundell Hall. In addition he was a highly successful dealer in Old Master paintings.

Although Mr. Irwin justly remarks 'what he did with the spade at Ostia, he tried to do with the brush in his studio in Rome', it can hardly be claimed that Hamilton's own paintings are impressive as works of art. To-day they appear over-large, empty machines, dryly painted and vapid. The same criticism applies in varying degrees to the works of the other English neo-classical painters about whom the author writes. West is mainly interesting for his historic rôle as the only American-born P.R.A. ; Angelica Kaufimann's simpering nymphs and shepherds seem painfully insipid in a world of beats and Beatles ; and if Fuseli's drawings still give pleasure the same can hardly be said of the history paintings which he regarded as his principal claim on posterity. Even the most generally familiar example of English neo-classical painting, James Barry's decoration of the Great Room at the Royal Society of Arts, intrigues by its complex iconography rather than any inspiring beauty. None of these artists can hold a candle as history-painters to David or even to Guérin, whom West and Flaxman are curiously revealed here as esteeming David's superior. The reason is not far to seek. Neo-classic painting was history-painting or it was nothing, and history-painting had no traditional roots in this country such as it possessed in France where David and his followers соцЫ draw sustenance from the example of Poussin and Lebrun. When it came to portraiture, all the artists mentioned (even Angelica Kauflmann) could acquit themselves with credit, for here they were working in a healthy and well-established tradition.

With English neo-classic sculpture matters were entirely different. Banks, Flaxman, Nollekens and Bacon are sculptors surpassed only by Canova and Houdon amongst European contemporaries. Flaxman enjoyed a widespread international reputation,

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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS NOVEMBER 1 966 and Banks (at least as original an artist as Canova) received patronage from as far afield as India and Russia. Here again the key to their strength lies in the fact that they were working in a tradition. Mr. Irwin is especially interesting on Flaxman's indebtedness to the gothic, a debt which is immediately apparent, for instance, in his monument to Mrs. Morely in Gloucester Cathedral, where the angels are taken almost directly from those in the triforium at Westminster Abbey. Banks, too, as this book points out, made casts from gothic sculpture and even collected it. In his own sculpture the gothic element is even more completely assimilated than with Flaxman.

On the surface the origins of neo-classicism were twofold. It was in part a reaction against rococo frivolity and in part arose from a newly awakened interest in antique art stimulated, in the case of England, by the widespread practice of sending young gentlemen to Italy on the Grand Tour to complete their education. It is generally regarded as the final phase of the Renaissance style. But the close links with gothic which Mr. Irwin stresses, as well as with contemporary literature and theories of the picturesque, suggest that it can be more properly regarded as the first stirrings of romanticism. The self-imposed limits implied in Mr. Irwin's title preclude him from exploring this question adequately, but the breadth of learning and penetrating aperçus of his modestly described 'studies' encourage the hope that he will one day essay the larger task of writing a full history of English neo-classicism. It would be well worth doing, for it was with the age of neo-classicism that English art attained maturity.

F. J. B. WATSON

the invention of the aeroplane, 1799-1909. By C. H. Gibbs-Smith. London , Faber , 1966. £4 45 net

Mr. Gibbs-Smith has produced another of his definitive studies of the history of aviation. This time he has concentrated on the crucial evolution as a practical vehicle of the aeroplane itself. Developments during the first hundred years, from Sir George Cay ley's clear statement of the fundamentals of fixed- wing flight by heavier- than-air machines in 1799 to the start in 1899 of the Wright brothers' experiments which led to the final solution of the problem, are covered in outline in the first seven chapters. The greater part of the book, however, concentrates particularly on the events of the ten-year period from 1899 to 1909, during which the practical aeroplane finally emerged and its development was brought to the point where the various workable configurations of biplane and monoplane were publicly exhibited in flight together for the first time at the 'Grande Semaine d'Aviation de la Champagne' held at Reims in Northern France in August 1909. The six principal types of aeroplane demonstrated at this historic competition are examined in great detail in the final chapter.

The book concludes with eight lengthy appendices covering the following subjects : early aircraft nomenclature; chronological list of first powered aeroplanes; table of the first powered flights; the first aero-engines; the Wrights and the revival of European aviation; control systems in 1909 (with diagrams to show how they worked) ; the Reims aviation meeting and the first aerodromes. A particularly important feature is the unique collection of illustrations, which enables the progressive evolution of the aeroplane to be followed visually step by step.

One of the most important conclusions which emerges from Mr. Gibbs- Smith's analysis will, however, to some readers, at least, remain controversial. It concerns the extent of the influence of the Wrights' experiments on the parallel development of the aeroplane in Europe and by Curtiss and his associates in America. Although the Wrights made their first aeroplane flights in 1903 and, by 1905, had demonstrated a fully-practical aeroplane which flew for more than half an hour, their achievements

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