Benedetto Gennari, The Annunciation, 1686, Oil paint on canvas, Collection of The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, the State Art Museum of Florida, Florida State University, Sarasota, Florida
The adage goes, put the words ‘American’ or ‘teenage’ in front of any noun and you’ve got yourself a movie title. Using the same principle, if you put the word ‘British’ before a noun, you’ve got what sounds like a mid-00s indie band name.
British Baroque, who may or may not be playing the John Peel Stage at this year’s Glastonbury, was an aesthetic movement that ran from roughly the early 1600s until 100 years later, and produced St Paul’s Cathedral, Blenheim Palace as well as many of Rubens’ and van Dyck’s greatest work.
We are treated to camp court portraiture, what the curators call ‘propaganda’, rather than the more virtuosic end of the movement
Like its continental counterparts, British Baroque relied on royal and aristocratic patronage of talented European artists. Unfortunately, this exhibition chooses to focus on the former, specifically the Restoration, rather than the latter, meaning we are treated to camp court portraiture, what the curators call ‘propaganda’, rather than the more virtuosic end of the movement, which took place earlier, during Charles I’s doomed reign—so no Peter Paul or Anthony. Instead what you get is a lot of second-rate Dutch, Spanish, Italian and French artists who came to Britain during the Restoration era.
In the past few years, the Tate’s programmers have, I believe, done a good job of reflecting contemporary cultural and political trends, with their lower-profile exhibitions at least. Last year, Tate Modern ran an excellent free show called Magical Realism: Art in Weimar Germany that wonderfully illustrated how political, economic and social upheaval encouraged a turn toward the surreal—a trend currently seen in the work of numerous British artists.
Samuel Van Hoogstraten, Young Man Reading in a Courtyard 1662-6, Oil paint on canvas
John Closterman, The Children of John Taylor of Bifrons Park, 1696, Oil paint on canvas, National Portrait Gallery, London
The period covered by British Baroque is also very much ‘on trend’, as seen in the success of The Favourite and a move, in women’s fashion at least, towards the big, billowing frockage favoured at the time.
It was also a time when this country’s relationship with Europe was intensely polarising, when the aristocratic elite, fronted by Charles II and his Catholic wife, favoured closer alignment with the continent, while the increasingly rancorous Commons and a majority Protestant population were suspicious of anything that looked like disloyalty to the British state.
The period covered by British Baroque is also very much ‘on trend’, as seen in the success of The Favourite
All told, it would seem the curatorial powers that be got it spot on when looking for a period to reflect our own times—Charles II was even known as the ‘Merry Monarch’ and no one really knew how many children he had fathered… I must admit, as with so many other things, I was almost completely ignorant of the significance of any form of British Baroque art.
And this exhibition did nothing to dispel that notion, which is a shame, since I’m something of a baroqueaholic. My favourite architectural style is the Spanish baroque of southern Italy, which, I believe, achieves its apotheosis in the façade of Lecce Cathedral. As for art, Caravaggio and Velazquez will always be the GOATs to me.
John James Baker, The Whig Junto, 1710, Oil paint on canvas Tate, From the collection of Richard and Patricia, Baron and Baroness Sandys. Accepted by HM Government and donated to Tate in 2018
Peter Lely, Barbara Palmer (née Villiers), Duchess of Cleveland with her son, probably Charles Fitzroy, as the Virgin and Child, Oil paint on canvas
Anyone who has a similar preference will recognise in those buildings and paintings something overripe, which owes as much to the flesh as it does to the heavens it purports to worship. The difference between this baroque and the British variety shown in the exhibition is the same as that of an Italian summer’s day to a rainy walk along Worthing Pier. Many of the paintings here are of Charles II’s mistresses, dubbed ‘The Beauties’. Plump, pale, swollen-eyed and retroussé-nosed, their moniker ends up feeling more than slightly ironic.
The power of the baroque is in its movement and the dance of light and shadow across silk, stone and flesh. The paintings here, vast brightly lit portraits, give the static impression of a well-heeled and highly anaemic aristocratic family’s living room.
The power of the baroque is in its movement and the dance of light and shadow across silk, stone and flesh
Charles II was called merry due to the decadence of his court and his own promiscuity, as well as the end his rule brought to the Puritanism of the Interregnum. It’s amazing he was so sanguine considering what had happened to his father, though a contemporary reader may ascribe all that booze and sex to him having actually a rather less cheery disposition.
His critics railed against the Catholic influence of his wife, Catherine of Braganza, and suspicions of his own beliefs were vindicated on his deathbed, when he was received into the Roman church.
Simon Verelst, A Vase of Flowers, c. 1669-75, Oil paint on canvas, The Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. Bequeathed by Daisy Linda Ward, 1939
Willem Wissing, Queen Anne, when Princess of Denmark, c. 1685, Oil paint on canvas, National Galleries of Scotland, purchased 1922
But the impression one gets from this show is that his fervour didn’t extend much further than the bedroom. It was up to his successor, James II, much less reticent about his faith, to commission the more interesting paintings on display; perhaps unsurprisingly, most of it contains religious themes.
However, it is the secular work of Protestant Dutch artists that steals the show. Trompe l’oeils, still lifes and painted illusions show the detail achieved with new optical technology and the beginnings of a consumer culture that began fetishising objects.
Dew drops seem to drip from paintings
Dew drops seem to drip from paintings and a detailed double-page spread illustration of a flea in Robert Hooke’s seminal scientific opus Micrographia, would have given those wealthy enough to afford it the chance to see what these insects, whose plagues continued to, um, plague mankind, looked like up-close.
Ironically, given the exhibition’s focus on the decadence of Charles II’s court, it is its scientific and architectural content that leaves the most enduring impression. For those keen to learn a bit more about Britain in the late 17th/early 18th centuries, it is good for filling in the gaps between Cromwell and the House of Hanover. But if you’re a fiend for the baroque, that true cult of beauty, you’ll be better sated elsewhere.
For more information on the exhibition, click here.
Tate Britain, Millbank, London, SW1P 4RG
