A roll call of groundbreaking British artists

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50 British Artists You Should Know

By Lucinda Hawksley

This book showcases the lives and works of 50 British artists who were 'masters in their field...groundbreaking, fascinating figures whose lives and work have changed the course of art history’ over a period of 500 years. This comprehensive overview of the history of British art and artists spans a number of genres, including portraits, landscapes, satire, sculpture, ceramics, conceptual art, installation art and graffiti and including a number of women, the roll-call of artists is impressive.

Lucinda Hawksley recognizes the rich inspirational resources of early inhabitants such as the Celts, Angles, Saxons, Vikings, Romans and Druids who have left their anonymous mark in numerous ways, such as carvings in the chalk landscape, Celtic crosses, stone circles. 

Many of the early known 'names' of artists in Britain were actually Dutch, German, French, Italians and others who had trained in their own countries and then came to live and work, and some cases make their fortune, in Britain. Probably two of the most well-known cases are the German born Hans Holbein the Younger and the Flemish-speaking Anthony van Dyck.  Such foreign painters were the court artists and the portrait painters of high society. The first generally recognized home-grown painter was Nicholas Hilliard, painter of miniatures at the court of Elizabeth I, and it is he who begins this book proper as number one in the roll call of artists.

As religious painting was by Hilliard’s time frowned upon under the new Protestant regime, portraiture developed as the key staple in an artist's commercial practice. Hilliard himself wrote in around 1600 'of all things the perfection is to imitate the face of mankind'.  Portrait painters were set to dominate British art for many years.  Hilliard flattered the Queen and her courtiers, Joshua Reynolds idealized his sitters almost as part of an heroic race, whilst in his satirical works Hogarth showed his subjects at their worst. 

The Pre-Raphaelites, including John Everett Millais, sought to return to the dignity, purity and realism of painting before Raphael, whilst their contemporary Lord Leighton idealized men and women as beautiful creatures almost from another world. In her sculptures, Barbara Hepworth created a new style of portrait, an 'abstract vision of beauty', while Antony Gormley has recreated the expression of the human form and placed it literally in the late 20th- and 21st-century landscape.

But it is not only portrait artists who have made it into the 50 artists here.  The school of British landscape painting has been significant and influential.  Richard Wilson (1714–82) benefited from an early rise in interest in landscapes but by the 1770s they had fallen out of fashion. With the career of Thomas Gainsborough (1776–1837) landscapes once again grew in popularity, to begin with as a background to the aristocratic sitters who were portrayed, such as Robert Andrew and his Wife Frances, against a backdrop of their country estates. The careers of J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) and John Constable (1776–1837) brought the British school of landscape painting to its height.

Modern artists working in the 20thcentury and onwards are well represented here, from Walter Sickert (1860–1942) to the anonymous graffiti artist Banksy, accounting for 33 out of the 50 artists.  Eleven women are represented from Mary Beale (1633–99), who ran a thriving portraiture business, to Rachel Whiteread (b. 1963).

Each artist receives a minimum double-paged spread with one page of text and one full page of images, incorporating where possible a small self-portrait or photograph above a column devoted to the artist's significant life dates and one or two suggestions for further reading. A most helpful time line runs across the top of the two pages, charting important historical events and other significant artists working at the same time.

Hawksely acknowledges in her excellent introduction the 'Herculean task' of whom to include and whom to leave out.  She acknowledges that each artist included represents many others working alongside them or in competition with them. One thing she doesn't mention is the vast store of religious art works in churches, abbeys and monasteries throughout the realm that were largely lost at the time of the reformation. The few remaining examples are by the hands of unknown artists.

The copious illustrations are mainly in full colour and make for an attractive and well-presented work which is clear and easy to navigate.  This is an excellent example of using the lives and works of the artists to present art history and will build knowledge and confidence in the readers new to the subject.

50 British Artists You Should Know  by Lucinda Hawksleyis published by Prestel, 2011. 157 pp., 150 colour/30 mono illus. ISBN 978-3-7913-4538-3