Painting for a Living in Tudor and Early Stuart England

✍ Scribed by Robert Tittler

• Publisher: Boydell Press
• Year: 2022
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 303
• Series: Studies in Early Modern Cultural, Political and Social History; 43
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

A rare examination of the political, social, and economic contexts in which painters in Tudor and Early Stuart England lived and worked While famous artists such as Holbein, Rubens, or Van Dyck are all known for their creative periods in England or their employment at the English court, they still had to make ends meet, as did the less well-known practitioners of their craft. This book, by one of the leading historians of Tudor and Stuart England, sheds light on the daily concerns, practices, and activities of many of these painters. Drawing on a biographical database comprising nearly 3000 painters and craftsmen - strangers and native English, Londoners and provincial townsmen, men and sometimes women, celebrity artists and 'mere painters' - this book offers an account of what it meant to paint for a living in early modern England. It considers the origins of these painters as well as their geographical location, the varieties of their expertise, and the personnel and spatial arrangements of their workshops. Engagingly written, the book captures a sense of mobility and exchange between England and the continent through the considerable influence of stranger-painters, undermining traditional notions about the insular character of this phase in the history of English art. By showing how painters responded to the greater political, religious, and economic upheavals of the time, the study refracts the history of England itself through the lens of this particular occupation.

✦ Table of Contents

Front cover
Contents
Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgements
Editorial Conventions and Abbreviations
Part I: Introduction
Introduction: Priming the Canvas
1 Painters before the Reformation
Part II: Kinds of People
2 The Stranger-Painters
3 The Painter-Stainers’ Company of London
4 Provincial Painters
Part III: Particular Specialities
5 Arms Painters
6 Glass Painters
Part IV: Ways and Means
7 The Workshop Personnel
8 The Workshop Space
9 The Business of Painting
Part V Conclusion
10 An Occupation in Transition
Bibliography
Index