Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 58-04, Section: A, page: 1134.

Director: Creighton Gilbert.

The dissertation examines Titian as a model in British art theory, criticism, and practice from 1768 to 1830. Many of the patterns affecting art during this period were established earlier, at the court of Charles I, when the English adopted a coloristic approach to painting, with an emphasis on portraiture, which derived largely from Titian via Van Dyck. This legacy directed painting in England for at least two hundred years.

However, Reynolds's early Discourses, the intellectual underpinnings of the nascent Royal Academy, derived from central Italian/French theoretical prototypes and--in opposition to traditional British practice--posited Venetian art as the Grand Style's antithesis, the paradigm for what great art was not. A disjuncture between Reynolds's widely accepted theory and British practice ensued: artists emphasized color in their work yet believed color to be mechanical. A product of this tension was the Provis Venetian Secret episode of 1797, in which a number of Academicians were duped into purchasing the reputed "recipe" for sixteenth-century Venetian coloring.

During the early nineteenth century, the "British School," consisting primarily of the artists associated with the Royal Academy, began to value color more highly in theory. Considered the founder of the British School, Reynolds was viewed as a colorist, despite his diatribe against the Venetians in the early Discourses. The British School increasingly defined itself, too, as coloristic, natural, and ultimately derived from Titian, in opposition to the French School, viewed as dry, artificial, and "liney."

Though the British School elevated the status of color during the early nineteenth century, it nevertheless otherwise accepted Reynolds's academic program. This stance may be viewed as academicism moderated with colorism. A few individuals rejected this middle-of-the road position. Outsider William Blake vociferously denounced Venetian color and naturalism. Connoisseur Richard Payne Knight, altogether rejecting academic art theory, formulated a color-oriented theory that placed Titian and the Venetians at the center of a new history of art. And the critic William Hazlitt also formulated a color-oriented theory that recognized Titian, and especially Titian the portraitist, as painting's greatest figure. With Hazlitt, art theory finally accorded with British practice.