Image, identity and John Wesley : a study in portraiture / Peter S. Forsaith.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Forsaith, Peter S., author.

Series:

Routledge Methodist studies series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Wesley, John, 1703-1791--Portraits.

Wesley, John.

Wesley, John, 1703-1791.

Genre:

Portraits.

Physical Description:

xvi, 209 pages, 58 unnumbered pages of plates : chiefly color illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, 2018.

Summary:

The face of John Wesley (1703-91), the Methodist leader, became one of the most familiar images in the English-speaking and transatlantic worlds through the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. After the dozen or so painted portraits made during his lifetime came numbers of posthumous portraits and moralising 'scene paintings', and hundreds of variations of prints. It was calculated that six million copies were produced of one print alone - an 1827 portrait by John Jackson R.A. as frontispiece for a hymn book. Illustrated by nearly one hundred images, many in colour, with a comprehensive appendix listing known Wesley images, this book offers a much-needed comprehensive and critical survey of one of the most influential religious and public figures of eighteenth-century Britain. Besides chapters on portraits from the life and after, scene paintings and prints it explores aspects of Wesley's (and Methodism's) attitudes to art, and the personality cult which gathered around Wesley as Methodism expanded globally. It will be of interest to art historians as a treatment of an individual sitter and subject, as well as to scholars engaged in Wesley and Methodist studies. It is also significant for the field of material studies, given the spread and use of the image, on artefacts as well as on paper. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 'A far greater Genius than Sir Joshua': some issues and complexities around the portraiture 9

2 'This melancholy employment': portraits from the life to 1780 23

3 'I yielded to importunity': portraits from the life, 1781-91 33

4 Prints and posthumous portraits: spreading and selling the image 41

5 Scene paintings 56

6 Pottery and sculpture: a note 66

7 No striking likeness? Images and ambiguities 69

8 'The Pious Preacher': satire 75

9 'Of pictures I do not pretend to be a judge': John Wesley and art 83

10 Image, identity and institution: constructing a canon 91

11 Conclusions: visualising Mr Wesley 100.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781138207899

1138207896

OCLC:

978252192