'Fancy' in eighteenth-century European visual culture / edited by Melissa Percival and Muriel Adrien.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Percival, Melissa, editor.

Adrien, Muriel, editor.

Voltaire Foundation.

Series:

Oxford University studies in the Enlightenment ; 0435-2866 2020:04.

Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 0435-2866 ; 2020:04.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Fantasy in art.

Fancy pictures--Europe.

Fancy pictures.

Fancy work--Europe.

Fancy work.

Figure painting--Europe.

Figure painting.

Portrait painting, European--18th century.

Portrait painting, European.

Face in art.

Human figure in art.

Europe--Social life and customs--18th century.

Europe.

Manners and customs.

Physical Description:

xvii, 325 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Liverpool, United Kingdom : Liverpool University Press on behalf of the Voltaire Foundation, [2020]

Biography/History:

Melissa Percival is Professor of French, Art History and Visual Culture at the University of Exeter. She has published widely on theories of facial expression, fantasy figures and portraits, with particular reference to eighteenth-century France; these include a monograph on Fragonard's fantasy figures. Muriel Adrien is Associate Professor of art history and visual culture within the English Department at the University of Toulouse. She has published numerous articles on 18th and 19th-century British and American art, especially as related to scientific context. She is chief editor of the online scholarly journal Miranda (https://journals.openedition.org/miranda/).

Summary:

Fancy in the eighteenth century was part of a rich semantic network, connecting wit, whimsicality, erotic desire, spontaneity, deviation from norms and triviality. It was also a contentious term, signifying excess, oddness and irrationality, liable to offend taste, reason and morals. This collection of essays foregrounds fancy - and its close synonym, caprice - as a distinct strand of the imagination in the period. As a prevalent, coherent and enduring concept in aesthetics and visual culture, it deserves a more prominent place in scholarly understanding than it has hitherto occupied. Fancy is here understood as a type of creative output that deviated from rules and relished artistic freedom. It was also a mode of audience response, entailing a high degree of imaginative engagement with playful, quirky artworks, generating pleasure, desire or anxiety. Emphasizing commonalities between visual productions in different media from diverse locations, the authors interrogate and celebrate the expressive freedom of fancy in European visual culture. Topics include: the seductive fictions of the fancy picture, Fragonard and galanterie, fancy in drawing manuals, pattern books and popular prints, fans and fancy goods, chinoiserie, excess and virtuality in garden design, Canaletto's British 'capricci', urban design in Madrid, and Goya's 'Caprichos'.

Contents:

The fantasy figures of Jean-Baptiste Santerre and the limits of generic frameworks of interpretation p. 15 / Emmanuel Faure-Carricaburu

The Parisian world of printmaking at the heart of the invention of a genre? Poilly, Courtin and Bonnart's fantaisies (1713-1728) p. 29 / Christophe Guillouet

Windows of opportunity: the French fantasy figure and the spirit of enterprise in early-eighteenth-century Europe p. 49 / John Chu

Modelling for the fancy picture in eighteenth-century England p. 69 / Martin Postle

The influence of drawing manuals on the British practice and reception of fancy pictures p. 87 / Bénédicte Miyamoto

A galant fantasy: Fragonard's fantasy figures and The Music lesson in relation to Van Dyck, Watteau and Carle Vanloo p. 105 / Guillaume Faroult

Fans, fantasy and fancy p. 121 / Pierre-Henri Biger

Fancy as a mode of consumption p. 135 / Melissa Percival

'A butterfly supporting an elephant': chinoiserie, fantaisie and 'the luxuriance of fancy' p. 153 / Vanessa Alayrac-Fielding

The garden as capriccio: the hortulan pleasures of imagination and virtually p. 171 / Laurent Châtel

Grand Tour capricci p. 191 / Béatrice Laurent

Venetian reminiscences and cultural hybridity in Canaletto's English-period capricci and vedute p. 207 / Xavier Cervantes

From the private cabinet to the suburban villa: caprices and fantasies in eighteenth-century Madrid p. 223 / Adrián Fernández Almoguera

Satire and fantasy in Goya's Caprichos p. 241 / Andrew Schulz

'Fancy paints with hues unreal': pictorial fantasy and literary creation in Ann Radcliffe's Gothic novels p. 259 / Alice Labourg.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 289-312) and index.

ISBN:

9781789620030

1789620031

OCLC:

1119760112