The Invention of British Art
Bendor Grosvenor (Elliott & Thompson, £40)
BRITISH art was a long time coming. According to Bendor Grosvenor, it was not until the early 18th century that a national school existed, which, in his wide-ranging, erudite and often surprising survey, he defines as British artists making work in Britain for British consumers. Even the natives were scathing. When it came to painting, said diplomat Sir Thomas Elyot in 1531, ‘Englishmen be inferiors to all other peoples’. An 18th-century critic complained ‘this highly civilised island of ours has produced fewer painters than any other civilised nation’.
The greatest artists to work here were, indeed, honorary Brits—painters such as Hans Holbein, Anthony van Dyck and Peter Lely; muralists including Antonio Verrio (whose work gave a continental gloss to Windsor Castle, Whitehall Palace
