British Baroque: it was never going to fly. Les rosbifs emulating the splendour of le Roi Soleil? Pas possible. Still, we had a go and the evidence is assembled in British Baroque: Power and Illusion, Tate Britain’s survey of the art of the Stuart court from the restoration of Charles II in 1660 to the death of Queen Anne in 1714.
An awful lot happened in those 54 years — the Glorious Revolution, the union of England and Scotland, endless wars in Europe, the rise of party politics — but through it all the Frenchified taste for ‘Wonderful Figures and Whirligigs… that are of no manner of use but to laugh at’ in the contemptuous words of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, remained constant, and sitters in the portraits of the period kept any signs of change under their wigs.
One suspects the foreign artists – the Italians especially – of taking the piss
Oh the wigs! The swags! The fluttering draperies! The flying cherubs! The shepherdesses! The sheep! To judge by the number of baa-lambs littering their paintings, portraitists’ studios must have had petting zoos attached.
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