Joseph Farington (1747-1821) was a professional topographical artist and lived most of his life in London. Through his extensive involvement in the affairs of the Royal Academy, his wide circle of friends, and his membership in several clubs and societies, he touched the life of his time at many points. This diary, which he kept from 1793 until his death, provides a meticulous record of his actions and observations and is an invaluable source for the history of English art and artists. It also constitutes an absorbing record of this period’s social, political, and literary developments. These first two volumes cover the time from July 31, 1793, when he visited Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill, to August 31, 1796. Apart from recording his constant involvement in Academy business, he describes his visit to Valenciennes and his sketching tour for the History of the River Thames. Such matters as the sale of part of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s collection, the controversies over the Shakespeare forgeries are set down against the background of the French Revolution and the war, and of political turbulence at home. The diary is now for the first time published in full. The unannotated text will be published in successive volumes with a full index and a final volume, A Companion to The Farington Diary, to follow.

The Diary of Joseph Farington: Volume 1, July 1793-December 1974, Volume 2, January 1795-August 1796 (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art)

Farington, Joseph

Biographies & Memoirs

Paul Mellon Centre

Joseph Farington (1747-1821) was a professional topographical artist and lived most of his life in London. Through his extensive involvement in the affairs of the Royal Academy, his wide circle of friends, and his membership in several clubs and societies, he touched the life of his time at many points. This diary, which he kept from 1793 until his death, provides a meticulous record of his actions and observations and is an invaluable source for the history of English art and artists. It also constitutes an absorbing record of this period’s social, political, and literary developments. This second pair of volumes covers the period in which Farington’s influence within the Royal Academy was at its height and he earned the title of ‘dictator of the Royal Academy.’ These years where characterized by artistic controversy over such matters as the eligibility of architects for membership, the expulsion of James Barry from his position as Professor of Painting and then from the Academy itself, and the alleged destructiveness of James Wyatt’s restoration of Durham Cathedral. Farington immersed himself in these and other artistic matters ranging from the campaign for the establishment of a national gallery to his budding friendships with the young Turner and the young Constable.

The Diary of Joseph Farington: Volume 3, September 1796-December 1798, Volume 4, January 1799-July 1801 (Studies in British Art)

Joseph Farington (1747-1821) was a professional topographical artist who lived most of his life in London. Through his extensive involvement in the affairs of the Royal Academy, his wide circle of friends, and his membership in several clubs and societies, he touched the life of his times at many points. His diary, now for the first time being published in full, is an invaluable source for the history of English art and artists. In this third pair of volumes, the chief interest is provided by Farington’s account of his visit to Paris, in company with Fuseli, during the Peace of Amiens in 1802. West, Opie, Flaxman, Hoppner, and Turner were among the other English artists who visited Paris at the same time, as did Charles James Fox and his followers. Farington provides much material on French art and artists, notably on David and his pupils, and on the works of art looted from other parts of Europe, especially from Italy, which were on view in the Louvre. There are vivid descriptions of Napoleon and of the atmosphere of Paris during the Consulate. During these years Farington also undertook tours of the Lake District, Scotland, and the Wye valley. He portrays in detail the pre-Regency society of these years, ranging from the small change of gossip and social life to the serious matters of art and politics.

The Diary of Joseph Farington: Volume 5, August 1801-March 1803, Volume 6, April 1803-December 1804 (Studies in British Art)

This book is the first modern study of James Barry, the finest of all British painters in the “grand manner.” Born in Cork, Barry settles in London in 1771 after five years of study in France and Italy financed by Edmund Burke.  He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1773 and appointed professor of painting nine years later.  In 1799, however, after fiercely denouncing its policies, he became the first and only artist to be expelled from the Academy.  His paintings include several that rank with the nest contemporary work, and his murals at the Royal Society of Arts form perhaps the most important cycle of history paintings in Great Britain. Although history painting was theoretically the most exalted of artistic genres, it had traditionally received little support in England, where portraiture and landscape dominated.  In the face of indifferent patronage, Barry struggles to establish an art worthy of the noble heritage of classical Greece and Renaissance Italy.  He passionately believed in art’s mission to instruct, and to this end he saw himself as an embattled spokesman for social, political and religious reform.William Pressly reveals the degree to which Barry’s view of his role shaped the character of his art and examines how his works, through rooted in traditional sources, creatively depart in both form and content from conventional academic practice.  He also assesses the artist as a portrait painter, including his use of portraiture within the context of historical subjects, and as one of the few late eighteenth-century British painters to work as an original printmaker.  The book contains the first complete catalogue of Barry’s paintings and of his surviving drawings and prints.William L. Pressly is associate professor of the history of art at Yale University.Published for the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art.

The Life and Art of James Barry (Studies in British Art)

Arts & Photography

Pressly, William L.

History & Criticism

The Diary of Joseph Farington: Volume 7, January 1805 - June 1806, Volume 8, July 1806 - December 1807

The ninth and tenth volumes of the diary cover the years from January 1808 up to December 1810. Among the public events that preoccupy Joseph Farington are the wars in Europe and South America and the spectacular scandal that erupted in 1809 over Duke of York’s association with Mary Anne Clark. This period finds Farington embarking on extended tours―one to the north of England and two to the West Country―making sketches to illustrate the survey of Britain, Britannica Depicta, compiled by his friends Samuel and Daniel Lysons. Farington’s association with this and other projects for the publishers Cadell and Davies involves him in negotiations with many engravers, among them Joseph Landseer, James Heath, and Samuel Middiman. Within the Royal Academy (to which Landseer is pressing that a number of engravers be admitted) feelings run high over the lecture by John Soane criticizing the architecture of Covent Garden Theatre, which was the work of Robert Smirke, the son of Farington’s oldest friends. At the end of 1810 Farington is occupied with assessing Robert Smirke’s prospects at the coming election of academicians. In common with many others in the diarist’s wide circle of acquaintances, Thomas Lawrence and John Constable continue to seek Farington’s advice on professional and practical affairs. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

The Diary of Joseph Farington: Volume 9, January 1808 - June 1809, Volume 10, July 1809 - December 1810 (Studies in British Art)

These eleventh and twelfth volumes of Farington's famous diaries gives his accounts of Academy exhibitions from 1811 to 1813 and discuss the political events of the time. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for studies in British art.

The Diary of Joseph Farington: Volume 11, January 1811 - June 1812, Volume 12, July 1812 - December 1813 (Studies in British Art)

John Constable, one of the most beloved of British painters, is renowned for his poetic approach to nature and his extraordinary use of broken color. In this beautiful two-volume set, the dean of Constable scholars, Graham Reynolds, discusses all the paintings and drawings the artist produced between 1790 and1816, both before and after his breakthrough into the original style that is the basis of his fame. Together with Reynolds`s award-winning The Later Paintings and Drawings of John Constable (1984), the books are a catalogue raisonne‚ of this artist`s monumental oeuvre.The two volumes, one of text and one of plates, describe and reproduce 1370 paintings and drawings in chronological order. They begin with Constable`s juvenilia and tentative experiments before he went to London in 1799 to become a professional artist. Next are some lesser-known works―elegant figure studies of girls, Constable`s first portraits, and his Lake District watercolors. Finally are the works after 1808―Dedham Vale: morning, Flatford Mill from a Lock on the Stour, A Summerland, The Stour Valley and Dedham Village, and the recently rediscovered The Wheatfield―works that made Constable a major force in British landscape painting. The volumes also include Constable`s numerous sketches of his homeland around East Bergholt and Dedham from this period, drawings on which he based his later masterpieces. An appendix records and reproduces, as addenda to The Later Paintings and Drawings, 94 works produced between 1817 and 1836 that have come to light since those books were published.

The Later Paintings and Drawings of John Constable (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art) (2 Volumes)

REYNOLDS, GRAHAM

Constable, J.

Joseph Farington (1747-1821), a respectable though not outstanding painter, was active in the social, cultural, and professional art world of his time. His voluminous diaries enrich our perception of this lively and productive age. Volumes XIII and XIV of the diaries take Farington past his seventieth birthday but show that his keen interest in public and artistic affairs remained undiminished. He rejoices at the end of the long war with France, deplores the conduct of Lord Byron, approves the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and speculates about the probable authorship of the attack on prominent connoisseurs in the catalogue raisonné of the British Institution exhibition. In private life, Farington survives a financial disaster, and campaigns tirelessly to secure the promotion of a nephew to the rank of Post Captain in the Royal Navy.

The Diary of Joseph Farington: Volume 13, January 1814 - December 1815, Volume 14, January 1816 - December 1817 (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in Britis)

The Diary of Joseph Farington: Volume 15, January 1818 - December 1819, Volume 16, January 1820 - December 1821 (Studies in British Art)

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