British landscape painting reached new levels of invention and sophistication, with the assistance of a
growing literature dedicated to aesthetic types and ideals. In France, Vernet’s landscapes were recognized
for their appeal to the feelings and imagination, especially when they included, however marginally,
narrative scenes of human activity or elements of the sublime (Consibee, 1981, 181). They were regarded
as modern adaptations of seventeenthcentury historical landscapes, infused with the new vogue for
sensibilité. Valenciennes developed further Vernet’s poetic treatments of light and atmospheric effects.
Works in the still life genre were regarded as the least susceptible to innovation, due to their longstanding
and evercontinuing (even into our own century) iconography. We have seen, however, how talented
artists such as Chardin could revolutionize their technical execution, suggesting new ways of looking that
facilitated greater subjective engagement in the viewer. If still life was regarded as inhabiting the borders
of “craft,” other works that had often been regarded as craft, such as engravings, miniatures and enamels,
crept toward the status of “art.” The paintings on enamel by the artist and writer, JeanÉtienne Liotard
(1702–1789), of servants serving chocolate or figures dressed in “exotic” costume, appealed to buyers
from the highest sections of society and resonated with the Enlightenment’s taste for “curiosities” of all
kinds. Like watercolor, this medium could transcend or bypass more formal hierarchies.
Further Reading
Andrews, Malcolm. 1989. The Search for the Picturesque: Landscape Aesthetics and Tourism in
Britain, 1760–1800. Aldershot: Scolar Press. A useful introduction to eighteenthcentury landscape
aesthetics.
Chardin (exh.cat.) 2000. London: Royal Academy Publications. Includes a useful series of essays on still
life in its broader social and cultural contexts.
Conisbee, Philip, ed. 2007. French Genre Painting in the Eighteenth Century. New Haven, CT, and
London: Yale University Press. An outstanding series of essays on genre painting.
Hallett, Mark. 2014. Reynolds: Portraiture in Action. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University
Press.
Levey, Michael. 1993. Painting and Sculpture in France 1700–1789. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale
University Press. See the Further Reading section in Chapter 1.
Retford, Kate. 2006. The Art of Domestic Life: Family Portraiture in EighteenthCentury England.
New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press. An excellent survey of eighteenthcentury English
portraiture in its broader social context.
Wrigley, Richard. 1993. The Origins of French Art Criticism: From the Ancien Régime to the
Restoration. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Chapter 8 contains an extremely useful introduction to the
hierarchy of genres.