From Reason to Revolution: Art and Society in Eighteenth-Century England @ VHS October 21, 2009

Lecture with Duncan Robinson, Master of Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge and former Director of the Yale Center for British Art.

Free and open to the public, advance tickets required.
Duncan Robinson takes a fresh look at a period often referred to as the Age of Reason. In this lecture he examines the art and literature of the time to highlight some of the contrasts inherent in a century of unprecedented social and political change. He argues that the seeds of revolution as well as those of romanticism were both sown and germinated in the fertile soil of the eighteenth century.

A good example of the combination of Reason and Romanticism occurring in 18th century art that Robinson will speak about is provided by the painting Tiger by George Stubbs, which is in the Paul Mellon Collection. On the one hand, Stubbs is a steadfast rationalist both in his objective approach to his subject matter and in his underlying scientific method founded upon the latest trends in comparative anatomy and zoology (two fields of science to which he himself was a major contributor.)

At the same time, his subject—the undomesticated and ferocious animal—is the antithesis of European Rationalism or, at very least, a peek into its “heart of darkness.” Supported by the Paul Mellon Endowment

Official Website: http://www.vmfa.museum/