British Baroque: Power and Illusion
Tate Britain, London
On 2 February, Boris Johnson gave a speech on trade in the Painted Hall of the Old Royal Naval College at Greenwich. The choice of a venue decorated with Sir James Thornhill’s murals glorifying British naval power will have gone down well with the Brexiteers who celebrated our leaving Europe two days earlier with rousing choruses of “Rule Britannia”. But any Brexiteers visiting Tate Britain’s exhibition, “British Baroque: Power and Illusion” (until 19 April), to see sketches of his murals may be disappointed to discover that Thornhill is practically the only Briton in the show.
In the half-century between the restoration of Charles II in 1660 and the death of Queen Anne in 1714, the principal painters employed by the Stuart court were Sir Peter Lely (Dutch); Jacob Huysmans (Flemish); Henri Gascar (French); Sir Godfrey Kneller (German); Michael Dahl (Swedish); and Benedetto Gennari and Antonio Verrio (Italian). The number of Catholic artists is especially interesting in view of the fact that, among other major events in British history, this period witnessed the Great Fire of London (1666) and the Popish Plot (1678), both blamed on Catholics.