What are the representatives of British national paintings?

English painting in the 18th century has an extremely complex historical background: in 1653, the newly established government and government were led by Cromwell to a military dictatorship, which made the British political situation even more chaotic. Especially after Cromwell's death, the so-called "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 finally led to the overthrow of the Restoration Dynasty and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy based on an alliance between the landed aristocracy and the big bourgeoisie. It took more than 40 years of turmoil to usher the British bourgeois revolution into a new era.

From this era, British painting began to undergo fundamental changes, completely getting rid of the influence of foreign painters such as Holbein and Van Dyck, and producing artists such as William Hogarth and Reynolds. Here, Gainsborough, Ramsey, Rayburn and Romney are some of the outstanding representatives of national painting. William Hogarth was a famous British oil painter and esthetician in the first half of the 18th century. He was world-famous for his satirical genre paintings. His works revealed some of the dark sides of British society, but they were not expressed in the form of cartoons, but in the form of very fine oil paintings. The characters and composition scenes were relatively complex and highly decorative, so the British society at that time called him "Joke Photographer". Hogarth had never received any systematic professional training and initially learned engraving from Ellis Gamble, a silver engraver. According to his own memoirs written in his later years, he had a gift of imitation when he was young. As long as he learned from others well, he could learn quickly.

He patiently learned formal painting composition techniques, and later specialized in illustrations for the publishing industry and production of etchings, from which he gained his earliest reputation for painting. Hogarth's more famous etchings are a set of five etched etchings, "The Fall of Harlot, the Firework Lady", which depict a rural girl who longed for city life, but later became a prostitute after losing her virginity, and lived an extremely dissolute life. process. Each of his works is like a stage play, and the painter himself is a director. Just like rehearsing a play, he handles the details of each "play" scene, character performance and various props, but not with exaggerated movements, but with dramatic expressions to show the relationship between the various images. Its comicality and ridiculousness are also formed from the interconnection of all details, just like scenes of popular satirical pantomimes, which are thought-provoking.