The King's Artists: The Royal Academy of Arts and the Politics of British Culture 1760-1840

by Holger Hoock

This is the story of the forging of a national cultural institution in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain. The Royal Academy of Arts was the dominant art school and exhibition society in London and a model for art societies across the British Isles and North America. This is the first study of its early years, re-evaluating the Academy's significance in national cultural life and its profile in an international context. Holger Hoock reassesses royal and state patronage of the arts and explores the concepts and practices of cultural patriotism and the politicization of art during the American and French Revolutions. By demonstrating how the Academy shaped the notions of an English and British school of art and influenced the emergence of the British cultural state, he illuminates the politics of national culture and the character of British public life in an age of war, revolution, and reform.

388 pages, Hardcover

First published November 13, 2003

About the author

Holger Hoock is an award-winning historian of the eighteenth century, specializing in the history of Britain and the British Empire. He holds the Amundson Chair in British History at the University of Pittsburgh and serves as Editor of the Journal of British Studies. Trained at the Universities of Freiburg, Cambridge, and Oxford, he has been a Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress, a Visiting Scholar at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Konstanz. Passionate about sharing his historical research as an author, educator, and a consultant for museums and TV, he lectures widely across Europe and North America.