Frame works: Paintings-within-paintings in nineteenth-century Britain.

摘要

Visual practitioners from every culture and time period make use of pre-existing motifs. Despite this fact, relatively little attention has been paid to the most explicit form of this practice: images-within-images. This dissertation investigates the multiple ways that artists reference other art, through close examination of the phenomenon in a very specific medium, place, and time: the painting-within-a-painting in nineteenth-century Britain. This period saw a rapid increase in the production, reproduction, and display of images. In response, many artists used the most traditional form of reproduction of all---copying another artwork by hand---to comment on these changing conditions. The result was a revealing but often-overlooked body of works in which paintings-within-paintings not only record but also comment on the visual canons and viewing practices of the day.;This dissertation considers depictions of a variety of display spaces both real and imagined, from family homes to public exhibitions, by a variety of artists, including John Scarlett Davis, J. M. W. Turner, John Everett Millais, and Emma Brownlow King. These images make explicit key issues for artists of the period, such as emulation and competition, and key issues for their audiences, such as visibility and recognition. For artists, reproducing the work of another within one's own canvas could offer homage, express rivalry, or invoke comparison. For audiences, identification of these visual references allowed one to demonstrate membership in an elite, visually literate group. Further, images-within-images mediated as well as reflected the experience of art on display, as evidenced by the fact that each of the very different artworks considered in this project was displayed for a time within the very space it depicts. This dissertation argues for a renewed attention to images of art on display, not as transparent records or convenient illustrations but as revealing fictions. Moreover, it offers a new methodological approach to visual reference and asserts its importance to the study of audience reception, an elusive but central aspect of the history of images.