Description
Book SynopsisFancy in the eighteenth century was part of a rich semantic network, connecting wit, whimsicality, erotic desire, spontaneity, deviation from norms and triviality. It was also a contentious term, signifying excess, oddness and irrationality, liable to offend taste, reason and morals. This collection of essays foregrounds fancy – and its close synonym, caprice – as a distinct strand of the imagination in the period. As a prevalent, coherent and enduring concept in aesthetics and visual culture, it deserves a more prominent place in scholarly understanding than it has hitherto occupied. Fancy is here understood as a type of creative output that deviated from rules and relished artistic freedom. It was also a mode of audience response, entailing a high degree of imaginative engagement with playful, quirky artworks, generating pleasure, desire or anxiety. Emphasizing commonalities between visual productions in different media from diverse locations, the authors interrogate and celebrate the expressive freedom of fancy in European visual culture. Topics include: the seductive fictions of the fancy picture, Fragonard and
galanterie, fancy in drawing manuals, pattern books and popular prints, fans and fancy goods,
chinoiserie, excess and virtuality in garden design, Canaletto's British 'capricci', urban design in Madrid, and Goya's 'Caprichos'.
Trade Review‘The fifteen essays published here are focused more specifically on the eighteenth century, ad consider a broad range of potential gateways to
fantasie
/fancy offered by artists, artisans, writers and tradesmen. The result is a refreshingly expansive overview of a concept that hitherto was largely confined to discussions of painting and to the exclusive consideration of such artists as Joshua Reynolds or Fragonard.’
Yuriko Jackall,
The Burlington Magazine'A valuable addition to European cultural studies, this well-documented collection provides a fascinating perspective on an important theme that pervades eighteenth-century creative expression.'Felicia B. Sturzer,
New Perspectives on the Eighteenth CenturyTable of ContentsList of figures
Acknowledgements
Melissa Percival - Introduction
Emmanuel Faure-Carricaburu - The fantasy figures of Jean-Baptiste Santerre and the limits of generic frameworks of interpretation
Christophe Guillouet - The Parisian world of printmaking at the heart of the invention of a genre? Poilly, Courtin and Bonnart's
fantaisies (1713-1728)
John Chu - Windows of opportunity: the French fantasy figure and the spirit of enterprise in early-eighteenth-century Europe
Martin Postle - Modelling for the fancy picture in eighteenth-century England
Bénédicte Miyamoto - The influence of drawing manuals on the British practice and reception of fancy pictures
Guillaume Faroult - A
galant fantasy: Fragonard's fantasy figures and
The Music lesson in relation to Van Dyck, Watteau and Carle Vanloo
Pierre-Henri Biger - Fans, fantasy and fancy
Melissa Percival - Fancy as a mode of consumption
Vanessa Alayrac-Fielding - 'A butterfly supporting an elephant':
chinoiserie, fantaisie and 'the luxuriance of fancy'
Laurent Châtel - The garden as
capriccio: the hortulan pleasures of imagination and virtuality
Béatrice Laurent - Grand Tour
capricci
Xavier Cervantes - Venetian reminiscences and cultural hybridity in Canaletto's English-period
capricci and
vedute
Adrián Fernández Almoguera - From the private cabinet to the suburban villa: caprices and fantasies in eighteenth-century Madrid
Andrew Schulz - Satire and fantasy in Goya's
Caprichos
Alice Labourg - 'Fancy paints with hues unreal': pictorial fantasy and literary creation in Ann Radcliffe's Gothic novels
Summaries
List of contributors
Bibliography
Index
