Discovery of Spain

The Discovery of Spain: British Artists and Collectors: Goya to Picasso, edited by David Howarth, 146 pages

Although throughout the 18th century British art tourists streamed through France and Italy, Spain remained largely unknown.  This changed in the nineteenth century, due both to the Peninsular War, which found the UK and the Spanish people fighting together against Napoleon, and the rise of Romanticism, which found in Spain an exotic, picturesque land on the doorstep of Europe.  The growing interest in Spain inevitably led aesthetes to the works of contemporary Spanish artists and the painters of Spain's Golden Age.  This dual influence of Spanish art and Spain itself on 19th and early 20th century British taste was the subject of a 2009 exhibition at the National Galleries of Scotland, of which this is the catalogue.  Unfortunately, while much of the art is stunning, most of the obligatory essays are indifferent.