Painting for Money: Visual Arts and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century England

A distinctly modern art world energed in 18th-century England. The period witnessed the establishment of the first public spaces for the display of art, widespread discussion of artistic issues and commercial patronage of painting and sculpture. In this book, David Solkin discusses these phenomena, showing how developments in painting were related to the rapid growth of commerce and analyzing how the sudden light of public exposure affected pictorial practice and theory.