Great British Artists

This site is about really great British Artists in the past and present.  It links to my "resources for art lovers" sites which provide good quality resources and information about notable British artists that I like

These are artists whose work attracts people from miles around plus the ones which have passed the art history test and are still well regarded despite having lived a long time ago.

The list is by no means complete and this site - and the linked sites - will be updated periodically.  The links are to other websites by makingamark.

Andrew Graham Dixon has written a study British art from the Reformation to the present (originally linked to a BBC2 television series). As he considers the works of artists as disparate as Stubbs and Bacon, Hogarth and Hockney, Constable and Henry Moore, the author depicts the cultural life of Britain since the Middle Ages which embraces not only painting and sculpture but also history, politics, architecture and literature.

This is my "to do" list in terms of developing more sites about British Artists.

Each artist is covered in a double page spread highlighting:

* A timeline

* a summary of their contribution to British Art

* samples of their artwork

Artists include: Nicholas Hilliard, William Hogarth, Richard Wilson, Joshua Reynolds, George Stubbs, George Romney, William Blake, JMW Turner, John Constable, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, Walter Sickert, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Laura kniught, Eric Gill. LS Lowry. Stanley Spencer, Henry Moore, Barabra Hepworth, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Elizabeth Frink, Bridget Riley, Patrick Caulfield, David Hockney, Gilbert & George, Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor, Grayson Perry, Tracy Emin, Damien Hirst and Banksy

This Dictionary covers the work of some six thousand British watercolour artists. It includes the less well known artists, both professional and amateur, as well as to the great artists, such as Turner, Girtin and Cotman. Much of the information is purely biographical and factual, however the author also add his own personal judgements of the artists' works and styles. Huon Mallalieu spent four and a half years at Christie's, mainly in the watercolour department.

A biography of William Hogarth (1697-1764)which reveals him as a figure who reinvented the very idea of what it is to be an artist. Hogarth was the first artist to make his living as a humorist, brilliantly inventing a means of reproducing a wit for wide public consumption.

This is the first authoritative survey of the radically innovative decade of the 1860s. The book explores new developments in English painting of this period, focusing on the early work of Edward Burne-Jones, Frederic Leighton, Albert Moore, Edward Poynter, Simeon Solomon, and James McNeill Whistler, as well as on paintings by Frederick Sandys and the older G. F. Watts, and by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his Pre-Raphaelite colleagues Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais.

Britain has made an amazing contribution to the development of botanical art. These are just some of the people who have made their mark on botanical art

About Elizabeth Blackwell - Famous Botanical Artist
Elizabeth Blackwell was the first British woman to produce a herbal and the first woman to engrave as well as draw plants. She compiled and published her ha...

About Margaret Mee - Famous Botanical Artist
Margaret Mee was both a botanical artist and a conservationist. In 1952, age 41 she left England to go and live in the Amazon where she studied and painted t...

About Sydney Parkinson - Botanical Artist
Sydney Parkinson was one of the botanical artists on Captain Cook's journey's on the Endeavour. He was the first botanical artist to draw and paint plants co...

These are the Contemporary British painters who have interested me enough to want to find out a lot more about them. These sites are a compendium of links to places where you can read more about them and look at their artwork

About Lucian Freud - Portrait Painter
This site is a compendium of information about Lucian Freud (1922 - 2011), Britain's greatest painter and portrait artist in recent years. It shares links t...

About David Hockney - British Artist
David Hockney (1937-present) has been voted the UK's most popular living artist. Find out about: - the life and art of David Hockney - museums, gallerie...

About Peter Doig - British Painter
Peter Doig (1959 - present) is one of Britain's most prominent and exciting young painters. He broke auction records for a living European artist in 2007 wh...

About David Gentleman - British Painter
This site is about David Gentleman the artist and illustrator. He's best known for his watercolour paintings and the stamps which he has designed for the Roy...

Catalogue for the recent record-breaking exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts

Stanley Spencer is one of the most highly regarded and best-loved of all twentieth-century British Artists.

Francis Bacon (1909-1992)subverted artistic conventions and religious symbols and created a sensation during his lifetime. Even after his death, his paintings of distorted figures and fractured spaces continue to ignite controversy.

This volume of the British Artists series examines Jacob Epstein, a pioneer of modern sculpture in Britain; yet he aroused hostility throughout his career and always felt an outsider in his adopted country.

I find I like sculpture and land art more and more - and it's also amazingly popular with the British public. These three are the first sculptors and land artists who I wanted to find out more about and these sites are the end result.

About Andy Goldsworthy - British Land Artist
Find out about Andy Goldsworthy (1956-present) - the British sculptor, photographer and environmentalist. Goldsworthy produces site-specific sculpture and l...

About Henry Moore - Famous British Sculptor
Henry Moore (1898-1986) was an English artist and sculptor who was probably the most celebrated sculptor of the twentieth century. Works were often sculpted...

About Antony Gormley - British Sculptor
This lens is about Antony Gormley (1950-present) - the man who produced "Angel of the North" - a towering sculpture in Gateshead "Another Plac...

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