In the age of the multimillionaire Brit Artist, with the likes of Damien Hirst commanding a million pounds and more – considerably more, if art trade rumours are to believed – for a single work, it is hard to imagine a time when the very phrase “British Art” struck most people as a contradiction in terms. But in the early years of the eighteenth century, that was precisely the case. In 1714, the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, declared that the arts in Britain had “sunk to their lowest state”. In the same year, a young student wrote an account of a visit to a painter’s studio, such as it then was, in which he describes finding the man in a rented garret, covering huge lengths of cloth with formulaic landscape scenes, which would then be cut into sections according to the gaps on his clients’ walls – a bit lopped off here to fit round a chimney, a bit there to accommodate a door. This really was art by the yard, but it was by no means uncharacteristic of the kind of journeywork expected of the British artist at the time – a figure regarded as little more than the lowest kind of artisan. Artists occupied the lowest rung of the social ladder, and the highest concentration of them was to be found living among the prostitutes and the destitutes in the slums of London’s West End. “Vulgar, illiterate and half sober” was the curt phrase chosen by the Earl of Shaftesbury, arbiter of taste, to damn the whole lot.

Yet fast forward to 3 March, 1792, and the situation could hardly be more different. That date marks the funeral of Sir Joshua Reynolds, first President of the Royal Academy. As his hearse arrives at St Paul’s Cathedral, a...

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