Abstract

This study of the history of British aesthetics from 1660 to 1790 represents an interdisciplinary approach to both aesthetic and historical studies. It traces artistic, cultural and social aspects of the evolution of a new eighteenth-century British aesthetic ideal from its four roots in iconoclasm, taste, education and emulation. The synthesis of these elements into the discourse which characterized eighteenth-century British culture represents a remarkable convergence of taste and cultural purpose in a variety of different socioeconomic groups. Within a relatively brief span of time at approximately the beginning of the eighteenth century there arose among British intellectuals and the upper-classes a new and intense interest in the visual arts and aesthetics. A traditional society of iconoclastic religious reformers, unsophisticated by French and Italian standards, became transformed into what in many ways was the epitome of a cultured art-loving people of refinement and good taste. The unique characteristics of iconoclasm beginning in the sixteenth century shaped English sensibilities towards images of all kinds for the next two centuries. At the same time, taste was increasingly becoming a social phenomenon as well as a personal virtue and was evolving into the chief means of saving the country from the serious dangers inherent in the unchecked destruction of socially necessary perceptual signs. An aesthetic liberal arts education became the means of acquiring true taste and the right to rule. And, the proper emulation of social and cultural ideals by the general population culminated in a transformation of aesthetics and held the different social groups in England together in a mutual quest to excel