Overview

Fancy in the eighteenth century was part of a rich semantic network, connecting wit, whimsicality, erotic desire, spontaneity, deviation from norms and triviality. It was also a contentious term, signifying excess, oddness and irrationality, liable to offend taste, reason and morals. This collection of essays foregrounds fancy – and its close synonym, caprice – as a distinct strand of the imagination in the period. As a prevalent, coherent and enduring concept in aesthetics and visual culture, it deserves a more prominent place in scholarly understanding than it has hitherto occupied. Fancy is here understood as a type of creative output that deviated from rules and relished artistic freedom. It was also a mode of audience response, entailing a high degree of imaginative engagement with playful, quirky artworks, generating pleasure, desire or anxiety. Emphasizing commonalities between visual productions in different media from diverse locations, the authors interrogate and celebrate the expressive freedom of fancy in European visual culture. Topics include: the seductive fictions of the fancy picture, Fragonard and galanterie, fancy in drawing manuals, pattern books and popular prints, fans and fancy goods, chinoiserie, excess and virtuality in garden design, Canaletto's British 'capricci', urban design in Madrid, and Goya's 'Caprichos'.

Full Product Details

Author:   Melissa Percival ,  Muriel Adrien
Publisher:   Liverpool University Press
Imprint:   Voltaire Foundation
Volume:   2020:04
ISBN:  

9781789620030

ISBN 10:   1789620031
Pages:   325
Publication Date:   13 April 2020
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Not yet available  
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

Table of Contents

List of figures Acknowledgements Melissa Percival - Introduction Emmanuel Faure-Carricaburu - The fantasy figures of Jean-Baptiste Santerre and the limits of generic frameworks of interpretation Christophe Guillouet - The Parisian world of printmaking at the heart of the invention of a genre? Poilly, Courtin and Bonnart's fantaisies (1713-1728) John Chu - Windows of opportunity: the French fantasy figure and the spirit of enterprise in early-eighteenth-century Europe Martin Postle - Modelling for the fancy picture in eighteenth-century England Bénédicte Miyamoto - The influence of drawing manuals on the British practice and reception of fancy pictures Guillaume Faroult - A galant fantasy: Fragonard's fantasy figures and The Music lesson in relation to Van Dyck, Watteau and Carle Vanloo Pierre-Henri Biger - Fans, fantasy and fancy Melissa Percival - Fancy as a mode of consumption Vanessa Alayrac-Fielding - 'A butterfly supporting an elephant': chinoiserie, fantaisie and 'the luxuriance of fancy' Laurent Châtel - The garden as capriccio: the hortulan pleasures of imagination and virtuality Béatrice Laurent - Grand Tour capricci Xavier Cervantes - Venetian reminiscences and cultural hybridity in Canaletto's English-period capricci and vedute Adrián Fernández Almoguera - From the private cabinet to the suburban villa: caprices and fantasies in eighteenth-century Madrid Andrew Schulz - Satire and fantasy in Goya's Caprichos Alice Labourg - 'Fancy paints with hues unreal': pictorial fantasy and literary creation in Ann Radcliffe's Gothic novels Summaries List of contributors Bibliography Index

Reviews

'The fifteen essays published here are focused more specifically on the eighteenth century, ad consider a broad range of potential gateways to fantasie/fancy offered by artists, artisans, writers and tradesmen. The result is a refreshingly expansive overview of a concept that hitherto was largely confined to discussions of painting and to the exclusive consideration of such artists as Joshua Reynolds or Fragonard.' Yuriko Jackall, The Burlington Magazine 'A valuable addition to European cultural studies, this well-documented collection provides a fascinating perspective on an important theme that pervades eighteenth-century creative expression.'Felicia B. Sturzer, New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century

Author Information

Melissa Percival is Professor of French, Art History and Visual Culture at the University of Exeter. She has published widely on theories of facial expression, fantasy figures and portraits, with particular reference to eighteenth-century France; these include a monograph on Fragonard’s fantasy figures. Muriel Adrien is Associate Professor of art history and visual culture within the English Department at the University of Toulouse. She has published numerous articles on 18th and 19th-century British and American art, especially as related to scientific context. She is chief editor of the online scholarly journal Miranda (https://journals.openedition.org/miranda/).

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