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Book Cover
E-book
Author Forsaith, Peter S., author

Title Image, Identity and John Wesley : a Study in Portraiture / Peter S. Forsaith
Edition First edition
Published London : Taylor and Francis, 2017

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Description 1 online resource : text file, PDF
Series Routledge Methodist Studies Series
Contents Cover; Title; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; List of figures; List of plates; Preface and acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Introduction; 1 'A far greater Genius than Sir Joshua': some issues and complexities around the portraiture; 2 'This melancholy employment': portraits from the life to 1780; 3 'I yielded to importunity': portraits from the life, 1781-91; 4 Prints and posthumous portraits: spreading and selling the image; 5 Scene paintings; 6 Pottery and sculpture: a note; 7 No striking likeness? Images and ambiguities; 8 'The Pious Preacher': satire
9 'Of pictures I do not pretend to be a judge': John Wesley and art10 Image, identity and institution: constructing a canon; 11 Conclusions: visualising Mr Wesley; Plates; Appendix A: iconography of principal paintings of John Wesley, with selected prints; Appendix B: references in John Wesley's journal and diaries to portraits and painters; Bibliography; Plate acknowledgements; Index
Summary "The face of John Wesley (1703-91), the Methodist leader, became one of the most familiar images in the English-speaking and transatlantic worlds through the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. After the dozen or so painted portraits made during his lifetime came numbers of posthumous portraits and moralising 'scene paintings', and hundreds of variations of prints. It was calculated that six million copies were produced of one print alone - an 1827 portrait by John Jackson R.A. as frontispiece for a hymn book. Illustrated by nearly one hundred images, many in colour, with a comprehensive appendix listing known Wesley images, this book offers a much-needed comprehensive and critical survey of one of the most influential religious and public figures of eighteenth-century Britain. Besides chapters on portraits from the life and after, scene paintings and prints, it explores aspects of Wesley's (and Methodism's) attitudes to art, and the personality cult which gathered around Wesley as Methodism expanded globally. It will be of interest to art historians as a treatment of an individual sitter and subject, as well as to scholars engaged in Wesley and Methodist studies. It is also significant for the field of material studies, given the spread and use of the image, on artefacts as well as on paper."--Provided by publisher
Subject Wesley, John, 1703-1791 -- Portraits
SUBJECT Wesley, John, 1703-1791 fast
Subject RELIGION -- Christianity -- Methodist.
RELIGION -- General.
ART -- Subjects & Themes -- General.
Genre/Form Portraits
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781315107905
1315107902