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Lusitania sinking, illustration from The War of the Nations (New York), December 31, 1919. World War I, WWI. This image is one of three on the page. (See source file for the other two.)

The Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives receiving a deputation of female suffragists, January 11, 1871, a lady delegate (identified as Victoria Woodhull) reading her argument (cont'd)

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Shah Jahan. Taj Mahal. Mughal architecture. Emperor Shah Jahan fifth Mughal Emperor (reigned 1628-1658) India, Himachal Pradesh, Basohli or Jammu and Kashmir, Mankot, circa 1690 Drawings; Opaque watercolor, gold, and ink on paper (see notes)

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Los Angeles Police Department wanted flyer on Elizabeth Short, aka the "Black Dahlia," who was brutally murdered in January 1947. The FBI supported the Los Angeles Police Department in the case, including by identifying Short through her fingerprints that

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Queen Elizabeth II addresses at opening of Parliament. (Date unknown on photo, but may be 1958, the first time the opening of Parliament was filmed.)

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Chinese pictograph, calligraphy tablet of Huang Tingjian, a famous calligrapher in Ancient Song Dynasty. The background of Chinese cultural elements.

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Sir Joshua Reynolds summary

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Below is the article summary. For the full article, see Joshua Reynolds.

Sir Joshua Reynolds, (born July 16, 1723, Plympton, Devon, Eng.—died Feb. 23, 1792, London), British portrait painter. Son of a clergyman-schoolmaster, he was apprenticed to a London portraitist in 1740. His large group portrait The Eliot Family (c. 1746) reveals the influence of Anthony Van Dyck. The impressions he gained during two years in Italy (1750–52), particularly in Venice, inspired his painting for the rest of his life. He established a portrait studio in London in 1753 and was immediately successful. His early London portraits introduced new vigour into English portraiture. After 1760, with the increasing vogue for Greco-Roman antiquity, his style became increasingly Classical and self-conscious. He was elected the first president of the Royal Academy in 1768. Through his art and teaching, Reynolds led British painting away from the anecdotal pictures of the early 18th century toward the formal rhetoric of continental academic painting. His Discourses Delivered at the Royal Academy (1769–90), advocating rigorous academic training and study of the Old Masters, ranks among the most important art criticism of the time.

English school Summary

English school, dominant school of painting in England throughout the second half of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th. Its establishment marked the rise of a national tradition that began with the emergence of native artists whose works were no longer provincial but rivaled

art criticism Summary

Art criticism, the analysis and evaluation of works of art. More subtly, art criticism is often tied to theory; it is interpretive, involving the effort to understand a particular work of art from a theoretical perspective and to establish its significance in the history of art. Many cultures have

painting Summary

Painting, the expression of ideas and emotions, with the creation of certain aesthetic qualities, in a two-dimensional visual language. The elements of this language—its shapes, lines, colors, tones, and textures—are used in various ways to produce sensations of volume, space, movement, and light

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Mona Lisa, oil on wood panel by Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1503-06; in the Louvre, Paris, France. 77 x 53 cm.

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Nazi Germany, Nazi SS troops marching with victory standards at the Party Day rally in Nuremberg, Germany, 1933. (Schutzstaffel, Nazi Party, Nurnberg)

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cloning. First cloned cat. First cloned companion animal. CC (copy cat) female domestic shorthair cat (b. Dec. 22, 2001) photo Jan. 18, 2002. Cloned at Texas A&M Univ. College of Vet. Med. & Biomedical Sciences. Reproductive cloning genetics DNA cc cat

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Groups of depositors in front of the closed American Union Bank, New York City. April 26, 1932. Great Depression run on bank crowd

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English school summary

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Below is the article summary. For the full article, see English school.

English school, Dominant school in painting in England from the 18th century to c. 1850. From 1730 to 1750 two distinctive British forms of painting were perfected by William Hogarth: genre scenes depicting the “modern moral subject,” and the small-scale group portrait, or “conversation piece.” Full-scale portraiture was popularized by Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough; the landscape tradition was founded by Richard Wilson; and historical painting was practiced by two American-born painters, Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley. The flowering of English Romantic art was embodied in the landscapes of J.M.W. Turner and John Constable. The art of the period rivaled continental art in quality and had great influence on European painting.

Joshua Reynolds Summary

Joshua Reynolds was a portrait painter and aesthetician who dominated English artistic life in the middle and late 18th century. Through his art and teaching, he attempted to lead British painting away from the indigenous anecdotal pictures of the early 18th century toward the formal rhetoric of

Thomas Gainsborough Summary

Thomas Gainsborough was a portrait and landscape painter, the most versatile English painter of the 18th century. Some of his early portraits show the sitters grouped in a landscape (Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, c. 1750). As he became famous and his sitters fashionable, he adopted a more formal manner

John Constable Summary

John Constable was a major figure in English landscape painting in the early 19th century. He is best known for his paintings of the English countryside, particularly those representing his native valley of the River Stour, an area that came to be known as “Constable country.” The son of a wealthy

The Painter and His Pug, self-portrait by William Hogarth, oil on canvas, 1745; in the Tate Gallery, London.

William Hogarth Summary

William Hogarth was the first great English-born artist to attract admiration abroad, best known for his moral and satirical engravings and paintings—e.g., A Rake’s Progress (eight scenes,1733). His attempts to build a reputation as a history painter and portraitist, however, met with financial