Chair of Archaeology, University of Southampton

“Truth and Beauty in the Artistic Engagement with Antiquity: British History Painters and the Representation of Ancient Egypt”

In the second half of the nineteenth century a flourishing tradition of history painting emerged as a result of the intense engagement with the material culture of the ancient world. In Britain key historicist artists, such as Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Edward Poynter and Edwin Long, produced highly evocative visions of antiquity, which were densely populated with archaeological references. This talk explores how these artists responded to the fast growing collections of antiquities in museums and how their paintings had a profound impact on the conception of the past.