As a result one may say in a very
general way that English painting is more illustrative than creative.
It endeavors to record things that might be more pertinently and
completely told in poetry, romance, or history. The conception of
large art--creative work of the Rubens-Titian type--has not been given
to the English painters, save in exceptional cases. Their success has
been in portraiture and landscape, and this largely by reason of
following the model.
EARLY PAINTING: The earliest decorative art appeared in Ireland. It
was probably first planted there by missionaries from Italy, and it
reached its height in the seventh century. In the ninth and tenth
centuries missal illumination of a Byzantine cast, with local
modifications, began to show. This lasted, in a feeble way, until the
fifteenth century, when work of a Flemish and French nature took its
place. In the Middle Ages there were wall paintings and church
decorations in England, as elsewhere in Europe, but these have now
perished, except some fragments in Kempley Church, Gloucestershire,
and Chaldon Church, Surrey.
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