James Northcote, History Painting, and the Fables

The artistic accomplishments of James Northcote (1746-1831) have tended to be overshadowed by his role as a biographer of Joshua Reynolds, first President of the Royal Academy of Arts, with whom Northcote apprenticed. Here, Mark Ledbury constructs a very different image of Northcote: that of a prolific member of the Royal Academy and an active participant in the cultural and political circles of the Romantic era, as well as a portrait and history painter in his own right. This book focuses on Northcote's One Hundred Fables (1828), a masterpiece of wood engraving, and the unconventional, collaged manuscripts for the volume. An underappreciated and courageously eccentric masterpiece, the Fables, extensively published here for the first time, were an early experiment in what is now a familiar multimedia practice. Idiosyncratic, personal and visionary, One Hundred Fables serves as a lens through which to examine Northcote's long, complex and fruitful artistic career.