Five Centuries of British Painting: From Holbein to Hodgkin (World of Art)

He traces the story of British painting from its hesitant beginnings under the influence of Holbein through its maturity in the time of Hogarth and Reynolds, when it reflected a prosperous society with growing Imperial influence. He then explores the pioneering role of Constable and Turner in the revolutions of the Romantic period, and the enigmatic position of artists in Victorian England, when a stiff moral code came into conflict with the uncertainties of the age of Darwin. In the twentieth century, Wilton shows how the new ideas of Modernism were explored by distinctive personalities from the Bloomsbury Group to Francis Bacon and the School of London.