This collection sheds new light on a common but often overlooked contribution of British art: the sporting print. Highly sought after during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, these prints endure today as vivid, direct, and even witty symbols of English culture. Catching Sight features more than eighty prints and three essays that go beyond the symbolism to examine these works from both art-historical and social perspectives.
Malcolm Cormack details the production and sale of sporting prints; Mitchell Merling explores the aesthetic implications of the sophisticated visual languages employed by sporting artists; and Corey Piper analyzes the meaning of the prints in the larger context of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century rural society.
Distributed for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts