Painting the Past: The Victorian Painter and British History

Magnificent Elizabeth, innocent Princes in the Tower, Mary Queen of Scots on the scaffold, and beautiful, tragic Lady Jane Grey—that is how we think of them. The spell they cast is one of reality amplified by the history of Victorian painting; yet many of these paintings have been ignored or despised by modern art historians and critics. In this pioneering study, Roy Strong shows how and why these works came into being. He separates the fanciful recreations from the accurate reconstructions of the past, pinpoints their sources and identifies such literary parallels as the medieval romances of Walter Scott, and charts the origins and course of the popular taste for history. Sir Roy Strong is the former Director of England’s National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum; among his widely hailed works is The Story of Britain.