The Real and the Romantic: English Art Between Two World Wars – A Times Best Art Book of 2022

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Although to this reader, Raphaella came across as vainglorious, manipulative and materialistic as well as (of course) beautiful, this is, after all the romantic era, and Cashel is the ultimate romantic. This is an interesting position, and one that bears some resonance in an age where some of the highest profile artists in the world, such as Chance The Rapper, are not only forging their own paths but being vocal about their resistance of record labels and the possibilities independence can give you. Not having enough information to complete a biography William Boyd has written a fictional account of his life based on that material. In The Real and the Romantic, Frances Spalding, one of Britain's leading art historians and critics, takes a fresh and timely look at this rich period in English art.

Romantic: the real life of Cashel Greville Ross : a novel The Romantic: the real life of Cashel Greville Ross : a novel

We are consistently invited to question how far Ross's exploits are "true" and how far they are self-perpetuated creation. I’m sitting with Eliza Caird (fka Doolittle, now just Eliza) in the restaurant of the Covent Garden Hotel, as she explains her transition from fresh-faced pop singer to the artist behind one of the rawest, smoothest albums of 2018. Ross involves himself in an unlikely escapade; it appears to go well; it turns out exceptionally badly; Ross escapes through some quirk of chance.

One hundred thousand people live on this small island, crammed into the noisome, narrow alleyways of the old town, and their effluvia is everywhere. Boyd was selected in 1983 as one of the 20 'Best of Young British Novelists' in a promotion run by Granta magazine and the Book Marketing Council. Independence is also an important subject, the singer expressing the significance of not letting anyone run your life, and not blaming anyone else for your own problems.

The Real and the Romantic: English Art Between Two World Wars

For all the hijinks that keep us turning his pages, Boyd is ultimately an artist of diminishment – one who tracks, in The Romantic , the ways in which a seemingly “great” life, lived over an entire century, can still dwindle, inexorably, into almost nothing: “tied bundles of letters received, drafts of letters sent, some little sketches, maps and plans, some photographs . He is to get caught up in a Greek antiquities scandal as the Nicaraguan Consul in Trieste, this puts hims in such danger that he goes in hiding in Venice.When Ross finds himself on the Italian beach where Shelley's body is being burned, Boyd vividly describes the "curious, putrefying, blue-grey hue" of what remains of the poet's flesh. The first William Boyd book that I read - and still my favourite - was Any Human Heart, which was the autobiography of Logan Montstuart, a fictional character whose life unfolded over - and reflected the events of - much of the 20th century. Throughout these years, the pursuit of 'the real' was set against, and sometimes merged with, an inclination towards the 'romantic', as English artists sought to respond to their subjects and their times. It’s something that I initially found disconcerting in his earlier books but in time I grew to enjoy looking out for these contrivances. But as with Logan Mountstuart, the hero of Boyd’s masterwork, Any Human Heart, Cashel ultimately emerges as a one-off – an inimitable character, whether he knows it or not.

The Real and the Romantic: English Art Between Two World Wars The Real and the Romantic: English Art Between Two World Wars

I did like Cashel’s definition of love “to care more about the person you loved than you did about yourself” (444). Spalding explores how exciting new ideas co-existed with a desire for continuity and a renewed interest in the past. The reason he is more or less unheard of is due to the fact someone else always seems to beat him to the punch.And it's good to see the genre is now getting some popular traction; The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is a whole life novel. He died, after an adventurous life, in 1882, leaving a hundred pages of autobiography, notes, letters, bills and receipts. Ross fights at the Battle of Waterloo and explores the world, meeting Byron and Shelley, brewing German beer in America and attempting to discover the source of the Nile. Yes, there’s a love story so Cashel is a romantic in that respect but he is also a romantic in outlook, being driven by impulse and circumstance, rather than by thoroughly thought through plans.