This pioneering study argues that the concept of ‘empire’ belongs at the centre, rather than in the margins, of British art history. Twenty essays by authors from four continents offer innovative methodological approaches to the analysis of visual art as it was produced, exhibited, and distributed throughout the British Empire.

Part I: Settlers and TravellersThe Expanded Field of the Picturesque: Contested Identities and Empire in Sydney Cove 1794 – Ian MacLeanThe Picturesque and the Palawa: John Glover’s Mount Wellington and Hobart Town from Kangaroo Point - David HansenJohn Septimus Roe and the Art of Navigation, c. 1815-1830 - Luciana Martins and Felix DriverColonial Illusions: Australasian Trompe-l’oeil Drawings - Roger BlackleyIdeas of ‘Home’ in South African Landscape Paintings by Thomas Bowler and Thomas Baines - Michael GodbyPart II: Metropolitan ViewsScalping: Social Rites in Westminster Abbey - Douglas Fordham“Conquest, usurpation, wealth, luxury, famine”: Mortimer’s Banditti and the Anxieties of Empire - David H. SolkinShips of the Line: The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1784 - Eleanor HughesUranian Imperialism: Boys and Empire in Edwardian England - Michael HattHomo-exoticism: John Minton in London and Jamaica, 1950-1 - Simon FaulknerPart III: Roles and ReversalsCritical Cosmopolitanism: Gifting and Collecting Art at Lucknow, 1775-1797 - Natasha EatonStorm in a Teacup? Visualizing Tea Consumption in the British Empire - Romita RayThe Politics of Portraiture behind the Veil - Mary RobertsA Veil of Truth and the Details of Empire: John Frederick Lewis’s The Reception - Emily M. WeeksImperial Masculinity, Mimicry, and the New Woman in Rhodes of Africa - Julie F. CodellPart IV: Subject FormationSavage Marks: Engraving and Empire in Thomas Harriot’s Briefe and True Report - Michael GaudioAlways There: Aboriginal People and the Consolation of Miniature Portraiture in British North America - Kristina HuneaultFractured Families: John Davis’s Photo-portraits of Robert Louis Stephenson and Family in Samoa - Leonard BellGentlemen at Leisure: Riding Breeches in the Photographic Portrait Images of Black South African Men - Sandra Klopper‘A Paralysis of Perspective’: Image and Text in the Creation of an African Chief - Jeff Guy

This pioneering study argues that the concept of ‘empire’ belongs at the centre, rather than in the margins, of British art history. Recent scholarship in history, anthropology, literature and post-colonial studies has superseded traditional definitions of empire as a monolithic political and economic project. Emerging across the humanities is the idea of empire as a complex and contested process, mediated materially and imaginatively by multifarious forms of culture. The twenty essays in Art and the British Empire offer compelling methodological solutions to this ambiguity, while engaging in subtle visual analysis of a previously neglected body of work. Authors from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, the USA and the UK examine a wide range of visual production, including book illustration, portraiture, monumental sculpture, genre and history painting, visual satire, marine and landscape painting, photography and film. Together these essays propose a major shift in the historiography of British art and a blueprint for further research.