hat led Turner or Constable into the highest gallery of European painters. Elie Faure is right: the English soul is not a plastic one; painting requires a capacity for objective generalisation that suits neither Englishmen nor their activities. But their tenacious, keen sense of observation, their restless attempts to borrow colours from Venetians, linear shapes from the painters of Florence, resulted in the creation of a school of painting, an artistic conscience as well as a social mentality strong enough to support the appearance of genius. Imitation turned into creation. Turner felt painting as a search for what was intimate, profoundly real and objective in nature and world. This vision enables Giuseppe Gatt to raise British painting to the level of creation: “Turner was the first truly modern painter of Europe.” Bibliography Burke, Joseph, English Art 1714- 1800, 1976 Clark, Kenneth, English Romantic Poets and Landscape Painting, 1945 Constable, W. G. Richard Wilson, 1953 Faure, Elie, Histoire de L’Art- L’Art moderne,1921 Gilbey, Walter, Animal Painters in England, 1900 Gowing, Lawrence, Turner: Imagination and Reality, 1966 Leslie, C. R. and Taylor, Tom The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Knight, 1809 Nicolau- Golfin, Marin, Istoria artei, 1968 Reynolds, G. Constable: the Natural Painter, 1965 Richardson, Essay on the Theory of Painting, 1715 Tinker, Brewster, Chauncey, Nature’s Simple Plan, 1922 Vertue, George, Notebooks, 1713-1752 Waterhouse, E. K. Reynolds, 1941 Gainsborough, 1958 Painting in Britain, 1953 Whitley, W. T. Thomas Gainsborough, 1925...
