Fancy Pictures
"Whether he most excelled in portraits, landscapes, of fancy-pictures, it is difficult to determine.”
Joshua Reynolds, Discourse XIV, delivered to the Royal Academy of Arts on December 10, 1788
This speech was delivered to mark the death of painter Thomas Gainsborough.
Fortunately for someone reading more than 200 years later, there is a footnote explaining what the heck a “fancy-picture” is. The footnote reads: “Fancy pictures: Most often rural scenes involving idealized peasants or genre scenes treated in a playful manner.”
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