- Type: Art Audio File
- Collection: European Art
- Culture/Region: Europe
- Subject Area: Visual Arts
- Grade Level: 9-12, College, Adult
English wood engraver Thomas Bewick (1753–1828) describes an artistic dilemma that he faced in 1798, when a patron requested that he alter naturalistic drawings of cattle and sheep to more closely resemble the sometimes idealized or exaggerated livestock images that circulated in the print market:
After I had made my drawings from the fat sheep, I soon saw that they were not approved, but that they were to be made like certain paintings shown to me. I observed to my employer that the paintings bore no resemblance to the animals whose figures I had made my drawings from; and that I would not alter mine to suit the paintings that were shown to me;
. . . my journey, as far as concerned these fat cattle makers, ended in nothing. I objected to put lumps of fat here and there where I could not see it, at least not in so exaggerated a way as on the painting before me; so “I got my labour for my trouble.” Many of the animals were, during this rage for fat cattle, fed up to as great a weight and bulk as it was possible for feeding to make them; but this was not enough; they were to be figured monstrously fat before the owners of them could be pleased.
Painters were found who could be quite subservient to this guidance, and nothing else would satisfy. Many of these paintings will mark the times, and, by the exaggerated productions of the artists, serve to be laughed at when the folly and the self-interested motives which gave birth to them are done away.