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Inquiry into the Beauties of Painting

Daniel Webb (1719?-98) was an Irish writer, critic and theorist, born in Limerick and studied at Oxford. He was the author of three seminal treatises on aesthetics: An Inquiry into the Beauties of Painting (1760), Remarks on the Beauties of Poetry (1762), and Observations on the Correspondence Between Poetry and Music(1769). Reflecting a trend in theoretical discourses of the period, An Inquiry into the Beauties of Painting (1760) is arranged as a dialogue, set out as case ‘A’ and ‘B’. Topics range from ‘Our Capacity to Judge of Painting’ and ‘The Antiquity and Usefulness of Painting’ to ‘Of Design’, ‘Of Colouring’, ‘Of the Clear Obscure’ and ‘Of Composition’. In the final Dialogue, Webb demonstrates his preference for Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci’s classicalism over the Baroque style of 17th century artists, such as Lanfranc and Pietro di Cortona.
 This work and many of his theories of art are considered to be informed by his trip to Rome, where he met his portrait painter and artist Anton Raffael Mengs (1728-79). Mengs granted Webb access to his unpublished manuscript Gedanken über die Schönheit (1762), or ‘Thoughts on Beauty’. German theorist Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768) later accused Webb of plagiarism, citing the similarities of An Inquiry into the Beauties of Painting in terms of its assessment of Raphael. Nevertheless, three editions translated into German were published in 1771.