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Images of Empire

This temporary exhibition traces the influence of Empire on a diverse range of artists from the sixteenth century to the present day. The exhibition (and its accompanying fully illustrated catalogue) looks at the complicated stories embodied in a wide range of objects from British collections and considers the different ways in which they speak about the history and consequences of Empire. Tate Britain, housing the national collection of British art at Millbank since 1897, keeps national identity at the fore. That an imperial legacy tangibly surrounds Britain today (to the distaste of the xenophobic Briton) is demonstrated in the Brexit debate. Hence, to consider the legacy of Empire as represented in British collections is timely when, despite ‘empire studies’ undergoing extensive academic research and public debate, no wide-ranging presentation of the objects made across the British Empire has appeared (we are told) since the vast Imperial exhibitions of the early twentieth century. Diverse work involved in communicating and legitimating imperial obligations and opportunities is presented in six themed rooms. They ask: How did Britain’s Empire influence the creation and collection of art since the sixteenth century? And how did artists themselves reinforce, resist and reflect the Empire in their work? To begin with, work displayed shows the expansion of the British world. Maps by explorers – like Matthew Flinders with his Terra Australis (1804) – promise the bounty of empire and knowledge. Australia figures substantially throughout the exhibition: George Stubbs’s portrait Portrait of a Large Dog (Dingo) (1772), commissioned by Joseph Banks, gives one example. In another, Thomas Rowlandson lampoons Banks’ zoological interests. The exoticism and ornamentalism of Empire follow. The first two rooms show how Empire gave artists new subjects to record and brought an array of art and artefacts into British collections. ‘Imperial Heroics’, with history paintings commemorating heroic occasions, comprises the third gallery in a display that encapsulates the ambition of the exhibition. The earliest work shown is by Francis Hayman (1708–1776), the first British artist to turn imperial subjects into significant history paintings. His oil sketch depicts Robert Clive negotiating with the quisling Mir Jafar after the Battle of Plassey (1757), whose treachery helped give the British victory over the Nawab of Oudh (Avadh) and put the East India Company in control of Bengal. Hayman’s paintings showing advances in the global extremes of Empire (North America and India) were hung in London’s pleasure grounds, Vauxhall Gardens, as patriotic propaganda. Of this ilk, and better-known, is Benjamin