出版社：University of Glasgow, Institute for Art History
摘要：James Northcote was as reputed for his liberality of anecdote as for his parsimony in hospitality. His conversations and recollections, bristling with detail, of his time in Reynolds’ orbit and after, have entertained and misled in equal measure, but in his encounters late in his life with William Hazlitt, now remembered through their restaging in Hazlitt’s Conversations of James Northcote RA in 1830, he found both a match and an irritant, a sensitive ear and an aggressive sparring partner. This paper explores the encounters between these two very different men, the anecdotes and lore they produced and the rifts that eventually came to divide the aging artist and the brilliant but troubled critic. My contention will be that while Northcote owed Hazlitt much, and enjoyed his company greatly, he found himself the victim of his own penchant for anecdote and fable, while Hazlitt brilliantly understood the political and cultural undercurrents that swirled beneath Northcote’s conversations.
