Wilton, (James) Andrew (Rutley) 1942-

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WILTON, (James) Andrew (Rutley) 1942-

PERSONAL: Born July 2, 1942, in Farnham, England; came to the United States, 1976; son of Herbert Rutley (a musician) and Mary Cecilia Morris (Buckerfield); married Christina Frances Benn (a teacher); children: Henry. Education: Trinity College, Cambridge, M.A. (with honors), 1964.

ADDRESSES: Office—David Higham Associates, 5-8 Lower John St., London W1F 9HA, England.

CAREER: Museum curator and author. Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, England, assistant keeper, 1965-67; British Museum, London, England, assistant keeper in Department of Prints and Drawings, 1967-76, 1981-84; Yale University, New Haven, CT, curator of prints and drawings at Center for British Art, 1976-81; Tate Gallery, London, England, curator of Turner Collection at Clore Gallery, 1985-89, keeper of British art, 1989-98; keeper and senior research fellow, 1998-2002; visiting research fellow, 2003—.

WRITINGS:

The Woodcuts of William Blake, British Museum Publications (London, England), 1977.

British Watercolours, 1750-1850, Phaidon (New York, NY), 1977.

(With John Russell) Turner in Switzerland, de Clivo (Zurich, Switzerland), 1977.

J.M.W. Turner: His Art and Life, Rizzoli (New York, NY), 1979.

William Pars: Journey through the Alps, de Clivo, 1979.

Turner and the Sublime, British Museum Publications (London, England), 1980.

Alexander and John Robert Cozens, Center for British Art, Yale University (New Haven, CT), 1980.

Turner Abroad: France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, British Museum Publications (London, England), 1982.

Turner in His Time, H.N. Abrams (New York, NY), 1987.

(Compiler and author of introduction) Turner Watercolours in the Clore Gallery, Tate Gallery (London, England), 1988.

Painting and Poetry: Turner's Verse Book and His Work of 1804-1812, Tate Gallery (London, England), 1990.

The Swagger Portrait: Grand Manner Portraiture in Britain from Van Dyck to Augustus John, 1630-1930, Tate Gallery (London, England), 1992.

(With Anne Lyles) The Great Age of British Watercolours, 1750-1880, te Neues (New York, NY), 1993.

(Editor, with Ilaria Bignamini) Grand Tour: The Lure of Italy in the Eighteenth Century, Tate Gallery (London, England), 1996.

(Editor) The Age of Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Watts: Symbolism in Britain, 1860-1910, Flammarion (New York, NY), 1997.

(Editor, with Kalman A. Burnim) Geoffrey Ashton, Pictures in the Garrick Club: A Catalogue of the Paintings, Drawings, Watercolours, and Sculpture, Garrick Club (London, England), 1997.

J. M. W. Turner, That Greatest of Landscape Painters: Watercolors from London Museums, Philbrook Museum of Art/University of Washington Press (Tulsa, OK), 1998.

Five Centuries of British Painting: From Holbein to Hodgkin, Thames & Hudson (New York, NY), 2001.

(With Tim Barringer) American Sublime: Landscape Painting in the United States, 1820-1880, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 2002.

Author of exhibition catalogs. Contributor of articles and reviews to magazines.

Wilton's books have been translated into German.

SIDELIGHTS: Andrew Wilton's experience as a museum curator has given him an excellent vantage point from which to write about English and American art. As in his books on British painter J.M.W. Turner, Wilton is interested in exploring—and hopefully solidifying—the concept of English art and its place in the Western canon. In The Age of Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Watts: Symbolism in Britain, he draws together a number of essayists in the hope of articulating Britain's role in the Symbolist movement; he argues that several British Pre-Raphaelite artists were instrumental in founding the movement, even as they remained distinct from the Continental scene.

Wilton's Five Centuries of British Painting: From Holbein to Hodgkin articulates an even-broader theme than the Symbolist movement. He does so by approaching his subject with a keenly aesthetic eye rather than drawing upon social or political theories. The result, according to a contributor to Contemporary Review, is "a refreshing return to a more balanced view of the history of art." The reviewer also noted that Wilton's text successfully retains the reader's interest—a hard feat, considering the broad scope of the book.

Wilton turns his eye to America in his next book, American Sublime: Landscape Painting in the United States, 1820-1880, coauthored with colleague Tim Barringer, an art historian at Yale University. With an eye to contextualizing the movement, Wilton discusses Edmund Burke's theory of sublimity and the recent developments in science that served to influence these painters. Booklist contributor Donna Seaman noted that the authors' "commentary is stimulating and important, and the exceptional plates" within the pages of American Sublime "are unadulterated bliss." American Sublime was intended to accompany an exhibit of landscape painting curated by Wilton and Barringer that was on display at the Tate Gallery during the spring of 2002.

Wilton once told CA: "I am by profession a museum curator. My first job is the care of works of art. The publication of catalogs and other material relating to those works of art is secondary; but I regard it as important that a curator should impart such knowledge as he has on the subjects in which he specializes. This is not the same task as the art historian's. It is less concerned with interpretation than with the collection and elucidation of facts."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Apollo, August, 1981, review of Turner and the Sublime, p. 138; December, 1983, review of Turner Abroad: France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, p. 529.

Art Bulletin, March, 1999, Elizabeth Helsinger, review of The Age of Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Watts: Symbolism in Britain, 1860-1910, pp. 165-168.

Bloomsbury Review, November, 1998, review of The Age of Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Watts, p. 27.

Booklist, September 1, 1982, review of Turner Abroad, p. 19; December 1, 1987, review of Turner in His Time, p. 599; June 1, 2002, Donna Seaman, "America: Land of the Free and Artistic" (review of American Sublime: Landscape Painting in the United States, 1820-1880), p. 1662.

Bookwatch, June, 1993, review of The Great Age of British Watercolours, p. 8.

Book World, November 28, 1982, review of Turner Abroad, p. 6.

British Book News, March, 1981, review of J. M. W. Turner: His Art and Life, p. 314, review of Turner and the Sublime, p. 171; February, 1983, review of Turner Abroad, p. 109.

Burlington, May, 1981, review of Turner and the Sublime, p. 319; October, 1984, review of Turner Abroad, p. 654; December, 1984, review of Turner Abroad, p. 796; November, 1989, review of Turner in His Time, p. 778, review of Turner Watercolours in the Clore Gallery, p. 779; January, 1997, review of Grand Tour: The Lure of Italy in the Eighteenth Century, p. 57; January, 1998, review of The Age of Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Watts, p. 51.

Choice, September, 1981, review of Turner and the Sublime, p. 66; December, 1982, review of Turner Abroad, p. 575; December, 1987, review of Turner in His Time, p. 612.

Contemporary Review, July, 2002, review of Five Centuries of British Painting: From Holbein to Hodgkin, p. 63.

History Today, December, 1982, review of Turner Abroad, p. 60.

Hungry Mind Review, summer, 1998, review of The Age of Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Watts, p. 45.

Illustrated London News, June, 1987, review of Turner in His Time, p. 75.

Library Journal, April 15, 1981, review of Turner and the Sublime, p. 873; September 1, 1982, review of Turner Abroad, p. 1650; July, 2002, review of American Sublime, p. 76.

London Review of Books, June 4, 1987, review of Turner Watercolours, p. 22; March 25, 1993, review of The Great Age of British Watercolours, p. 18.

New Republic, October 12, 1987, review of Turner in His Time, p. 47.

New York Times Book Review, May 31, 1987, review of Turner in His Time, p. 11.

Observer (London, England), November 28, 1982, review of Turner Abroad, p. 30; April 12, 1987, review of Turner in His Time, p. 23.

Publishers Weekly, July 16, 1982, review of Turner Abroad, p. 66; August 7, 1987, review of Turner in His Time, p. 440; March 8, 1993, review of The Great Age of British Watercolours, p. 62.

Science, August 30, 2002, review of American Sublime, p. 1480.

Spectator, April 11, 1987, review of Turner in His Time, p. 33; November 27, 1993, review of The Great Age of British Watercolours, p. 35.

Times Literary Supplement, January 30, 1981, review of Turner and the Sublime, p. 119; July 10, 1987, review of Turner in His Time, p. 735; December 25, 1987, review of Turner and the Sublime, p. 10; December 28, 1990, review of Painting and Poetry: Turner's Verse Book and His Work of 1804-1812, p. 1401; December 18, 1992, review of The Swagger Portrait: Grand Manner Portraiture in Britain from Van Dyck to Augustus John, 1630-1930, p. 14; February 12, 1993, review of The Great Age of British Watercolours, p. 16; November 22, 1996, review of Grand Tour, p. 18; October 31, 1997, review of The Age of Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Watts, p. 23.