[The following excerpt is taken from the twenty-fifth chapter of D H Laven’s historic work-in-progress 'The Story of Forgotten Art’. In the introduction to this pioneering work he writes: ‘There is no such thing as forgotten art. There are only forgotten artists. And a hell of a lot of them too’. In this passage he looks at the work of Sir Anthony Tosh, an eighteenth century cow painter.]
Many a word I have written on art that has been forgotten. Literally forgotten: thrown into a damp and dingy cellar, burnt on a fiery furnace, tossed into the whiffy wastepaper baskets of history, to the unutterably ghastly gutters of culture’s overcrowded highways and byways; to the edge of the canonical circle – and beyond. Many a word I have written on this type of art. Art which has been and gone – which is no more, is lost, is finished, is but a faint stain on the great carpet of memory.
But there are two ways of forgetting. There is never looking, and there is never looking properly. There is some art, therefore, which is both remembered and forgotten. Art that is in fact well-known, and yet not known at all. Art that hides behind itself; that can be seen and not seen, both at the same time. Such is the art created by the British eighteenth century painter Sir Anthony Tosh. Read the rest of this entry »
