The Schranz family of artists [desk diary]

Abstract

Towards the end of the 18th century Neo-classicism had largely replaced Baroque aesthetics in art, creating a taste for calmer treatment and sharper definition of the subject-matter - approximating in fact a draughtsman's art, thus greatly assisting the development of "view-making" or landscape-painting. Soon the Romantic temperament of such artists as Turner was to liberate landscape-painting from this bondage; but meanwhile the process of litho- graphy had been discovered, through the medium of which the 18th century tradition of "view-making" was to survive for many more decades as a topographical art. The beginning of the 19th century was for Malta a time of profound transformation. With the expulsion of the Knights of St John in 1798, Malta became a mere pawn of the big powers. With the capitulation of the French in 1800, the island was easily dominated by the British who were determined to retain it as a naval and military base, enabling them to increase their influence in the region by extending their presence into the eastern Mediterranean. The Treaty of Paris (1815) sanctioned British presence in Malta, but the island of Minorca in the Balearics - previously occupied by the British to enable their fleet to operate against the French port of Toulon - was returned to Spain. Strange as it may seem, this series of events affected the lives and the careers of a family of painters - the Schranz family who for the best part of a century were to create paintings and issue a formidable lithographic production in which the British navy featured prominently. [excerpt]