Between Antiquarianism and the Avant-Garde: Revisiting the Taste Debate through John Brown

Abstract: The conflict between artists and connoisseurs that erupted in Britain in the eighteenth century centred on a fundamental question: who commanded the authority of good taste and could thereby judge and direct the course of visual art? The parameters of this dispute—commonly known as the taste debate—are well established. However, while previous scholarship has focused on the debate as it unfolded in the public sphere, the present study unsettles familiar narratives through close looking at a series of private commissions executed by the Scottish draughtsman and painter John Brown (1749–1787). Brown remains a marginal figure in histories of British art and culture, but his connections to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, the Society of Dilettanti in London, and the Fuseli circle in Rome position him at a crucial nexus between art communities that are usually understood as being socially and ideologically opposed. I argue that Brown's unusual oeuvre reveals hitherto overlooked affinities between the ideals and ambitions of artistic producers and elite collectors as each turned from mimesis toward reinvention of the antique.