Three styles of life necessarily predominated in the earliest societies. In accordance with the diversity of the regions in which they found themselves, nature presented them with one of these three conditions, which even today distinguish the different regions of the world. Men were, depending on their location, either hunters, shepherds or farmers. Fish‐eaters are of course to be included in the class of hunters.
The notion that this difference in lifestyle failed to produce an essential and characteristic difference in the style of the first shelters that primitive industry appropriated for itself beggars belief.
For a long time, hunting or fishing peoples cannot have constructed any habitation for themselves. The former in view of the long expeditions that they make, and the latter in view of their sedentary and indolent condition of life, either on the shores of lakes or seas or along river banks, find it more convenient to excavate dwellings from the earth or take advantage of excavations already made by nature itself. All travellers’ accounts testify to the continued existence of this mode of being, and their narratives, like those of the past, prove to us how natural and common the use of underground chambers was for the primitive dwellings of a great number of peoples.
A people of shepherds, constantly in movement, always migrating from one place to another to find new pastures, cannot make use of these dwellings hollowed out by the hand of nature. They cannot be detained by a fixed dwelling, as they need movable ones that can accompany them; hence, from time immemorial, the use of tents.
By contrast, agriculture requires a life that is simultaneously active and sedentary. This must have suggested to mankind that it build solider and more fixed dwellings. Moreover, the farmer, living on his field and on what it produces, has provisions to store and needs a safe, comfortable, healthy and extensive dwelling. The wooden cabin, with its roof, must soon have arisen.
These three conditions of life necessarily had an active and immediate influence on the use and choice of the earliest inhabitations. But it is not at all my intention to deny that other natural causes, such as the materials available, the scarcity or abundance of forest, and the influences of climate also acted as determining causes in these habits. It is not suggested that anything here can be attributed exclusively to a single principle. On the contrary, the object is to argue and demonstrate a plurality of principles and from these deduce the inevitability of divergent consequences.
The various principles cited above suggested to mankind dwellings of very different kinds and these primitive dwellings, in their turn, suggested a wide range of models to the art of architecture.
It should further be observed that, in every country, architecture takes on at the moment of its generation that essential form whose development subsequently produces such remarkably different results. Shapeless as this seed might seem, it already bears within it certain characteristics it will never subsequently lose and that can be discerned in its loftiest development. […]
The knowledge of the state of Egyptian architecture that it is our task in this volume to impart and develop therefore requires that we distinguish certain of the essential causes that must have imprinted its character. From this form of discernment will arise our ability to establish a parallel between it and Greek architecture, which, uncovering the properties of each, will help to distinguish, among the resemblances that will be encountered, those that must be attributed to the general action of a universal principle from those that reveal the spirit of imitation or borrowing.
All buildings, in every architecture, have supports known as columns. But does this element of conformity between, for example, Chinese and Indian architecture prove that the one borrowed from the other? Before drawing this conclusion, we must examine the character, system and kind of their columns. And if we find that they are not only different but indeed contrasting in their forms, proportions and essential mode of being, we should conclude that completely different types presided over their formation. Imitation of tents is inscribed into every limb of Chinese architecture. Its curved roofs, its cut‐out effects,1 its narrow supports and coloured decorations together declare that their houses imitated the primitive dwelling of the former pastoral state – and this is consistent with the most reliable information that we have on the early lifestyle of the Chinese, who were, like all Tartars, nomads or tent‐peoples, that is, they camped with their flocks before they had towns.
The pavilion‐shaped roofs of China and the gabled roofs of Greece are, moreover, objects that have no relation other than the general one of covering and capping. The Greek gable or pediment belongs to a system of construction independent of any other. Like every other part and arrangement of this architectural tradition, it is connected to the principle of the wooden frame and to a faithful imitation of the wooden cabin, whose imprint has survived in so authentic a fashion in the productions of the highly developed art as to guarantee its originality.
In Egyptian architecture, too, a native principle must be acknowledged. And if, in all its buildings, both overall and in every detail, we find a perfect resemblance with the taste and nature of underground dwellings, it will be concluded, that, having an origin so very different to that of Greek architecture, it could not easily have communicated its tastes and principles to that tradition. It follows that Greek borrowings from Egypt can only have been of details and accessories alien to the constitution of its architecture.
It may also follow that the two traditions should be considered devoid of any generic mutual relationship, like two species distinct in their essential conformation. That the one should have preceded the other – even were this as clearly demonstrated as it is, in fact, difficult to show – would be an argument of little value in this field. The date of their birth is, indeed, of little importance if each was born of a different seed.
IIC13 Joshua Reynolds (1723–92) from his Discourses 1776 and 1786
In line with the expanded remit of art history in the contemporary period, writers have begun to show interest in the work of certain European artists, including figures hitherto marginal in established art histories, because their work evidences interaction with other cultures. Examples include William Hodges (cf. IIb8)], who travelled to Oceania on the second Cook voyage and later worked in India, and the Irish artist Thomas Hickey, who also worked in India for many decades. Mutatis mutandis, the work of more canonical figures has likewise been scrutinized for evidence of what has been called an ‘imperial aesthetic’: to find traces, or encoded forms, in both visual and textual representations of assumptions about the priority of the academic tradition over the visual forms of other cultures; in a word, of Eurocentrism. The contents of Part II have shown ample evidence of such biases, indeed it would be strange if it were otherwise. Nonetheless, for all his centrality to the academic establishment of British art in the period, it has to be said that the published writings of Joshua Reynolds have very little to say about the art and culture of other countries. Reynolds was an avowed classicist, and leading advocate of the Grand Style, but he says little about its Others. In his Discourse VI, delivered on 10 December 1774, Reynolds does make a fleeting reference to artists needing to acquire knowledge ‘from the East and from the West’, but the context makes it clear that this is little more than a figure of speech. Nowhere in that Discourse’s discussion of the models which an artist must imitate in order to achieve excellence does he venture beyond classical antiquity, the Italian Renaissance and the post‐Renaissance European canon. However, two partial exceptions to this general rule can be found in addresses a decade apart, in 1776 and 1786. In his Discourse VII, delivered on 10 December 1776, against a background of homage to Greece and Rome, Reynolds discusses the personal adornment of both Native Americans and the inhabitants of Tahiti. Reynolds had some experience of both. He had encountered a delegation of Cherokee Indians in London in 1762, and his full‐length portrait of Omai, the Tahitian who travelled to England with James Cook, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1776. In terms of fine art, Reynolds maintained absolute standards of taste and decorum, but in what were to him altogether slighter areas of ornament, he is surprisingly pluralistic about different canons of taste, even though ‘art’