Britishness as an Identity: Art Theory and the Apperception of the British Empire

Britishness is a conceptual narrative of prestige and conquest. What we understand as British identity has become a conglomeration of artefacts that embody not merely the result of imperialism but the concept itself. In British Modernist art, the theoretical notion of apperception—understood as self-awareness in the roles of the artist, critic, and viewer—manifests in a visual and conceptual interrogation of British identity, where modernist aesthetics become tools for reflecting on the obligations, expectations, and cultural responsibilities of creating and interpreting art within a rapidly transforming nation. British Modernism functions like a current, ebbing and flowing between old and new ideals of what it means to be British. As Mark Cheetham wrote, “Art theory is the apperception of what one does and should do as an artist, historian of art, or viewer.” This artistic self-awareness, a confident sense of self from both artist and viewer, has helped to solidify British identity– granted, at the expense of those conquered and subdued by the British Empire.

Paintings have contributed to shaping a transformative British identity. Each figure, landscape, or portrait reveals the idealized notion of Britishness, sometimes consciously or unconsciously. Artists caught between tradition and the velocity of a changing England used their craft not only to assert British identity but to conceptualize a singular image of Britain; one that asserts itself as superior to all other forms of nationhood. Portraiture becomes a microcosm of British society, landscape, and a mediated expression of nature and dominion. Both forms, enriched by symbolism, artistic experimentation, and ideological ambition, have helped entrench British identity as a perceived truth. Whether informed by race, class, or politics, British modernists saw their work as part of the evolving identity of a “New England,” shaped by both the patterns and the stains of the empire.

To become a modernist requires self-awareness. Art acquired a philosophical dimension. To paint with purpose was to engage with one’s surroundings and capture an evolving realism. British artists began to self-examine their own culture through the lens of visual art. This is evident in The Skating Minister by Henry Raeburn– a portrait that elevates the self-importance of its subject, the Reverend Robert Walker, within the context of the British aristocracy. Painted in 1795 and later passed down through family inheritance before being housed in the Scottish National Gallery, the painting’s lineage alone signals its cultural significance. Portraiture, after all, was a symbol of power, a way to align oneself with aristocracy, echoing the grandeur of the empire.

The Skating Minister exudes restrained opulence. An unconventional portrait, the Reverend dominates the entire composition. The setting is bleak and subdued; the background is painted in muted tones, while the Reverend glides across the ice in a balletic motion, a figure of control, elegance, and introspection. While the scenery is rendered with loose brushstrokes, the Reverend himself is tightly painted: the detail in his black coat, the buckle on his shoe, and the structure of his hat evoke precision and refinement. As a man of the cloth, his rigid posture and composed demeanour reflect a Britishness that is polished and pious. It shows great respect and authority. Having learned to skate on the frozen canals of the Netherlands, the Reverend becomes a symbol of cosmopolitan grace. His figure, silhouetted against a glowing sky, projects pleasure, solitude, and mastery. It is a visual manifestation of British self-assurance and cultural superiority.

This assured identity, however, is not immune to critique. Yinka Shonibare’s sculpture Reverend on Ice (2005) is a reinterpretation of Raeburn’s painting, offering a radical counterpoint. By rendering the Reverend as a headless figure dressed in vibrant African Ankara fabric, Shonibare, a British Nigerian artist, collapses the boundaries between Europe and Africa, exposing the entangled histories of colonialism and cultural identity. It is a third-dimensional observation of the “English” body. As Cheetham observes, “Englishness tends to mask other British identities, which is in itself a problem. Shonibare’s version not only literalizes this erasure through the absence of a head but also confronts the viewer with the contradictions of British imperial pride. The African fabric, the pose, and the medium all collide in a satirical interrogation of identity, authority, and cultural legitimacy. Without aristocracy, control and nationalism, Britain remains to have an incoherent sense of identity. In this act of artistic apperception, Shonibare reclaims agency and challenges the presumed unity of Britishness.

This tension extends further when considering The Captive Slave by John Simpson. First exhibited in 1827, the portrait depicts a bound Black man seated against a stone wall, gazing upward plaintively. At a time when Britain’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade was increasingly scrutinized, Simpson’s work aimed to provoke sympathy and moral reckoning. The subject’s vulnerability, his manacled wrists, his rich orange clothing, and the muted green backdrop command the viewer’s attention. Individual portraits of enslaved persons were rare in European art. In painting this man, Simpson was not only confronting the viewer with the human cost of the empire, but he was using the Black body as a moral lens through which British identity could be re-examined; the Black body is used as a direct antithesis of Britishness. In its rarity and its directness, the painting takes on modernist dimensions. It interrogates the customs of its time and forces British viewers to reckon with their complicity.

This reflective impulse also defined the 1851 Great Exhibition, held at the Crystal Palace. The Exhibition was a showcase of imperial power and innovation; a spectacle designed to reinforce Britain’s global dominance. John Absolon’s View in the East Nave (1851) captures this moment: the Greek Slave statue by Hiram Powers stands prominently, flanked by Native American figures, while British families observe. The sculpture, of a nude woman enslaved in a Turkish market, was interpreted as a commentary on American slavery. As a modern viewer, however, this commentary falls flat and is like a pot calling the kettle black, as Britain was heavily involved in the transatlantic slave trade. Yet, the statue also embodied Victorian ideals of beauty, virtue, and conquest. This poignant commentary is heightened by the red curtain that accentuates the work’s pure whiteness; it is similarly an ode to classical Greek art. Much like ‘The Captain’s Slave’, this sculpture stands as an overt commentary on abolition and portrays a foreign identity through British lens. This is like the Native American figures, which further exoticize the scene, suggesting that non-European identities existed primarily to be observed, collected, and interpreted alongside Western ideals. Through this lens, the Exhibition becomes a curated act of nation-building, one that appropriates other cultures while reinforcing Britain’s supposed moral and aesthetic authority.

Orientalist art further reveals this British tendency to “other” non-European cultures. British Modernism thus becomes a reflective practice– where form and content are inseparable from the moral and cultural act of national self-examination. Edward Said argued that Orientalism is based on the Orient’s special place in European Western experience. It is constructed not just as a geographical entity but as a contrasting image through which Europe defined itself. Yet, as Said writes, none of these images of the Orient is merely imaginative. This idea of the Orient has been shaped by Britain to augment its own sense of identification with Britishness. They have used ideological tools to shape these images. In John Frederick Lewis’s In the Bezestein, for instance, a white British man (modeled by Lewis himself) is depicted in Eastern dress, lounging in what is presumably an Egyptian market. The setting is ambiguous, and the figures in the background indistinct, but the central figure is unmistakably European. By inserting himself into the composition, Lewis blurs the line between observer and subject– yet fails to offer an authentic portrayal of the East. Not only is this reflective of British imperialist society, but it also reflects a British perspective that is affirming their identity through their apperceptive conceptions of the Middle East. Moreover, Lewis reaffirms British identity by appropriating and reimaging the Orient in familiar terms.

This performative lens is also visible in A Peep at the Train by Rudolph Swoboda. Commissioned by Queen Victoria to paint her Indian subjects, Swoboda’s work straddles a delicate line between admiration and exoticization. Queen Victoria declared herself Empress of India in 1876. She once wrote that “there is a universal feeling that India should belong to me.” British Modernist art showcases a culture that prioritizes domination over international support and enrichment. In this painting, Indian figures are seen gazing at a passing train. Yet the viewer’s vantage point, as Mark Tully of The Guardian noted, is from the train itself. This subtle shift in perspective centers the European gaze, not the Indian experience. Nevertheless, Swoboda had a delicate respect for his subjects, as his paintings could easily have been a little more cartoonish or picture-postcard art. Despite Swoboda’s technical skill– the careful rendering of embroidery, the warm sepia tones– his subjects remain unknowable, fixed in their differences. Tully remarked that classical Indian art seeks to represent not what the eye sees, but what the mind understands. Swoboda, by contrast, paints the “other” through a Western lens. The result is an image of India not as it is, but as it is imagined by the British Empire.

British artists were pioneering new methods of portraying the immense power of the British Empire, particularly through depictions of Queen Victoria. Thomas Jones Barker’s The Secret of England’s Greatness (1863) is a semi-portrait of Queen Victoria receiving a bible from an African emissary. As a cultural artifact, the painting’s meticulous detail elevates Queen Victoria not only as a sovereign ruler but also as a divine moral authority. Lynda Nead emphasizes the symbolism of the Black man’s prostration and the Bible he offers, together representing a visual articulation of “greatness” and superiority. Barker’s painting exemplifies imperial iconography. The kneeling posture, evocative of slavery, visually reinforces British dominance, while the Bible– offered but not touched– acts as both a divider and legitimizer of colonial hierarchy. As Nead observes, physical contact would have been “frowned upon,” making the bible a surrogate of imperial distance and moral justification. This image constructs Britishness as inherently adjacent to, yet elated above, the colonized “other”. The Secret of England’s Greatness becomes a projection of racial and national ideology, mapping power relationships between metropolis and colony, local and global.

Theoretical notions of imperial supremacy extended into physical landscapes. British modernists used landscape painting as a visual mode to expand the image of the empire and its national identity. W.J.T. Mitchell famously argued, “Landscape is a medium of exchange between the human and the natural, the self and the other…Landscape is a natural scene mediated by culture.” John Constable’s View on the Stour near Dedham (1822) represents a form of landscape realism rooted in domestic British ideals. Art Historian Anne Helmreich defined landscape as both a noun and a verb. The former is that of “a picture representing natural inland scenery as distinguished from a sea picture, a portrait.” Therefore, landscape is known as a genre painting. The latter, refers to a particular type of landscape as well as what might be pictured in a landscape: “a view or prospect of natural inland scenery, such as can be taken in at a glance from one point of view; a piece of country scenery.”

Constable treats landscape as a verb, as an act of witnessing. He infuses the scene with lived experience and mimetic devotion. “The sound of water escaping from mill-dams… old rotten planks, slimy posts, and brick work…As long as I do paint, I shall never cease to paint such places,” Constable once wrote. His attention to detail: the moss along the bank, the workers, the abandoned boats, conveys a philosophy of nature deeply rooted in English life. Thomas Gainsborough once suggested that figures in a painting “create a little business for the Eye to be drawn from the Trees in order to return to them with more glee.” Therefore, adding narrative interest without eclipsing the natural world. Constable’s figures similarly complement the environment, reinforcing ideals of rural labor and national identity. His use of chiaroscuro, a technique where natural light is rendered as an empirical truth, further solidifies the landscape as both philosophical and apperceptive. It’s not merely a visual record but a meditation on Englishness itself.

Pre-Raphaelitism intensified this self-reflection. Although the movement looked back to Italianate styles and intense color palettes, it also sought a purer, more meaningful vision of British art. William Holman Hunt’s Our English Coasts (1852) offers a picturesque yet symbolically charged depiction of England. Painted en plein air on the southern coast of Cove Hurst Bay near Hastings, the work features a flock of sheep grazing near a cliff edge. Its asymmetrical composition and meticulous detailing of tangled branches and wool elevate an otherwise simple rural scene. Hunt, known for his religious themes, imbues the sheep with symbolic resonance. They become stand-ins for English subjects, innocent, pastoral, and under divine providence.

This symbolism echoes Hunt’s The Scapegoat (1854-56) and The Hireling Shepherd (1851), where sheep function as metaphors for human frailty and spiritual redemption. In Our English Coasts, the intimacy between two sheep, their heads resting against one another, echoes human tenderness and community. For Victorian audiences, steeped in religious and domestic ideals, these cues would have held deep emotional resonance. Thus, the painting becomes a quiet assertion of national identity, rooted in the land, governed by God, and affirmed through moral allegory. It merges both definitions of landscape– depicting nature while actively shaping it as a visual ideology of Britishness.

Britishness, as presented in art, hinges on the concept of access. The British Empire prided itself on its global reach, often commodifying other cultures for its own consumption. This dynamic is vividly captured in John Orlando Parry’s A London Street Scene (1835). The painting teems with posters advertising exotic destinations, such as Jerusalem, Paris, Pompeii, and even alongside local events in Liverpool and Vauxhall. Parry inadvertently paints London as a city of modern conveniences and emerging technologies. It’s a capital not just of an empire, but of industrialization. The city is portrayed as a hub of global consumption, where British citizens are offered curated glimpses of the world they dominate. Parry’s work reflects a self-aware vision of everyday British life, revealing a public that sees itself as global consumers; beneficiaries of imperial expansion, even if they never leave the city.

Yet Britishness, while outward facing, often excludes those within. British Modernist art reveals how the lower classes were marginalized– even in depictions meant to highlight national identity. It is done as a socially realist commentary on jaded Victorian ideals and the blasé of the British upper class. This exclusion becomes a critique in Hubert von Herkomer’s Hard Times (1885). The painting is a provocative illustration of suffering. It shows a family resting along a rural path, evidently exhausted and defeated. The father, leaning against a gate, stares into the distance, burdened not just by his physical load but by the relentless pursuit of subsistence. As Julian Treuherz notes, although Great Britain was at the peak of its industrial and imperial dominance, paintings like Hard Times exposed the human toll of its material progress.

The Victorian lower class became symbols of depravity and neglect. Herkomer was inspired by a real group of people he saw resting at the roadside in Coldharbour Lane near his Bushey home. The painting captures a rural England abandoned by employment; an allegory for a nation’s failure to care for its own. Despite its Dickensian title and its overt sympathy for the working class, Hard Times is less polemical than allegorical. It suggests, through its composition and symbolism, a glimmer of hope. Perhaps an enduring belief in the moral potential of the nation. The painting, however, is more or less concerned with the hope of a British nation rather than with its destitution. In the context of British identity, the painting serves as an implicit critique: Britishness is incomplete without acknowledging the suffering it often desperately conceals.

Viewed through the lens of art theory, British identity emerges as a constructed amalgam, composed of traditions, aesthetics, and ideologies carefully curated to reinforce cultural dominance, while evading moral accountability. It is a national self-image built on contradiction: outwardly expansive yet inwardly rigid; self-assured yet evasive of historical responsibility. British Modernism, as both aesthetic movement and a cultural tool, transformed the concept of Britishness into an apperceptive ideal– an image of what England believes itself to be, rather than what it is. As George Eliot wrote, “Appeals founded on generalizations and statistics require a sympathy ready-made, a moral sentiment already in activity. Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience.” For the British, what they painted became an artifact of a curated reality; a visual manifestation of power, denial, and imagined universal greatness.

Works Cited

Treuherz, Julian, Hard Times: social realism in Victorian art / , 1st ed., London : Lund Humphries in association with Manchester City Art Galleries ; 1987, Yale Center for British Art.

W. J. T. Mitchell, “Imperial Landscape,” in Landscape and Power, 2nd ed. 2002 :5.

Guardian staff reporter. “The Empress Strikes Back.” The Guardian, The Guardian, 9 Nov. 2002, www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2002/nov/09/art.artsfeatures. Accessed 9 May 2025.

Helmreich, A. (2013). Defining, Shaping, and Picturing Landscape in the Nineteenth Century. In A Companion to British Art (eds D. Arnold and D.P. Corbett).

Lynda Nead, The Secret of England's Greatness, Journal of Victorian Culture, Volume 19, Issue 2, 1 June 2014, Pages 161–182,

Said, E. W. (1979). Orientalism. Vintage Books.

Cheetham, Mark A. “The “Englishness” of English ArtTheory1.” Blackwell Publishing Ltd EBooks, 21 Feb. 2013, pp. 11–37, https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118313756.ch1. Accessed 29 Apr. 2023.

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