Novel Paintings: Learning to Read Art through Joseph Highmore's Adventures of Pamela

Abstract:This essay examines Joseph Highmore’s Pamela paintings, possibly the first series of paintings derived from an English novel, in relation to evolving artistic and social practices in the first half of the eighteenth century. Despite the significance of Highmore’s work, the series has been evaluated primarily for its illustrative fidelity to Richardson’s novel. This essay analyzes the series as a production parallel to the novel that is responding to recent developments in the art market that prompted anxieties around issues of class and behavior as the audience for artworks expanded beyond the aristocracy. Drawing on his work in portraiture, a genre at the center of these anxieties, Highmore utilized the popularity of Pamela’s narrative to provide his audience with a lesson in the moral dimensions of spectatorship, depicting the dangers of improper viewing and the social benefits of a moral spectatorship, akin to Richardson’s text’s attention to the correct reading of character. Ultimately, Highmore’s paintings offer a moral pedagogy that makes the proper understanding of paintings a model for properly understanding people.