Eye Witness: Artists and Visual Documentation in Britain, 1770-1830. (Reviews of Books).

Sam Smiles. Eye Witness: Artists and Visual Documentation in Britain, 1770-1830. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate. 2000. Pp. xi, 216. $84.95. ISBN 1-84014-636-2.

In this wide-ranging examination of illustrated books and print series, Sam Smiles makes two claims for the epistemological status of images. His larger claim is that British prints made in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries betray a new cultural emphasis on the relationship between vision and cognition, wherein "seeing becomes a vital element in the acquisition of knowledge, almost a form of research" ...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.