ABSTRACT
With its overriding taste for commerce and positive enjoyment of everything to do with trade, the national character of the English has not encouraged the flowering of artistic genius, as in other countries. The English get their painting, architecture and music from the foreigner. The first Spanish traveller to publish detailed impressions of the British artistic scene was Antonio Ponz, a distinguished painter and Secretary to the Royal Academy in Madrid. The skills of printmakers had made British artists well known throughout Europe, and the commemoration of heroes and new methods of engraving formed the most positive impressions among Spanish perceptions of the British School. While France had provided the original model for training at the Academy, Jovellanos and Cean Bermtidez became important figures in the infiltration of British art and ideas into Spain during the later eighteenth century.
