ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the subsequent travels undertaken by historical illustrations, within or without books, and seeks to assess what those images did when they circulated. It examines the development of historical illustration in a wider artistic context, that of the appropriation of history painting in eighteenth-century Britain. The chapter presents the manner in which historical painting in Britain developed as a means to resolve this conundrum, allowing British artists to prove themselves as painters of grand narrative works of national significance fit to be exhibited in public. In compliance with the rules of the competition, the young British painters who submitted works to the Society of Arts all painted subjects drawn from British history, but they did so without taking up Johnson's particular suggestion. West's Citizens of London Offering the Crown to William the Conqueror was part of a new historical series to which numerous other painters and engravers contributed.
