English Travelers

Oil on canvas. Travel was a major pictorial theme in the mid-19th century – particularly meaning the "Grand Tour" taken by the nobility and other wealthy people. This was also when "educational travel" first became common among a broader segment of the public. The present work by painter-lithographer Carl Ludwig Schubart shows a tour group taking their rest in a craggy landscape. Despite the summery, carefree ambience, everyone but the guide and the little girl in the foreground is grumpily absorbed in a red book. None pays any attention to the view of the landscape or their nearby environs. The red book is not hard to recognize as a "Baedeker," the era's most popular guide book. In 1857, Schubart's witty painting was already anticipating a later phenomenon: travel as a prestigious consumer product in which any real interest in foreign cultures plays only a minor role.