Dibdin and John Raphael Smith

This interlude builds on insights into the relationship between song and visual culture by discussing in detail the relationship between Charles Dibdin and the artists George Morland and John Raphael Smith, who produced numerous high-art paintings based on Dibdin’s songs. It considers the implications of this appropriation of a popular musical tradition by the elite art world, and provides a compelling account of the overlapping worlds of fine art, the theatre, and musical entertainment by examining the clubs and societies in which they mingled. It concludes by relating this to issues of professionalism and status, matters of supreme importance to a self-made man such as Dibdin.