DOCSLIB.ORG

DRAWING on the PAST: VICTORIAN INNOVATION and TRADITION in LIFE, LEGEND, LANDSCAPE VICTORIAN DRAWINGS and WATERCOLOURS 17 February – 15 May 2011

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
DRAWING on the PAST: VICTORIAN INNOVATION and TRADITION in LIFE, LEGEND, LANDSCAPE VICTORIAN DRAWINGS and WATERCOLOURS 17 February – 15 May 2011 DRAWING ON THE PAST: VICTORIAN INNOVATION AND TRADITION IN LIFE, LEGEND, LANDSCAPE VICTORIAN DRAWINGS AND WATERCOLOURS 17 February – 15 May 2011 THE BACKWARD GLANCE and crossed more loosely over the body the placement of these intricate, delicate In April 1861, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & than the confining corsets and bustles images across the gallery walls; one of the Co. officially opened for business, offering dictated by mainstream taste. This drawing, strongest of these is the tension between clients bespoke decorative objects made which may have been created for sale in historicism and invention. Tracing the using techniques, palettes, materials its own right, eventually informed one of means by which a cluster of the artists and designs – whether for stained glass, the many stained glass panels decorating represented in the Gallery’s present show furniture or textiles – that simultaneously the beautiful South Kensington dining engaged with the past gives us a more looked forward and backward in history. room. The Green Dining Room project refined and deeper understanding of their Edward Burne-Jones, whom Morris had combined Burne-Jones’ languid glass Victorian present and its varied attempts met when they were undergraduates designs with painted decoration in greens, to articulate a cohesive cultural identity. at Oxford in the 1850s, was the firm’s reds and ruddy oranges to create a As modernity challenged convention, the chief designer of stained glass. As such, harmonious, pleasurable public space for concept of ‘revival’ gained a revolutionary he created a series of sumptuous and refreshment, removed from the Museum’s quality in nineteenth-century Britain, serene panels for their first major secular vast collections whilst referencing them and this is evident in numerous albeit commission: the Green Dining Room of with its finely worked details (Fig. 2). The apparently disparate pictures in Life, the South Kensington Museum (now the site’s design was essentially a distillation Legend, Landscape. Three broad themes V&A) designed jointly by Burne-Jones, of medieval and Elizabethan rooms in – ideal beauty, medievalism, and ornament Philip Webb and William Morris. grand houses and as such was one of many – can be used as lenses to carefully and Burne-Jones produced a study of a girl in decorative spaces that was directly and yet insightfully focus on these drawings’ classical drapery twisted and folded across imaginatively informed by Britain’s distant different yet consistently provocative the back and waist (Fig. 1) to accentuate past. revisions of historic precedent. both the figure’s pose and to allude to the fashion of the day for ‘Aesthetic dress’, GENDER AND IDEAL BEAUTY wherein luxurious fabrics were draped William Etty’s depictions of nude women attracted a great deal of attention – not always positive – throughout his career. In 1843 he exhibited Musidora: The Bather ‘At the Doubtful Breeze Alarmed’ at the Royal Academy (Fig. 3). Fig. 2 The drawings and watercolours displayed in the Courtauld Gallery’s Life, Legend, Landscape exhibition are a miscellany, as Fig. 3 pointed out by Elizabeth Prettejohn in the exhibition catalogue. The sheer range of subjects, artists, and techniques speaks as He made at least four versions of the a whole to the diversity and importance picture, clearly captivated by the challenge of drawing and watercolour painting for of depicting a nude young woman at the artists in Britain in the nineteenth century. anxious point of anticipating inevitable Fig. 1 Themes within the collection emerge in discovery. The subject was inspired 1 by James Thomson’s 1730 poem, The to be WOMAN, that all human beauty to the female studies, shielding his eyes Seasons: Summer in which Musidora is had been concentrated in her, I resolved or stretching. Leighton, who consistently discovered by Damon while bathing in a to dedicate myself to painting – not the worked from the nude towards clothed river alone: Draper’s or the Milliner’s work – but God’s figures in his finished work, was also most glorious work, more finely than ever comfortable with the transferring of female But desperate youth, had been done.’ and male anatomical characteristics How durst thou risk the between studies in order to create soul distracting view:… Unlike Etty’s project’s reliance on gender either ambiguously composite or clearly With fancy blushing, specificity and the particular qualities gendered figures. This strategy both at the doubtful breeze of feminine beauty for its avant-garde privileged and eclipsed the central Alarmed, and startling like impetus, Frederic Leighton’s treatment importance of working from life and the fearful fawn. of the nude form was radical precisely incorporating the nude figure into because of the artist’s consistent merging each stage of his art production. While Etty’s most controversial representations and translating of male and female bodies Leighton’s work shows a preoccupation of young, nubile British women made as artworks progressed from sketches to with idealized classical forms, his practice critics uneasy because these figures were finished oil paintings. Leighton’s interest also discloses a surprising flexibility painted without allegorical or classical in androgyny has striking parallels with regarding biological sex and pictorial gloss. Even the cited inspiration of an Burne-Jones and Simeon Solomon in the composition. eighteenth-century poet whose work had 1870s and 1880s; this is particularly evident also inspired Gainsborough could not fully in Elijah in the Wilderness, the angel for ORNAMENT AND THE DECORATIVE account for what was a nude, vulnerable which is a composite of male and female Charles Conder’s small mixed media woman surprised in the middle of a very models. Angelic androgyny is also striking picture on silk, Les Incroyables of 1892, English secluded stream. The voyeuristic in the series of works Leighton produced offers the viewer a theatrical, dreamlike opportunities afforded by this image are for the Dalziel Brothers’ 1881 biblical image of spaces and figures swathed in rich related to Etty’s earlier drawing of a female illustrations, such as Abraham and the fabrics of varying hues and textures (Fig. 7). Angel (Fig. 5). Fig. 7 The male ‘Incroyables’ (Incredibles) and female ‘Merveilleuses’ (literally, the Marvelous ones) refer to fashionable youths who resisted the Reign of Terror’s violent implications for France by dressing flamboyantly to mark themselves out as politically critical of the Jacobin regime. Conder’s image is, however, also suggestive of a decadent fin-de-siecle lushness and Symbolist ambiguity; this is Fig. 5 Leighton’s chalk studies for his ambitious especially located in the gestures and dress apocalyptic scene, ’And the Sea gave of the figure on the right, whose deep blue up the Dead which were in it’ date from cloak and hat contrast vibrantly against the c.1877-84 (Fig. 6). coolness of the sparsely leafy background, Fig. 4 which leads the eye towards the shadowy nude posing with a cast of the Venus de Incroyables in their grand black hats at the Medici (Fig. 4). very rear of the stage-like space. Figures in this work take on decorative qualities The celebrated Venus in the Uffizi in in their patterned costumes; they are all Florence was replicated as a plaster cast for artifice and intrigue as Conder displays student inspiration at the drawing school their bodies not to suggest an intelligible of the Royal Academy, where Etty spent narrative, but to confound clarity and many years refining his technique. In this foreground the decorative for its own sake. image he fuses together drawing from the In this sense, Conder could be usefully antique and drawing from life, suggesting connected to one of the Victorian period’s that the dynamism and fleshy sensuality of most significant draughtsmen, Aubrey the live model outstrips even the renowned Beardsley. classical beauty of the Medici Venus. Moreover, what is hidden in Etty’s rendition of the plaster cast is revealed in the contrived pose of the nude model, whose crossed legs and outstretched arm allow for playful embrace of the plaster statue Fig. 6 and the simultaneous exposure of pubic hair, an aspect of mature womanhood The earlier of the drawings shows a woman so typically overlooked in traditional with her white neck craned upward and representations of ideal female beauty. back arched, her arms bent sharply at Of representing women, Etty claimed that the elbows in two related positions on a he ‘never painted with a lascivious motive’. single sheet. A later drawing depicts a Rather, ‘finding God’s most glorious work draped male figure in a similar position Fig. 8 2 In both Servant Carrying Slippers (1893) and a network of artists including Daniel in detail and careful observation. This (Fig. 8) and Pierrot with Mandolin Maclise. Maclise’s careful rendering of plate represented the development (1894), the vibrant tension of Beardsley’s minutiae in his interpretation of Tennyson’s of acanthus ornament from Greek use deftly handled ink lines create zones Idylls of the King dates from c.1860 through to Roman, Gothic, and finally the of concentrated ornament, contrasting (Fig. 10). Its crisp lines, particularly in Renaissance. ‘The Nature of Gothic’, which satisfyingly with expanses of negative the strands of hair, musculature of the was profoundly influential for numerous space. Whether a mild smugness or a steed, and stiffly folded drapery of Enid’s scholars and enthusiasts of the Middle practiced deference, the character of garb, allude to Northern Renaissance Ages in the nineteenth century, was first each figure is described with a graceful masters such as Albrecht Durer and Martin published within Stones as a plea for economy that drew on Japanese graphic Schoengauer. The image takes up an event modern art and architecture to return to art and distilled it into an unprecedented described by Tennyson, the Victorian poet what Ruskin believed was a utopian period yet attractive set of artistic parameters laureate, as a suspicious and uncertain yet of labour and dignity.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • A Field Awaits Its Next Audience
    Victorian Paintings from London's Royal Academy: ” J* ml . ■ A Field Awaits Its Next Audience Peter Trippi Editor, Fine Art Connoisseur Figure l William Powell Frith (1819-1909), The Private View of the Royal Academy, 1881. 1883, oil on canvas, 40% x 77 inches (102.9 x 195.6 cm). Private collection -15- ALTHOUGH AMERICANS' REGARD FOR 19TH CENTURY European art has never been higher, we remain relatively unfamiliar with the artworks produced for the academies that once dominated the scene. This is due partly to the 20th century ascent of modernist artists, who naturally dis­ couraged study of the academic system they had rejected, and partly to American museums deciding to warehouse and sell off their academic holdings after 1930. In these more even-handed times, when seemingly everything is collectible, our understanding of the 19th century art world will never be complete if we do not look carefully at the academic works prized most highly by it. Our collective awareness is growing slowly, primarily through closer study of Paris, which, as capital of the late 19th century art world, was ruled not by Manet or Monet, but by J.-L. Gerome and A.-W. Bouguereau, among other Figure 2 Frederic Leighton (1830-1896) Study for And the Sea Gave Up the Dead Which Were in It: Male Figure. 1877-82, black and white chalk on brown paper, 12% x 8% inches (32.1 x 22 cm) Leighton House Museum, London Figure 3 Frederic Leighton (1830-1896) Elisha Raising the Son of the Shunamite Woman 1881, oil on canvas, 33 x 54 inches (83.8 x 137 cm) Leighton House Museum, London -16- J ! , /' i - / .
    [Show full text]
  • BOOK REVIEW Modern Painters, Old Masters: the Art of Imitation From
    Tessa Kilgarriff 126 BOOK REVIEW Modern Painters, Old Masters: The Art of Imitation from the Pre-Raphaelites to the First World War, by Elizabeth Prettejohn (London: Yale University Press, 2017). 288 pp. Hardback, £45. Reviewed by Tessa Kilgarriff (University of Bristol) Visual allusion and the transhistorical relationship between works of art and their viewers form the subject of Elizabeth Prettejohn’s illuminating study, Modern Painters, Old Masters. The author proposes that the much-maligned term ‘imitation’ most accurately describes the practice by which artists and viewers form relationships with their counterparts in other historical eras. The book argues that ‘imitation’ came in two distinguishing categories during the period from the 1848 founding of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to the First World War: ‘competitive imitation’ (in which the artist attempts to transcend their predecessor) and ‘generous imitation’ (in which the artist faithfully copies the earlier model) (p. 15). In chapters on originality and imitation, on the influence of Jan van Eyck’s Portrait of (?) Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife (1434), on the Pre-Raphaelites’ discovery of early Renaissance painters, on Frederic Leighton’s debts to Spanish painting, and on the tension between making art and looking at it, Prettejohn asks fourteen key questions. The formulation and clarity of these questions is explained by the origins of the book, namely Prettejohn’s Paul Mellon Lectures given at the National Gallery in London and at the Yale Center for British Art in 2011. Prettejohn’s incisive questions stringently rebuff the notion that the significance of visual allusions, or references, is limited to identification.
    [Show full text]
  • PRE-RAPHAELITE STUNNERS at CHRISTIE’S in JUNE Works by Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Poynter and Leighton
    PRESS RELEASE | LONDON FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE : 20 A p r i l 2 0 1 5 PRE-RAPHAELITE STUNNERS AT CHRISTIE’S IN JUNE Works by Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Poynter and Leighton London – This summer, Christie’s London presents a stellar collection of Pre-Raphaelite and Victorian drawings and paintings – one of the very best collections in private hands with museum-quality works, some of which have not been seen for decades. Offered as part of the Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite & British Impressionist Art sale on 16 June 2015, this beautiful collection features 45 works and is expected to realise in the region of £2 million. Leading the collection is one of eight works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), Beatrice: A Portrait of Jane Morris (estimate: £700,000-£1 million, illustrated above left). The collection presents the opportunity for both established and new collectors alike to acquire works at a wide range of price points with estimates ranging from £1,000 to £700,000. Harriet Drummond, International Head of British Drawings & Watercolours, Christie’s: “Christie's is delighted to be handling this important and breath-takingly beautiful collection of paintings and drawings brought together by a couple of anglophile art lovers, who combined their passion for the aesthetic of the Victorian Period with the discerning eye of the connoisseur collector. It is the art of this Victorian era celebrating beauty through its depiction of largely female figures, from the monumentality of ‘Desdemona’ to the intimacy of ‘Fanny Cornforth, asleep on a chaise-longue’ that so strongly influenced our idea of beauty today.” With the recent re-emergence of interest in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, led by Tate’s Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde exhibition in 2012, this collection represents many of the ‘Stunners’ who inspired their paintings and made their work truly ‘romantic’, including eight beguiling works by Rossetti.
    [Show full text]
  • Leighton's Iconic Painting Flaming June on View in New
    LEIGHTON’S ICONIC PAINTING FLAMING JUNE ON VIEW IN NEW YORK CITY FOR THE FIRST TIME June 9 through September 6, 2015 Born in Scarborough, Yorkshire, in 1830, Frederic Leighton was one of the most renowned artists of the Victorian era. He was a painter and sculptor, as well as a formidable presence in the art establishment, serving as a longtime president of the Royal Academy, and he forged an unusual path between academic classicism and the avant-garde. The recipient of many honors during his lifetime, he is the only British artist to have been ennobled, becoming Lord Leighton, Baron of Stretton, in the year of his death. Nevertheless, he left almost no followers, and his impressive oeuvre was largely forgotten in the twentieth century. Leighton’s virtuoso technique, extensive preparatory Frederic Leighton (1830–1896), Flaming June, c.1895, oil on canvas, Museo de Arte de Ponce. The Luis A. Ferré Foundation, Inc. process, and intellectual subject matter were at odds with the generation of painters raised on Impressionism, with its emphasis on directness of execution. One of his last works, however, Flaming June, an idealized sleeping woman in a semi-transparent saffron gown, went on to enduring fame. From June 9 to September 6, Leighton’s masterpiece will hang at the Frick, on loan from the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico. The exhibition, which is accompanied by a publication and series of public programs, is organized by Susan Grace Galassi, Senior Curator, The Frick Collection. Leighton’s Flaming June is made possible by The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation and Mr.
    [Show full text]
  • Aubrey Beardsley's 'Frontispiece to Chopin's Third Ballade'
    Sado-masochismand synaesthesia: AubreyBeardsley's 'Frontispiece to Chopin's Third Ballade' by RO B E R T UPSTONE, Tate Britain, London TO HONOUR THE centenary of his death, at the end of 1998 the Tate's Patrons of British Art purchased for the Gallery Aubrey Beardsley's Frontispieceto Chopin's Third Ballade (Fig.27). At first sight this appears to be a straightforwardly witty, perhaps even charming image of a woman on a horse, with something of the pantomime or theatre about it. But this is by Beardsley and thus it contains a range of references, both iconographic and ideological, that slyly combine to subvert and pervert the apparent simplicity and innocence of the image. The Frontispiecetouches on sexual themes, specifically those associated with domination and masochism, and it also addresses contemporary theoretical discussions about synaesthesia and cor- respondence. In dealing with these, Beardsley employs a rich range of pictorial sources which demonstrates the melting pot of references that inhabit his art, making connexions with high Pre- Raphaelitism and contemporary European Symbolism, and his choice of each sheds a certain on the and of Bork, 1560, by light subject meaning Edward Burne- the design as a whole. Jones. i86o-6i. However, before dissecting these exciting and titillating attrib- Water-colour and utes, it is worth establishing briefly the circumstances of the draw- body-colour, 33 by 17 cm. ing's history. It might be assumed from the title that Beardsley (Tate, London). made it as the frontispiece or cover design to an edition of Chopin's Ballade no.III, opus 47.
    [Show full text]
  • Aubrey Beardsley’, Tate Britain, 4 March–20 September 2020
    ‘Aubrey Beardsley’, Tate Britain, 4 March–20 September 2020 Reviewed by Kristina McClendon (Independent, UK) ‘Aubrey Beardsley’ at Tate Britain was the first exhibition on the artist and illustrator Beardsley (1872–98) at Tate since 1923, and the largest display of his work in Europe since the 1966 exhibition at the V&A. This long planned-for revival took place during the unprecedented times of a global pandemic in which national lockdowns prevented museum visits for much of the year. The atmosphere of our own peculiar time could not fail to add to the surreal, dream-like, and intense experience of viewing Beardsley’s bizarre and grotesque images. To the casual Victorianist and art enthusiast, Aubrey Beardsley’s name is most closely associated with his work on Oscar Wilde’s play Salomé (1894) and his time as art editor of the decadent periodical The Yellow Book. This exhibition provides an opportunity of getting to know this quintessential figure of 1890s decadence more intimately. The Tate exhibition set the stage for Beardsley’s short, yet prolific artistic career with the opening description that he knew from childhood that his life would be a brief one. This led him to work at a hectic pace. One contemporary described his determination ‘to fill his few working years with the immediate echo of a great notoriety.’ Moving rapidly from style to style, he created well over a thousand illustrations and designs in just five years. Whilst this introduction prepared visitors for the enormous amount of work on view, the exhibition still felt very demanding, requiring the viewer to read and look with intensity at the sheer amount of detail in Beardsley’s illustrations.
    [Show full text]
  • Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Italian Renaissance: Envisioning Aesthetic Beauty and the Past Through Images of Women
    Virginia Commonwealth University VCU Scholars Compass Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2010 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI AND THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE: ENVISIONING AESTHETIC BEAUTY AND THE PAST THROUGH IMAGES OF WOMEN Carolyn Porter Virginia Commonwealth University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons © The Author Downloaded from https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/113 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at VCU Scholars Compass. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of VCU Scholars Compass. For more information, please contact [email protected]. © Carolyn Elizabeth Porter 2010 All Rights Reserved “DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI AND THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE: ENVISIONING AESTHETIC BEAUTY AND THE PAST THROUGH IMAGES OF WOMEN” A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University. by CAROLYN ELIZABETH PORTER Master of Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University, 2007 Bachelor of Arts, Furman University, 2004 Director: ERIC GARBERSON ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF ART HISTORY Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, Virginia August 2010 Acknowledgements I owe a huge debt of gratitude to many individuals and institutions that have helped this project along for many years. Without their generous support in the form of financial assistance, sound professional advice, and unyielding personal encouragement, completing my research would not have been possible. I have been fortunate to receive funding to undertake the years of work necessary for this project. Much of my assistance has come from Virginia Commonwealth University. I am thankful for several assistantships and travel funding from the Department of Art History, a travel grant from the School of the Arts, a Doctoral Assistantship from the School of Graduate Studies, and a Dissertation Writing Assistantship from the university.
    [Show full text]
  • Julia Margaret Cameron: the Val Prinsep Album Lot 244 English Literature, History, Children’S Books and Illustrations
    JULIA MARGARET CAMERON: THE VAL PRINSEP ALBUM LOT 244 ENGLISH LITERATURE, HISTORY, children’S BOOKS AND ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON 10 DECEMBER 2013 JULIA MARGARET CAMERON: THE VAL PRINSEP ALBUM LOT 244 ENGLISH LITERATURE, HISTORY, CHILDREn’S BOOKS AND ILLUSTRATIONS AUCTION IN LONDON 10 DECEMBER 2013 SALE L13408 2.30 PM EXHIBITION Friday 6 December 9 am-4.30 pm Saturday 7 December 12 noon-5 pm Sunday 8 December 12 noon-5 pm Monday 9 December 9 am-4.30 pm 34-35 New Bond Street London, W1A 2AA +44 (0)20 7293 5000 sothebys.com SPECIALISTS AND AUCTION ENQUIRIES For further information on lots in this auction please contact any of the specialists listed below. SALE NUMBER SALE ADMINISTRATOR Simone Klein L13408 “CAROLINE” Joanna Lowe Photographs [email protected] Director, Specialist BIDS DEPARTMENT +44 (0)20 7293 5287 +33 (0)1 53 05 52 26 +44 (0)20 7293 5283 fax +44 (0)20 72936297 [email protected] fax +44 (0)20 7293 6255 [email protected] POST SALE SERVICES Elliott Depree Telephone bid requests should Post Sale Manager be received 24 hours prior FOR PAYMENT, DELIVERY to the sale. This service is AND COLLECTION Brandei Estes offered for lots with a low estimate +44 (0)20 7293 5220 Photographs of £2,000 and above. fax +44 (0)20 7293 5910 Deputy Director, Specialist [email protected] +44 (0)20 7293 5586 PRIVATE CLIENT GROUP [email protected] Maureen Hooft Graafland, FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS CALL Head of Department +44 (0)20 7293 5000 Alexandra Brenninkmeyer for UK & Europe Annabel O’Keeffe +1 212 894 7000 USA Celsa
    [Show full text]
  • 3. Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
    • Of course, their patrons, largely the middle-class themselves form different groups and each member of the PRB appealed to different types of buyers but together they created a stronger brand. In fact, they differed from a boy band as they created works that were bought independently. As well as their overall PRB brand each created an individual brand (sub-cognitive branding) that convinced the buyer they were making a wise investment. • Millais could be trusted as he was a born artist, an honest Englishman and made an ARA in 1853 and later RA (and President just before he died). • Hunt could be trusted as an investment as he was serious, had religious convictions and worked hard at everything he did. • Rossetti was a typical unreliable Romantic image of the artist so buying one of his paintings was a wise investment as you were buying the work of a ‘real artist’. 1 • The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) had only seven members but influenced many other artists. • Those most closely associated with the PRB were Ford Madox Brown (who was seven years older), Elizabeth Siddal (who died in 1862) and Walter Deverell (who died in 1854). • Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris were about five years younger. They met at Oxford and were influenced by Rossetti. I will discuss them more fully when I cover the Arts & Crafts Movement. • There were many other artists influenced by the PRB including, • John Brett, who was influenced by John Ruskin, • Arthur Hughes, a successful artist best known for April Love, • Henry Wallis, an artist who is best known for The Death of Chatterton (1856) and The Stonebreaker (1858), • William Dyce, who influenced the Pre-Raphaelites and whose Pegwell Bay is untypical but the most Pre-Raphaelite in style of his works.
    [Show full text]
  • Press Release Pre-Raphaelites on Paper, Leighton House Museum
    PRESS RELEASE Pre-Raphaelites on Paper: Victorian Drawings from the Lanigan Collection An exhibition at Leighton House Museum organised by the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa 12 Feb 2016 – 29 May 2016 Press Preview 11 Feb 2016 Pre-Raphaelites on Paper: Victorian Drawings from the Lanigan Collection will be the first exhibition opening at Leighton House Museum in 2016, presenting an exceptional, privately- assembled collection to the UK public for the first time. Featuring over 100 drawings and sketches by the Pre- Raphaelites and their contemporaries, the exhibition is organised by the National Gallery of Canada (NGC). It expresses the richness and flair of British draftsmanship during the Victorian era displayed in the unique setting of the opulent home and studio of artist and President of the Royal Academy (PRA) Frederic, Lord Leighton. From preparatory sketches to highly finished drawings intended as works of art in themselves, visitors will discover the diverse ways that Victorian artists used drawing to further their artistic practice, creating, as they did so, images of great beauty and accomplishment. Portraits, landscapes, allegories and scenes from religious and literary works are all represented in the exhibition including studies for some of the most well-known paintings of the era such as Edward Burne- Jones’ The Wheel of Fortune (1883), Holman Hunt’s Eve of St Agnes (1848) and Leighton’s Cymon and Iphigenia (1884). With the exception of Leighton’s painting studio, the permanent collection will be cleared from Leighton House and the drawings hung throughout the historic interiors. This outstanding collection, brought together over a 30-year period by Canadian Dr.
    [Show full text]
  • The Art of Aubrey Beardsley: a Fin De Siecle Critique of Victorian Society by Erin Smith
    The Art of Aubrey Beardsley: A Fin de Siecle Critique of Victorian Society by Erin Smith In the late Victorian period, many English, among other Europeans, were beginning to question the benefits of the rapid change and industrialization which characterized most of the nineteenth century. As a result, the Victorian value system and social order, which fit in so well with industrial capitalism, came under attack. In England by the late 1880's, although much of the mainstream art and literature still upheld Victorian values and social order, an avant-garde movement of artists and writers began to criticize and satirize Victorian society. Aubrey Beardsley was an illustrator who took part in this movement, and became known in the larger context of Art Nouveau. In criticizing Victorian society, Beardsley focused on the sexual sphere. He was fully aware that challenges to Victorian values came not only from the avant-garde, but from the Women's Movement, which by the 1880's, had made some gains in the areas of education and economic rights. Through his bizarre and symbolic style, Beardsley's drawings blur gender lines and mock male superiority. They also play on Victorian anxieties about sexual expression and men's fear of female superiority. The phrase Fin de Siecle came from the title of a French play, and became a popular expression which symbolized the mood in England from the 1870's to the turn of the century. During this time, Britain was a power in decline. Economically, the industrial middle class was feeling strain from the "great depression" of the 1880's and increasing foreign competition in trade.
    [Show full text]
  • The Alma-Tademas' Studio-Houses and Beyond
    This is a repository copy of Introduction : The Alma-Tademas' Studio-Houses and Beyond. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/134823/ Version: Published Version Article: Prettejohn, Elizabeth Francesca orcid.org/0000-0001-6615-0448 and Trippi, Peter (2018) Introduction : The Alma-Tademas' Studio-Houses and Beyond. British Art Studies. ISSN 2058-5462 10.17658/issn.2058-5462/issue-09/prettejohn-trippi Reuse This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) licence. This licence allows you to remix, tweak, and build upon this work non-commercially, and any new works must also acknowledge the authors and be non-commercial. You don’t have to license any derivative works on the same terms. More information and the full terms of the licence here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ British Art Studies Summer 2018 British Art Studies Issue 9, published 7 August 2018 Cover image: Jonathan Law, Pattern, excerpt from ilm, 2018.. Digital image courtesy of Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art with support from the staf of Leighton House Museum, The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. PDF generated on 7 August 2018 Note: British Art Studies is a digital publication and intended to be experienced online and referenced digitally.
    [Show full text]