Victorian narrative paintings offer a unique insight into the 19th century. The plight of women, the affects of the class system, and the onslaught of industry are all forced upon the attention of the viewer. Within each picture there is a story to uncover, either optimistic, educational, or tragic. Hugely popular in the Victorian period, the paintings tell much about how the Victorians viewed themselves and those whose "transgressive" practices threatened their respectability. An illustrated introduction decodes the conventions used in narrative painting, from literary and artistic allusions to the use of symbolism. The stories contained in works by William Holman Hunt, William Powell Frith, Richard Redgrave, John Everett Millais, and many others are uncovered in detailed examinations of their paintings.
A provocative interdisciplinary study of the Victorian novel and Pre-Raphaelite art, this book offers a new understanding of Victorian novels through Pre-Raphaelite paintings. Concentrating on Elizabeth Gaskell, Wilkie Collins, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy and aligning each novelist with specific painters, this work interprets narrative redrawings of Pre-Raphaelite paintings within a range of cultural contexts as well as alongside recent theoretical work on gender. Letters, reviews, and journals convincingly reinforce the contentions about the novels and their connection with paintings. Featuring color reproductions of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, this book reveals the great achievement of Pre-Raphaelite art and its impact on the Victorian novel. Arguing for the direct relationship between Pre-Raphaelite painting and the Victorian novel, this book fills a gap in the currently available literature devoted to the Victorian novel, the Pre-Raphaelites, and the connection of Pre-Raphaelite art to Victorian poetry. Visual readings of the Victorian novel channel the twenty-first-century readers' desire for the visual into the exploration of Pre-Raphaelite art in the Victorian novel, in the process offering fresh insights into the representation of gender in Victorian culture. Through a textual and a visual journey, this work reveals a new approach to the Victorian novel and Pre-Raphaelite art with profound implications for the study of both.
Victorian Paintingis a comprehensive survey of one of the most fertile and varied eras in the history of painting. It embraces not just the United Kingdom, but also English-speaking countries linked to Britain by cultural ties of empire and emigration, such as the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Africa. Long regarded as a backwater of sentiment and outmoded academic convention that was bypassed by the mainstream of development in Western art, Victorian painting is now wholeheartedly enjoyed in its own right. Unfettered by old prejudices, Lionel Lambourne presents a vivid panorama of an age of unparalleled energy and creativity. Wealth, optimism, education and self-confidence created a huge demand for art, and a remarkable array of talent emerged to meet it. Producing works in a wide variety of styles, subjects and media, many artists became rich celebrities, while the profession as a whole enjoyed unprecedented public esteem. The author tackles this protean subject by dividing it into themes that reflect its richness and variety. Chapters are devoted to such topics as Mural/ History Painting, the Nude, the Portrait, Sporting Painting, Genre Scenes and Women Painters; and social themes such as the Fallen Woman, Social Realism, Travel and Emigration; as well as movements such as the Pre-Raphaelites. Written with a light touch, full of illuminating anecdotes, and with 600 color illustrations, Victorian Paintingis beautiful, highly entertaining and informative. It is also an invaluable reference work since, in addition to many famous and well-loved images, it presents a wealth of fine work by lesser-known artists, and explores the byways as well as highways of Victorian art, demonstrating the astounding range and depth of talent of the age.
The Victorian era and its aftermath were the backdrop to one of the great flowerings of British art. Taking the story of British art from the era of Romanticism to the formal and aesthetic breakthrough of Post-Impressionism, this book offers a definitive survey of the field.
The middle decades of the nineteenth century saw an unprecedented growth in the picture industry, with technological advances ensuring that images adorned the pages of books and the walls of Victorian homes.
US scholars of literature explore how illustrated books became a cultural form of great importance in England and Scotland from the 1830s and 1840s to the end of the century. Some of them consider particular authors or editions, but others look at general themes such as illustrations of time, maps and metaphors, literal illustration, and city scenes. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
In one of the first studies of its kind, Orphan texts seeks to insert the orphan, and the problems its existence poses, in the larger critical areas of the family and childhood in Victorian culture. In doing so, Laura Peters considers certain canonical texts alongside lesser known works from popular culture in order to establish the context in which discourses of orphanhood operated.The study argues that the prevalence of the orphan figure can be explained by considering the family. The family and all it came to represent - legitimacy, race and national belonging - was in crisis. In order to reaffirm itself the family needed a scapegoat: it found one in the orphan figure. As one who embodied the loss of the family, the orphan figure came to represent a dangerous threat to the family; and the family reaffirmed itself through the expulsion of this threatening difference. Orphan texts will be of interest to final year undergraduates, postgraduates, academics and those interested in the areas of Victorian literature, Victorian studies, postcolonial studies, history and popular culture.
In Victorian England, virtually all women were taught to sew, but this essentially domestic virtue took on a different aspect for the professional seamstress of the day. This study considers the way this powerful image of working-class suffering was used by social reformers in art and literature.
