After the Pre-Raphaelites: Art and Aestheticism in Victorian England

by Elizabeth Prettejohn

What happened in Victorian painting and sculpture after the Pre-Raphaelites? Aestheticism has been called the next avant-garde movement but attention has centered on literary figures such as Algernon Charles Swinburne, Walter Pater, and Oscar Wilde. This volume is the first scholarship study of parallel trends in the visual arts, including the work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, James McNeill Whistler, Edward Burne-Jones, Simeon Solomon, and Albert Moore among others. Victorian Aestheticism has often been traded as a frivolous elevation of art above the concerns of political and social life. This book reinterprets Aestheticism as a significant exploration of what it might mean to produce works of art in the modern world. The chapters address not only "art for art's sake" but also linkages with the realms of science and morality. A major concern is the relationship between art and sexuality, from the experiments of the Rossetti circle in the 1860s to the male nude in late-Victorian sculpture. Both homosexual and heterosexual eroticism emerge as key issues in the artistic debates of the late-Victorian period. As a complement to the existing literature on Pre-Raphaelitism, this collection is essential reading for all students of nineteenth-century art, literature, and culture. Contributors Caroline Arscott, Robyn Asleson, Colin Cruise, Whitney Davis, Kate Flint, Alastair Grieve, Michael Hatt, Anne Koval, Alison Smith, and Robin Spencer

Genres: Art

265 pages, Paperback

Published August 1, 1999

Reviews

[Dawson Escott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I used one chapter of this book in my senior project and enjoyed the essay, and the whole Aesthetic movement, so I decided I could read this whole thing as a bit of a victory lap for finishing my thesis. I don't regret doing it, there are a lot of really strong and interesting articles in this! Aestheticism is such a potent. multilayered, fascinating art movement that I really think continues to be underrated historically. This collection does the movement justice.

Strongest articles- Elizabeth Prettejohn's piece on Walter Pater is really great and multidisciplinary, and it studies closely the referential nature of aesthetic art. Kate Flint's piece on Edward Burne Jones and subjectivity is also really interesting. The best article by far is the one on John Addington Symonds and homoerotic art criticism by Whitney Davis. This text is just really compelling and tragically beautiful on even a narrative level, and I was touched emotionally reading it.

I could take or leave the a couple articles, but overall this is a pretty killer set of essays that leaves me wanting to look up full books by several of the authors.

[Ray's Artshelf · Rating 5 out of 5]

"When Pater revised The Renaissance for the fourth edition of 1893, he removed many phrases that had provoked criticism; his alteration of 'art for art's sake' to 'art for its own sake' seems minute, but may indicate that the phrase had become controversial."

Controversies of the beautiful, of the aesthetic, abound in this collection of eleven sharp and memorable essays, which are grouped into three broad (and I think very porous) themes: art, science and morality. (Science and morality here considered in relation to art, of course, so for example, in the science section there is an essay on Albert Moore's abstraction, and in the morality section quite a witty and unexpected essay on physical culture as seen by Victorians.)

One of the most pleasurable reads I've yet found on the topic, and at time of writing it's 20 years old and still essential. Essays examine, inter alia, Whistler & Swinburne, surface and subjectivity, and the approach to art of John Addington Symonds. This essay is a wonderful companion to Symonds' memoir (here in the excellent Grosskurth edition ) and I'd urge anyone who has read it to track down Prettejohn's book for Whitney Davis' essay alone! The writing here on Rossetti and, naturally, Pater, is also first-rate.