Victorian painting

Victoria's early reign was characterised by rapid industrial development and social and political change, which made the United Kingdom one of the most powerful and advanced nations in the world.

Reynolds and the academy were strongly influenced by the Italian Renaissance painter Raphael, and believed that it was the role of an artist to make the subject of their work appear as noble and idealised as possible.

They were particularly fascinated by recent scientific advances which appeared to disprove the biblical chronology, as they related to the scientists' attention to detail and willingness to challenge their own existing beliefs.

A new generation of painters and writers known as the aesthetic movement felt that the domination of art buying by the poorly-educated middle class, and the Pre-Raphaelite emphasis on reflecting the reality of an ugly world, was leading to a decline in the quality of painting.

While Pre-Raphaelite art enjoyed a return to popularity, non-Pre-Raphaelite Victorian painting remains generally unfashionable, and the lack of any significant collections in the United States has restricted wider knowledge of it.

[11] British painting had been strongly influenced by Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), the first president of the Royal Academy of Arts, who believed that the purpose of art was "to conceive and represent their subjects in a poetical manner, not confined to mere matter of fact", and that artists should aspire to emulate the Italian Renaissance painter Raphael in making their subjects appear as close to perfection as possible.

[15] John Ruskin's seminal Modern Painters, the first volume of which was published in 1843, argued that it was the purpose of art to represent the world and allow the viewer to form their own opinions of the subject, not to idealise it.

[15] An upcoming generation of young artists, the first to have grown up in an industrial age in which the accurate representation of technical detail was considered a virtue and a necessity, came to agree with this view.

Despite Ruskin's defence of his work as being ultimately "an entire transcript of the whole system of nature",[15] Turner (who by 1845 had become the eldest Academician and deputy president of the Royal Academy[18]) had come to be seen by younger artists to embody bombast and wilfulness, and to be a product of an earlier, Romantic period out of touch with the modern age.

[2] In 1848 three young students at the Royal Academy art schools,[19] William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB).

PRB founder William Holman Hunt led a revolution in English religious art, visiting the Holy Land and studying archaeological evidence and the clothing and appearance of local people to paint biblical scenes as accurately as possible.

[28][E] The title and subject come from John Lemprière's Bibliotheca Classica, and refers to a prayer to Venus to turn the hearts of Roman women away from debauchery and lust and back towards modesty and virtue.

Landseer's The Old Shepherd's Chief Mourner, showing a sheepdog sitting beside a coffin, was particularly well-regarded by John Ruskin, who described it as "a touching poem upon canvas, which, it cannot be doubted, has caused many a stout heart to 'play the woman' by moving it to tears".

[42] In this context, dogs exhibiting emotions were a highly popular topic in a time of rapidly declining religious faith, suggesting the possibility of a nobility within nature that transcended cruelty and the will to live as a driving force.

[43] In the 1870s the Long Depression wrecked the economy and confidence of Britain, and the spirit of progress symbolised by the Great Exhibition began to fade, to the extent that in 1904 G. K. Chesterton described the Crystal Palace as "the temple of a forgotten creed".

[47] The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 caused large numbers of French artists such as Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro to relocate to London, bringing with them new styles of painting.

[49] Against this background, a new generation of painters such as Frederic Leighton and James Abbott McNeill Whistler departed from the traditions of storytelling and moralising, painting works designed for aesthetic appeal rather than for their narrative or subject.

[51] The aesthetic movement, as Pater and his successors came to be known, became increasingly influential; it was championed by Whistler and Oscar Wilde and until his death in 1883 by former Pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and was popularised with the public by the successful Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera Patience.

[54] Coupled with this, they felt that since industrialisation and capitalism were making the world increasingly unattractive, the emphasis of Pre-Raphaelite painters and those influenced by them upon reflecting reality as closely as possible was itself leading to the loss of beauty from art.

[54] Likewise, the subjects of their paintings were rarely engaged in activity of any kind; human figures typically stand, sit or lie still, generally with blank facial expressions.

Many of the most noteworthy artists of the period, particularly from the aesthetic movement, chose to work on such themes despite their lack of religious faith, as it gave a legitimate excuse to paint idealised figures and scenes and to avoid reflecting the reality of industrial Britain.

[59] (Edward Burne-Jones, who despite his lack of Christian belief was the most significant painter of religious imagery in the period, told Oscar Wilde that "The more materialistic science becomes, the more angels I shall paint".

In contrast, the aesthetic movement and their followers sought to emulate the most passive (and generally female) works of the classical world, such as the Venus de Milo.

[69] The most influential of these colonies was the Newlyn School in western Cornwall, which was heavily influenced by the style of Jules Bastien-Lepage in which individual brushstrokes remain visible, suggesting the coarse simplicity of the idealised country life.

[66] George Frederic Watts saw the rise of the French style as reflecting a growing culture of laziness within Britain as a whole, while William Holman Hunt was troubled by the lack of significance of the paintings' subjects.

[71] The New English Art Club in turn suffered a schism in 1889 between those painters who painted rural life and nature, and a faction led by Walter Sickert who felt themselves more influenced by impressionism and experimental techniques.

[74] Many people blamed the outbreak of the First World War, which devastated Britain and Europe, on the legacy of the Victorian age, and arts and literature associated with the period became deeply unpopular.

[70][M] In the 1940s William Gaunt's The Pre-Raphaelite Tragedy, coupled with a general desire during wartime to celebrate the achievements of British culture, led to a revival of interest in Victorian art.

[76] A number of major British museums held events and exhibits in 1948 to mark the centenary of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,[76] but fashionable art critics such as Wyndham Lewis mocked the PRB as a pretentious irrelevance.

[79] Although non-Pre-Raphaelite Victorian art has experienced a slight revival in subsequent years, it remains unfashionable, and the lack of any significant collections in the United States has held back global interest in the topic.