Vincent van Gogh used art to express his intensely emotional response to the world around him. Enraptured by the beauty of nature and tormented by the sorrows of human existence, he produced in his tragically short life some of the most powerfully expressive paintings ever seen. Many have made the mistake of thinking him mad, and he did suffer throughout his life periods of mental anguish. But Van Gogh's paintings are not the works of a madman. Van Gogh famously sold only one painting during his life, but within a few years of his death he was recognized as one of the greatest modern painters.

Challenging distinctions between fine and decorative art, this book begins with a critique of the Rodin scholarship, to establish how the selective study of his oeuvre has limited our understanding of French nineteenth-century sculpture. The book's central argument is that we need to include the decorative in the study of sculpture, in order to present a more accurate and comprehensive account of the practice and profession of sculpture in this period. Drawing on new archival sources, sculptors and objects, this is the first sustained study of how and why French sculptors collaborated with state and private luxury goods manufacturers between 1848 and 1895. Organised chronologically, the book identifies three historically-situated frameworks, through which sculptors attempted to validate themselves and their work in relation to industry: industrial art, decorative art and objet d'art. Detailed readings are offered of sculptors who operated within and outside the Salon, including Sevin, Cheret, Carrier-Belleuse and Rodin; and of diverse objects and materials, from Sevres vases, to pewter plates by Desbois, and furniture by Barbedienne and Carabin. By contesting the false separation of art from industry, Claire Jones's study restores the importance of the sculptor-manufacturer relationship, and of the decorative, to the history of sculpture.

Georges Seurat is best known as the painter of A Sunday on the Grande Jatte--1884, one of the most recognizable and reproduced works of art in the world. In recent years the painting has been the subject of a highly successful exhibition, the inspiration for a Broadway musical (by Stephen Sondheim), and the subject of a television program. The Grande Jatte has achieved this iconic status for a number of reasons, but is unknown to most people except as a simulacrum. The Grande Jatte is also plagued by the long-standing cliche that it embodies a "scientific" way of painting. The painting is much more complex, however; so is Seurat's body of work as a whole. In this collection of essays, Paul Smith has assembled a broader view of Seurat's oeuvre. Seurat Re-viewed touches on its engagement with society, gender, politics, new artists' materials, and developments in art theory.

Individual essays focus on the many facets of Seurat's work and its context, including its use of color and its debt to color theory; its exploitation of different drawing media; its connection to the work of the artist's contemporaries, including the poets Jules Laforgue and Stephane Mallarme; and its concern with nineteenth-century social issues. The contributions also show important links among the Grande Jatte, literary Symbolism, and the development of future Modernist practices. The book amounts to a major reevaluation of Seurat's art in the culture of the late nineteenth century.

In addition to the editor, the contributors are Anthea Callen, S. Hollis Clayson, Jonathan Crary, Joan U. Halperin, Richard Hobbs, John House, Brendan Prendeville, Georges Roque, and Richard Shiff.

Painting Labour in Scotland and Europe, 1850-1900 explores hitherto unrecognised European variations in the phenomena of rural labour imagery, particularly in Scotland. In exploring these distinctions relative to Scotland and Europe it looks to develop a new understanding of the commonalities and idiosyncrasies of rural labour imagery which have often been treated as homogenous. Lacking the detailed analysis that has been accorded other images, writing about Scottish painting has often been appended to analyses of English or French imagery. It has generally been understood as intellectually divorced from the sometimes brutal realities of evolving Scottish nineteenth century urbanism, or simply ignored. Painting Labour in Scotland and Europe, 1850-1900 sets out systematically to discuss the Scottish rural painting in relation to its particular Scottish historical context, both sociological and aesthetic and its English and European counterparts. Alongside canonical Scottish images by major figures such as James Guthrie, the book explores many hitherto under researched and unconsidered paintings by nineteenth century Scottish artists, and considers them in relation to major English and Continental Realist and Romantic painters. The juxtaposition of J.F. Millet with W.D. McKay, and Edwin Landseer with George Reid makes for a volume that will appeal both to an academic audience and to one interested in European art history more generally.

For much of the nineteenth century, King Alfred was as important as King Arthur in the British popular imagination. A pervasive cult of the King developed which included the erection of at least four public statues, the completion of more than twenty-five paintings, and the publication of over a hundred texts, by authors ranging from Wordsworth to minor women writers. By 1852, J.A. Froude could describe Alfred's life as 'the favourite story in English nurseries'; in 1901, a national holiday marked the thousandth anniversary of his death, organised by a committee including Edward Burne Jones, Arthur Conan Doyle and Thomas Hughes. The book examines the ways in which Alfred was rewritten by nineteenth-century authors and artists, and asks how beliefs about the Saxon king's reign and achievements related to nineteenth-century ideals about leadership, law, religion, commerce, education and the Empire. The book concludes by addressing the most interesting enigma in Alfred's reception history: why is the king no longer 'England's darling'? A fascinating study that will be enjoyed by scholars of history, cultural history, literature and art history. -- .

Dialogic Materialism: Bakhtin, Embodiment and Moving Image Art argues for the relevance of Mikhail Bakhtin's theories of dialogism as a means of examining the interdisciplinary nature of contemporary moving image art forms. The volume comprises six chapters divided into two sections. The first section, Part I, illustrates the key concepts in Bakhtin's multifaceted dialogism and develops these ideas in relation to moving image art. The main focus of this first part is the proposal of what the author terms dialogic materialism, which builds upon the Marxism inherent in Bakhtin, examining the material processes of cultural exchange with a particular emphasis on multi-perspective subjective relations. Part II consists of case studies that apply dialogic materialism to the moving image artwork of three artists: Stan Douglas, Jamelie Hassan and Chris Marker. Applying Bakhtinian theory to the field of the visual arts provides a means of examining the fundamentally dialogic nature of moving image art making and viewing, a perspective that is not fully developed within the existing literature.

Northern Ireland is now generally regarded to be a post-conflict region since the official end to three decades of violence in 1998. However, given some of the stipulations of the Good Friday Belfast Agreement, including the early release of politically motivated prisoners from jail, society in Northern Ireland remains in a state of flux, uncertainty and disagreement. This book presents four thematic studies revolving around the issues of imprisonment, surveillance, traumatic recall and myth-making in Northern Ireland. These studies examine the different ways in which artists and filmmakers are experimenting with film aesthetics and new media technologies to represent, re-present and invite engagement with the underlying anxieties that continue to trouble post-Agreement society. In doing so, the author argues for a reassessment of the critical analysis of film's convergence with other forms of visual art. Ultimately, the volume assesses the usefulness of such an approach in examining how artists and filmmakers experiment with diverse forms that open up space for discussion of the hidden and marginalized concerns in Northern Ireland's new, 'shared' society. This book was the winner of the 2012 Peter Lang Young Scholars Competition in Film Studies.

Highly innovative and long overdue, this study analyzes the visual culture of addiction produced in Britain during the long nineteenth century. The book examines well-known images such as William Hogarth's Gin Lane (1751), as well as lesser-known artworks including Alfred Priest's painting Cocaine (1919), in order to demonstrate how visual culture was both informed by, and contributed to, discourses of addiction in the period between 1751 and 1919. Through her analysis of more than 30 images, Julia Skelly deconstructs beliefs and stereotypes related to addicted individuals that remain entrenched in the popular imagination today. Drawing upon both feminist and queer methodologies, as well as upon extensive archival research, Addiction and British Visual Culture, 1751-1919 investigates and problematizes the long-held belief that addiction is legible from the body, thus positioning visual images as unreliable sources in attempts to identify alcoholics and drug addicts. Examining paintings, graphic satire, photographs, advertisements and architectural sites, Skelly explores such issues as ongoing anxieties about maternal drinking; the punishment and confinement of addicted individuals; the mobility of female alcoholics through the streets and spaces of nineteenth-century London; and soldiers' use of addictive substances such as cocaine and tobacco to cope with traumatic memories following the First World War.

James Lawrence Isherwood (1917-1989) is widely regarded by his followers as one of the best impressionist painters this country has produced. Born and bred in Wigan, now part of Greater Manchester, England, he was a prolific painter and produced his best work from the early 1960s on. His work has always been considered truly original and is typified by strong brushwork and extravagant colours. His subjects ranged from rural and industrial landscapes to nudes and portraiture, and his work has found its way into art collections across the world. Now Dr. Brian Iddon has written this authoritative biography about James Isherwood and his work.

In this volume, emerging and established scholars bring ethical and political concerns for the environment, nonhuman animals and social justice to the study of nineteenth-century visual culture. They draw their theoretical inspiration from the vitality of emerging critical discourses, such as new materialism, ecofeminism, critical animal studies, food studies, object-oriented ontology and affect theory. This timely volume looks back at the early decades of the Anthropocene to query the agency of visual culture to critique, create and maintain more resilient and biologically diverse local and global ecologies.

Antebellum American Pendant Paintings: New Ways of Looking marks the first sustained study of pendant paintings: discrete images designed as a pair. It opens with a broad overview that anchors the form in the medieval diptych, religious history, and aesthetic theory and explores its cultural and historical resonance in the 19th-century United States. Three case studies examine how antebellum American artists used the pendant format in ways revelatory of their historical moment and the aesthetic and cultural developments in which they partook. The case studies on John Quidor's Rip Van Winkle and His Companions at the Inn Door of Nicholas Vedder (1839) and The Return of Rip Van Winkle (1849) and Thomas Cole's Departure and Return (1837) shed new light on canonical antebellum American artists and their practices. The chapter on Titian Ramsay Peale's Kilauea by Day and Kilauea by Night (1842) presents new material that pushes the geographical boundaries of American art studies toward the Pacific Rim. The book contributes to American art history the study of a characteristic but as yet overlooked format and models for the discipline a new and productive framework of analysis focused on the fundamental yet complex way images work back and forth with one another.

Originally published in 2004. Once the most popular Victorian artist, G. F. Watts was also a complex and elusive figure. Influenced by evolutionary theory, he reinterpreted the tradition of the classical body, while his philanthropic and educational interests informed projects for a more affective public art. This book is the first modern account of the full range of Watts's different artistic interests and practices. Offering fresh approaches to his historical, allegorical and mythological paintings, it also traces his increasingly radical approach to portraiture and sculpture and examines the institutional and biographical factors behind his immense public profile. Together the essays present a comprehensive analysis of Watts's work and his vital relationship to the intellectual, cultural and social forces of his time.

The Life and Times of Moses Jacob Ezekiel: American Sculptor, Arcadian Knight tells the remarkable story of Moses Ezekiel and his rise to international fame as an artist in late nineteenth-century Italy. Sephardic Jew, homosexual, Confederate soldier, Southern apologist, opponent of slavery, patriot, expatriate, mystic, Victorian, dandy, good Samaritan, humanist, royalist, romantic, reactionary, republican, monist, dualist, theosophist, freemason, champion of religious freedom, proto-Zionist, and proverbial Court Jew, Moses Ezekiel was a riddle of a man, a puzzle of seemingly irreconcilable parts. Knighted by three European monarchs, courted by the rich and famous, Moses Ezekiel lived the life of an aristocrat with rarely a penny to his name. Making his home in the capacious ruins of the Baths of Diocletian in Rome, he quickly distinguished himself as the consummate artist and host, winning international fame for his work and consorting with many of the lions and luminaries of the fin-de-siecle world, including Giuseppe Garibaldi, Queen Margherita, Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, Sarah Bernhardt, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Eleonora Duse, Annie Besant, Clara Schumann, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Alphonse Daudet, Mark Twain, Emile Zola, Robert E. Lee, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and Isaac Mayer Wise. In a city besieged with eccentrics, he, a Southern Jewish homosexual sculptor, was outstanding, an enigma to those who knew him, a man at once stubbornly original and deeply emblematic of his times. According to Stanley Chyet in his introduction to Ezekiel's memoirs, "The contemporary European struggle between liberalism and reaction, between modernity and feudalism, between the democratic and the hierarchical is rather amply refracted in Ezekiel's account of his life in Rome." Indeed so many of the contentious cultural, political, artistic, and scientific struggles of the age converged in the figure of this adroit and prepossessing Jew.

Translation of fiction is always interpretation. This book discusses the challenges facing translators of fictional works from German into English using as examples English translations of canonical German novellas by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Theodor Storm, Gerhart Hauptmann, Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka. The author addresses the difficulties of translating in the poststructuralist era, when every fictional work potentially has a large number of interpretations and, therefore, at least the same number of possible translations. Considering interpretations of the original text in detail not only improves the reader's understanding and ability to criticize the translated text, but it will also provide valuable insight into the possible intentions of the writer. An initial linguistic observation of a target text can therefore lead to a fruitful connection between the linguistic and literary analysis of translated works. This book offers new perspectives on the delicate negotiation of translating source texts for a contemporary audience while maintaining the values, ideas and hidden meanings from the source in relation to its original epoque.

An interdisciplinary examination of nineteenth-century French art pertaining to religion, exile, and the nation's demise as a world power, this study concerns the consequences for visual culture of a series of national crises-from the assault on Catholicism and the flight of emigres during the Revolution of 1789, to the collapse of the Empire and the dashing of hope raised by the Revolution of 1830. The central claim is that imaginative response to these politically charged experiences of loss constitutes a major shaping force in French Romantic art, and that pursuit of this theme in light of parallel developments in literature and political debate reveals a pattern of disenchantment transmuted into cultural capital. Focusing on imagery that spoke to loss through visual and verbal idioms particular to France in the aftermath of the Revolution and Empire, the book illuminates canonical works by major figures such as Eugene Delacroix, Theodore Chasseriau, and Camille Corot, as well as long-forgotten images freighted with significance for nineteenth-century viewers. A study in national bereavement-an urgent theme in the present moment-the book provides a new lens through which to view the coincidence of imagination and strife at the heart of French Romanticism. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, French literature, French history, French politics, and religious studies.

In Alois Riegl in Vienna 1875-1905 - An Institutional Biography, Diana Cordileone applies standard methods of cultural and intellectual history for close readings of Riegl's published texts, several of which are still unavailable in English. Further, the author compares Riegl's work to several of the early works of Friedrich Nietzsche that Riegl is known to have read before 1878. Using archival and other primary sources this study also illuminates the institutional conflicts and imperatives that shaped Riegl's oeuvre. The result is a multi-layered philosophical, cultural and institutional history of this art historian's work of the fin-de-siecle that demonstrates his close relationship to several of the significant actors in Vienna at the end of the nineteenth century, an epoch of innovation, culture wars and political uncertainty.The book is particularly devoted to explaining how Riegl's theories of art were shaped by debates outside the purview of the academic art historian. Its focal point is the Austrian Museum for Art and Industry, where he worked for 13 years, and it presents a new interpretation of Riegl based upon his early exposure to Nietzsche.

This book focuses on Sir Edward Burne-Jones' mythical paintings from 1868 to 1886. His artistic training and traveling experiences, his love for the Greek-sculptress, Maria Zambaco, and his aesthetic sensibility provided the background for these mythical paintings. This book analyzes two main concepts: Burne-Jones' assimilation of Neoplatonic ideal beauty as depicted in his solo and narrative paintings, and Burne-Jones' fusion of the classical and emblematic traditions in his imagery.

Dublin has held an important place throughout Ireland's cultural history. The shifting configurations of the city's streetscapes have been marked by the ideological frameworks of imperialism, its architecture embedded within the cultural politics of the nation, and its monuments and sculptures mobilized to envision the economic ambitions of the state. This book examines the relationship of Dublin to Ireland's social history through the city's visual culture. Through specific case studies of Dublin's streetscapes, architecture and sculpture and its depiction in literature, photography and cinema, the contributors discuss the significance of visual experiences and representations of the city to our understanding of Irish cultural life, both past and present. Drawing together scholars from across the arts, humanities and social sciences, the collection addresses two emerging themes in Irish studies: the intersection of the city with cultural politics, and the role of the visual in projecting Irish cultural identity. The essays not only ask new questions of existing cultural histories but also identify previously unexplored visual representations of the city. The book's interdisciplinary approach seeks to broaden established understandings of visual culture within Irish studies to incorporate not only visual artefacts, but also textual descriptions and ocular experiences that contribute to how we come to look at, see and experience both Dublin and Ireland.

Over the course of the nineteenth century, women in Britain participated in diverse and prolific forms of artistic labour. As they created objects and commodities that blurred the boundaries between domestic and fine art production, they crafted subjectivities for themselves as creative workers. By bringing together work by scholars of literature, painting, music, craft and the plastic arts, this collection argues that the constructed and contested nature of the female artistic professional was a notable aspect of debates about aesthetic value and the impact of industrial technologies. All the essays in this volume set up a productive inter-art dialogue that complicates conventional binary divisions such as amateur and professional, public and private, artistry and industry in order to provide a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between gender, artistic labour and creativity in the period. Ultimately, how women faced the pragmatics of their own creative labour as they pursued vocations, trades and professions in the literary marketplace and related art-industries reveals the different ideological positions surrounding the transition of women from industrious amateurism to professional artistry.

Over the course of the long nineteenth century, Civilisation was the subject of some of the most prominent public mural paintings and sculptures in Europe and the United States, especially those that speculated on the direction of history. It also underpinned Western depictions of non-Western societies and evaluations of social progress and artistic excellence. The essays in this volume explore the ways in which the idea of Civilisation acted as a lens through which Europeans and Americans represented themselves and others, how this concept reshaped understandings of historical and artistic development, and also how it changed and was put to new uses as the century progressed. This collection will prove invaluable to students and academics in both history and art history. -- .

Henri Rousseau was the first naive artist in the history of Western art to be recognized for his true worth. His paintings have now entered popular consciousness to such an extent that it is difficult to imagine how strongly they were resisted at the time. Much of the credit for his transformation is due to the author of these Recollections, dealer and art historian Wilhelm Uhde. It was Uhde who mounted the first exhibition of Rousseau's work, and the catalog he wrote for the occasion is the basis of the Recollections. In it, he painted a picture of a man of naivete, humor, and total commitment to an art of whose importance he was utterly convinced.

In a moving intervention into Romantic-era depictions of the dead and wounded, Philip Shaw's timely study directs our gaze to the neglected figure of the common soldier. How suffering and sentiment were portrayed in a variety of visual and verbal media is Shaw's particular concern, as he examines a wide range of print and visual media, from paintings to sketches to political prose and anti-war poetry, and from writings on culture and aesthetics to graphic satires and early photographs. Whilst classical portraiture and history painting certainly conspired with official ideologies to deflect attention from the true costs of war, other works of art, literary as well as visual, proffered representations that countered the view that suffering on and off the battlefield is noble or heroic. Shaw uncovers a history of changing attitudes towards suffering, from mid-eighteenth century ambivalence to late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century concepts of moral sentiment. Thus, Shaw's story is one of how images of death and wounding facilitated and queried these shifts in the perception of war, qualifying as well as consolidating ideas of individual and national unanimity. Informed by readings of the letters and journals of serving soldiers, surgeons' notebooks and sketches, and the writings of peace and war agitators, Shaw's study shows how an attention to the depiction of suffering and the development of 'liberal' sentiment enables a reconfiguring of historical and theoretical notions of the body as a site of pain and as a locus of violent national imaginings.

Part of a series of handy, luxurious Flame Tree Pocket Books. Combining high-quality production with magnificent fine art, the covers are printed on foil in five colours, embossed then foil stamped. And they're delightfully practical: a pocket at the back for receipts and scraps, two bookmarks and a solid magnetic side flap. These are perfect for personal use, handbags and make a dazzling gift. This example features one of Louis Comfort Tiffany's glorious peacock glass designs.

Eschewing the limiting idea that nineteenth-century architecture photography merely reflects functionality, the objective of this collection is to reflect the aesthetic, intellectual, and cultural concerns of the time. The essays hold appeal for social and cultural historians, as well as those with an interest in the fields of art history, urban geography, history of travel and tourism. Nineteenth-century photographers captured what could be seen and what they wanted to be seen. Their images informed of exploration, progress, heritage, and destruction. Architecture was a staple subject for the first generation of photographers as it patiently tolerated the long exposures of the early processes. During its formative decades photography responded to evolutionary cultural forces of market and artistic production. Photographs of architecture reflected a specific political or social context modulated through individual points of view. For this reason, the examination of each photographic image as a primary visual document and an aesthetic object rather than a technical milestone on a chronological trajectory affords a richer multi-faceted approach to the extensive and complex corpus of photographs taken by photographers all over the world. This project acknowledges the importance of technique in the early decades of photography but focuses on the thematic content of the material. It places the photography of architecture in an international context under the contemporary critical lens sharpened by theoretical and cultural examinations of the topic.